Yifan
Gong

I am Yifan Gong, a current PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh. My PhD is on the theme of strategising the Theatre of One Emancipated Spect-actor using accumulating methods. It is led by the accumulative aesthetics and the political and practical aesthetics of the emancipated spect-actor referencing Augusto Boal and Jacques Rancière. As a practitioner in the flesh, I conduct performative (practice-led), phenomenological and hermeneutic research methods to produce intermedial performances and to research this theme.

I hold a BFA degree with distinction in Theatre and Visual Arts from the University of the Fraser Valley, Canada. I started to take theatre and visual arts courses (painting and analogue photography) in January 2017 and learned filmmaking at Shanghai Vancouver Film School in 2020/21.

My artistic practices so far span devised theatre, digital performance, filmmaking, directing and acting for theatre/screen, analogue and digital photography, acrylic painting, songwriting, post-modern dance and choreography. My research areas include but are not limited to: phenomenology, hermeneutics, theatre and performance aesthetics, philosophy of art, intermediality and intermedial art, XR media and technologies, volumetric capture and volumetric film, practice-led/based research, digital humanism, immersive theatre, devised theatre and psychology of personality traits.

Digging deeper into trans/interdisciplinary art research with the rapid development of science and technology is a necessity for this generation, so I am passionate about integrating new technologies within contemporary art-making. In terms of genres, I often manipulate non-linear storytelling, abstract expressionism and improvisation.