EoP Public Forum: Ecologies of Participation
A day of roundtable discussions and project demonstrations exploring artistic practice, technology and urban space as a public humanities research initiative.
Friday, 25 April 2025
Time: 10:00am – 7:30pm
Venue: G/F Atrium, Lee Shau Kee Architecture Building, CUHK
Register to join: https://forms.gle/jAY7nWGgdeuXAhRy9
Ecologies of Participation (EoP) is a transdisciplinary research collaboration initiated by scholars working between Fine Arts, Architecture and Media and Cultural Studies at CUHK. Through panel discussions, workshops, artistic projects and symposiums, the initiative aims to bridge research and practice by providing platforms for developing experiments with creative practice, technology, and urban space.
For this culminative event, the public forum gathers speakers from previous events, with invited international scholars and practitioners to further engage with us on key questions around the conception of participation in the East and Southeast Asian contexts, the role of art and technology in urban and social transformation, and the challenges of practice-based research in Hong Kong and beyond.
The event will be a full-day event held at the School of Architecture at the CUHK, including project presentations, roundtable discussions and prototype demonstrations consolidating some of our research around technology-enabled participatory practices in urban space. The programme will result in a publication and a network of like-minded scholars and practitioners in the region. We welcome you to join us for this momentous event.
About EoP:
Ecologies of Participation (EoP) is a collaborative research project initiated in 2024 by Yim Sui Fong (Assistant Professor of Fine Arts), Melody Hoi Lam Yiu (Research Assistant Professor of Architecture) and Ashley Lee Wong (Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). The initiative aims to develop practice-based collaborations to explore the role of creative arts in society. EoP is kindly supported by the Research Institute for the Humanities, and the Faculty of Arts at CUHK.
https://www.instagram.com/eop.cuhk
Schedule:
| 10:00am – 10:15am | Event introduction and welcome | Event organisers: Yim Sui Fong, Melody Hoi Lam Yiu and Ashley Lee Wong |
| 10:15am – 11:45am | Session 1: Project Presentations: The Role of the Arts and Technology in Urban and Social Transformation | Speakers: Agung Firmanto Budiharto (Geger), Lifepatch (IN) Pak Sheung Cheun, HASS Lab (HK) Federico Ruberto, formAxioms, Senior Lecturer, Architecture, National University of Singapore Tim Wong, Loftwork (TW) |
| 11:45am – 1:30pm | Lunch | Chung Chi College Staff Club |
| 1:30pm – 2:45pm | Session 2: Roundtable discussion: What is participation in East and Southeast Asia? | Speakers: Nie Xiaoyi, researcher, writer, and curator (CN) Minna Vaijakka, Senior Researcher, University of Helsinki (FI) Debbie Ding, Artist-scholar and PhD Candidate, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore |
| 2:45pm – 3:15pm | Coffee break | |
| 3:15pm – 4:30pm | Session 3: Roundtable discussion: What is at stake for Practice-based Research in Hong Kong and beyond? | Speakers: Frank Vigneron, Chair and Professor of Fine Arts, CUHK Pat Wing Shan Wong, Foreseen Property Agency, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Baptist University Ryo Ikeshiro, Assistant Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong |
| 4:30pm – 5:00pm | Conclusion | Concluding remarks and Q&A |
| 5:30pm – 7:30pm | Session 4: Prototype Demonstrations and Dinner | Workshop sharing: EoP initiators EoP Prototype: Debbie Ding, VR chat world Pat Wing Shan Wong, 3D scanning and cultural heritage Open mic: Fung Junhua, Energy Waving Collective (CN) |
Guest Speakers:
Agung Firmanto Budiharto [geger] is a co-founder of Lifepatch – a citizen initiative in art, science, and technology – and URBANCULT.net, a documentation of street art in Yogyakarta. He is also passionate about fruit fermentation and supports creative practices rooted in the spirit of DIY (do it yourself) and DIWO (do it with others). He holds degrees in Politics & Government Science from UGM and in Education from USD, both universities in Yogyakarta. His artistic practice includes media fabric / silk screen printing, and linocut-based printing. Since March 2019 has been actively volunteering in a sea turtle conservation in Yogyakarta. He co-founded Kawan Pustaha, a collective dedicated to exploring and preserving old Batak manuscripts in 2022. He explores bean-to-bar chocolate making / cacao projects, running workshops with local communities and students making their own chocolate as part of his ongoing personal project in decolonizing knowledge.
Debbie Ding is an artist-scholar working across the intersection of artistic research, technology and game studies, exploring psychogeography in virtual worlds. She is currently doing a practice-led PhD at Nanyang Technological University on the NTU Research Scholarship. Ongoing exhibitions include NTU Museum and New Art Museum Singapore. Her work was shortlisted for the President’s Young Talents 2018 and Impart Art Awards 2020 and is collected by the Australian War Memorial and Singapore Art Museum. Notable exhibitions include Ars Electronica, “Radical Gaming” at HeK Basel, “Worldbuilding” at Julia Stoschek Foundation Dusseldorf, “Wikicliki” at Singapore Art Museum, “Radio Malaya” at NUS Museum, Kochi Biennale, and the Singapore Biennale.
Ryo Ikeshiro is an artist, musician and researcher who explores the possibilities of meaning and context through sound and its materiality in relation to digital audio and technologies. His work includes installations and live performances using immersive audiovisual environments, field recordings and generative works. He has participated in exhibitions at the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea, and M+ Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong, and he is a contributor to Sound Art: Sound as a medium of art, a ZKM Karlsruhe/MIT publication. He is an Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.
Nie Xiaoyi is a researcher, writer, editor, and curator specialising in curatorial studies and Chinese contemporary art. She approaches curating as an act of instigating (cedong), fermenting ideas, and facilitating discussion. She is a Curatorial Fellow at the De Ying Foundation for the 2024–2025 term. Since 2021, she co-edits the transnational Sinophone publishing platform Qilu Criticism. From 2022 to 2024, she was the senior editor of ArtReview’s Chinese edition and LEAP. Her research frequently reinterprets the histories of transcultural exhibitions through archival materials and interviews. Her Ph.D. at the Royal College of Art focused on the emergence of curating in China and explored the mobilising effects of art in 20th-century China. In 2022, she joined the research project Three Contested Sites, which examines touring exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art in Europe during the 1990s. In 2020, she received IAAC-UK’s Emerging Art Writer Fellowship. She has contributed to curatorial programs at OCAT Research Institute (Beijing), Gasworks (London), the Royal College of Art (London), and the Jimei-Arles Photography Festival (Xiamen). Her research has been presented at the Institute of International Visual Arts (London), the Chinese Academy of Arts (Hangzhou), and the Glasgow School of Art.
Pak Sheung Chuen is a Hong Kong artist and co-founder of HASS Lab, a graduate of the Department of Fine Arts at CUHK in 2002, is known for his playful works that subtly alter everyday experiences. He has been an art columnist for Ming Pao and represented Hong Kong at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 with his solo presentation “Making (Perfect) World.” Pak has participated in numerous international exhibitions and biennials, including the Busan Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, and Taipei Biennial. Recognized as one of Art Asia Pacific’s Outstanding Artists in 2011, he won the Best Artist Award at the CCAA in 2012 and was named Artist of the Year (Visual Arts) by the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards the same year.
Federico Ruberto is a writer, architect and artist working between philosophy and design. He produces and curates forms/concepts, projects that intersect digital (platforms) and physical space (buildings), spatial structures (planetary urbanism), political economy, technology (of self) and (artificial) ecology. Federico teaches at the National University of Singapore, Department of Architecture, where he is the Programme Director of BA Arch. He is a co-founder/partner of formAxioms, a Singapore based media laboratory, and of reMIX Studio, an architectural studio located in Shenzhen.
Minna Valjakka specializes in artistic and creative practices in East and Southeast Asia. Through locally embedded research at the intersection of art studies, urban studies and environmental humanities, she investigates how different practices created in public spaces interact with varied forms of ‘publicness,’ shared agency and civil society formation. Her multi-sited approach includes ethnographic fieldwork and archival research across the region. Minna has held numerous research fellowships and published widely in journals, books, and exhibition catalogues. Currently, she is working on a monograph about art and plants and leads the interdisciplinary project “EcoConjunctions,” funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024-2028).
Pat Wing Shan Wong (aka Flyingpig) is an artist and researcher whose research-led project explores the interplay between people and urban transformation, particularly in the context of capitalisation and its impacts on both the real and digital worlds. She founded Spreadpages, a contemporary illustration platform to explore illustration as a process in research methods and is an artist duo Foreseen Agency to creative speculative narratives with an art technology cross-disciplinary research. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her project, Barter Archive, funded by Arts Council England, was collected by the Museum of London. The latest project, Foreseen Property Agency has secured support from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and Design Trust HK. This project investigates future community conservation practices in a speculative approach.
Tim Wong is an architectural and urban designer by training, and an entrepreneur with two decades of global experience at the intersection of design, urban development, and creative technology. After seven years delivering architectural and urban design projects across the US, the Middle East, and Asia, Tim joined Loftwork in 2013 and co-founded FabCafe Global — a platform for creative communities that blends design, emerging technologies, and traditional craft. Since then, FabCafe has expanded to 13 locations in 7 countries. In 2015, he co-founded Loftwork Asia to support the company’s expansion beyond Japan, developing new services and business strategies that go beyond conventional design consulting. His work spans creative program development, operational management, and stakeholder engagement across both public and private sectors. Tim’s portfolio includes architectural and urban design, immersive technology for urban applications, rural revitalization, and entrepreneurship-focused education. At the core of his practice is a commitment to social impact, environmental sustainability, and designing systems for resilient futures. He holds dual master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard Graduate School of Design.
EoP Initiators:
Yim Sui Fong (Assistant Professor, Fine Arts, CUHK) is an artist and educator with a research focus on socially engaged art, sound art, and experimental pedagogy. She received the Award for Young Artist (Visual Arts) from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (2019/2020) and the WMA Masters Award (2017/18). She is a co-founder of Rooftop Institute, a charitable organization that promotes community-based education through art, advocating for art and artistic thinking as a new way of understanding and valuing society. Her work uses sound as a medium to negotiate collective individualism—the coexistence of “artistic practice (individual practice)” and “education (collective practice)”—enabling us to envision new forms of cohabitation.
www.yimsuifong.com
Melody Hoi-lam Yiu (Research Assistant Professor, Architecture, CUHK) is an architect and urban scholar studying cultural architecture and public space, building upon 15 years of professional experience in urban design and planning to investigate spatial and cultural development issues. Her research on the architecture of Hong Kong’s public cultural centres will be published in the monograph Cultural Architecture and Late-colonial Space: Constructing Cultural Centres in Hong Kong by Routledge (Research in Architecture series) in 2025. Her current work focuses on cultural infrastructure in Asian cities and its spatial agency. https://threshold.blog/
Ashley Lee Wong (Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, CUHK), and Associate Director of the MA Cultural Management programme. She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director, MetaObjects, a studio that facilitates digital projects with artists and cultural institutions. She is manager of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology and Technophany journal. Her research bridges theory and practice to ways of thinking and engaging in contemporary cultural economies for artists and practitioners working at the intersections of art and technology. She is the author of the monograph Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies Through Art and Technology (The MIT Press, 2025).