Fractured Time: Yuan Ding’s Cross-Media Works
Yuan Ding, whose work combines sound, image, theater, and performance in a cross-media approach, primarily focuses on the micro-states of time. Her creative inspiration stems from her curiosity and insights into the natural world, such as the movement of mitochondria, bee swarms, bird flock trajectories, ant death spirals, and the formation and evolution of the herd effect. She explores the relationship between these behaviors and human behavior, and applies them to the creation of her video, theater, and performance art works. In “Relative Stillness” and some of her performance and sound works, she has been experimenting with perceiving time through hearing, touch, and microtones, and questioning the standards and violence of time. Her cross-media art film project, “Asexual Propagation,” launched two years ago, is a reflection on the commodification, degeneration, and atomization of intimate relationships in contemporary society.
Yuan Ding has been exploring the relationship between different synesthetic experiences and art, creating images that can induce tactile sensations, as well as poems, performance art, and theatrical works that combine hearing and touch. She is also dedicated to research on electronic vocal phenomena and sound poetry, and has created a series of works on the theme of “ghost words,” and organized related thematic events that integrate various media forms such as sound and poetry.
In this sharing session, Yuan Ding will share her performance art creations and screen excerpts from “Asexual Propagation.” The audience will also have the opportunity to participate in creating sound installations and interact with the artwork.
“NIGHT SCHOOL NY INSIGHT” Vol. 66
Fractured Time: Yuan Ding’s Cross-Media Works
Lecture: Unitrip
Host：Jody Huang
Feb 7th, 2026 (Sat)
Sponsor: UP-ON Performance Art Archive
Sponsor: Nongyuan International Art Village
Yuan Ding
Unitrip, a dream-obsessed sound artist and midnight sleepwalker wizard, founded the sound theater group Silence Wave in 2017. She is deeply fascinated by poetry (including creation of sound poetry and tactile poetry), site-specific theater, sound art, performance art, and video art creation.
Intrigued by suspended time and microscopic matter, she perceives them as “corrupt illusions”—a pulsating atom, an internalized vessel, existing at the boundary between virtuality and reality. Her artistic engagements include the Midi Music Festival, A Bunch of Noise Experiment Festival, “Listen to the Road” exhibition at Duolun Modern Art Museum, “I Never Dream Otherwise than Awake:Journeys in Sound”at West Bund Art Center, Bund Architecture Festival, Shanghai Improvisational Art Festival, Cement Park Art Festival, Daliang Mountain Theater Festival, Dragonfire, FREQS, and Yibohui Performance art festival. She has also conducted public welfare
sound therapy workshops for children with autism. Currently working on “Asexual Propagation,” an art film and theater project initiated two years ago, explores the materialization, degradation, and atomization of intimate relationships in contemporary society.
Asexual Propagation 2023-2025, art film/performance art, still frame, Performer And Choreography:Gypsy /Chorin /Octopus /Trees; Director/Concept/Editor/Setting/Sound Design:Unitrip; Executive Director/Editor:Yi Feng; Photographer:Xi Man Qiu/Yi Feng/Trees/Unitrip
‘Relative Stillness’ Performance art/Sound, 2024 East Mountain Island Yibohui
‘Ghost words’ Performance art/Video/Sound, 2025, Yell Space
‘Meat Jelly’ Experiment Performance Art Theatre Co-created and Performed By Aiping/ Yuqi/ Unitrip
