Rae-Yen Song, a Glasgow-based artist, describes themselves as predominantly a maker of things, working within the solitude of their studio to contribute to the idea of world-building—to think of a world that could be fundamentally structured differently from the one we currently inhabit and/or are conditioned to—through fabulations, philosophies, collective imagining and science fiction. This led them to expand their research to collaborate with other makers and organise their recently concluded research exhibition life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot, showcased at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, UK. The art exhibition, which was on view from February 24 - May 18, 2024, featured a collection of works and thoughts by 23 invited artists, makers and thinkers and over three months, included a live programme composed of a series of 15 events across performances, film screenings, workshops, talks and study groups. It included works across moving images, sculptures, drawings, installations, prototypes, costumes, bacterial compositions, experiments, a soundscape created from growing tea fungus and artefacts and debris such as fragments of bones, a piece of the moon and the eye of the Large Hadron Collider, alongside a resource library that people could add titles to.

The multimedia artist has been pondering how to navigate the role of research within their practice. As a result, they approach their exhibition by integrating research insights from diverse disciplines, utilising contemporary knowledge systems and ancestral wisdom across art, ecology and science to further explore alternative approaches to exhibition-making and world-building. Central to this process lies the theory of radical imagination, which challenges the dominant, linear framework of Western systems predominantly controlled by white cis-heteronormative male figures, who have shaped the reality we currently inhabit and are conditioned to – further raising the question of who, historically, has been allowed to imagine and whose voices, conversely, have been suppressed. In reflection on this, Song speaks about approaching their practice through diasporic futurisms and more-than-human politics that seek to build a collective resistance to Western power structures. They perceive the act of world-building as a sensual and pleasurable act aimed at imagining alternative cultures and ways of being, in the process, moving away from colonial, capitalist societies that are founded on individual ego, or structures that seek to compartmentalise and control. Excerpts from a conversation with STIR:

Shalmali Shetty: How has your upbringing in Scotland influenced your practice, especially in terms of embracing and exploring your Singaporean culture and heritage, perhaps as a foreigner to both? Has this particularly shaped your artistic practice in terms of your approach to incorporating and reimagining histories, memories, Eastern thought or Daoist philosophies?

Rae-Yen Song: I haven't visited Singapore that often. But growing up in Edinburgh within a white background, there was that sense of not being ashamed of who I was, but almost not wanting to acknowledge it because your default is to assimilate, fit in and be like the others. You're not even thinking about race. And so there was always this underlying tension of not questioning, but also not fully embracing who I was; impounding that sense of being [the] other. And when I reflect back on it, that's probably why I'm an artist, by being almost like a trickster. It's wanting to poke holes and disrupt those realms of normality.

In 2017 when I started collaborating with my family for my work through cultural and oral stories about my parents' life in Singapore, it was the beginning of starting to digest my background and where I fit in. It became a case of them trying to remember and what I found interesting is how these stories were abstracted and imagined, with their memories being myths as well. And, the fact that these memories are so fractured and floating, that my wanting to get closer to these ancestors was not a retelling of their history, but more about fabulating and embellishing them in the process. Even though that's a far more fictitious approach, it's a more honest one.

So I think of ancestors, spirits or ghosts as foundations of world-building, with their pasts having been lost or shifted due to different migrations through journey, forced movements, labour, silence, shaming, generational and economic divides, or religion; and that extrapolates into much broader conversations around movements that have happened due to colonialism. Tying that with philosophies of Daoism, reincarnation or cyclical life expanded the thinking around ancestry in a far broader sense of multi-species entanglements and how other organisms and our life, deaths and existence are so entwined with other species.

As a reflection on the idea of the migrant and foreigner existing in multiple ways in a hostile environment or a foreign land and navigating that space in a multitude of understandings to resist and to thrive, goes hand in hand with thinking about other organisms and how they survive and thrive in hostile lands that humans have created. It touches upon ancestral history, but also broader histories of resisting the colonial project or the environmental crises. So many colonised groups and queer groups have never had their imaginings explored. One has to acknowledge what's happening in Palestine – who gets to world-build, who has the privilege of world-building, who gets to imagine and who doesn't? Who gets to have their voices heard, explored, or dream of the world that we want? This world is built up of many other worlds, from the micro to the macro, just shifting constantly and being moulded by different things.

In Octavia's Brood (2015), co-edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown, Imarisha coins the term "visionary fiction" and elaborates on how organising is science fiction. Imarisha says, "Visionary fiction is a term we developed to distinguish science fiction that has relevance towards building new, freer worlds from the mainstream strain of science fiction, which most often reinforces dominant narratives of power. Visionary fiction encompasses all of the fantastic, where the arc always bends towards justice. We believe this space is vital for any process of decolonisation because the decolonisation of the imagination is the most dangerous and subversive form there is, for it is where all other forms of decolonisation are born. Once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless."

Fabulous, fabulated and fable, all have the same etymology. Myths and stories that are born from ancestral fables are fabulated. There are so many gaps and fragments that I'm filling and embellishing, to create something fabulous. – Rae-Yen Song

Shalmali: Your past exhibitions have primarily showcased your work as an artist. How has your studio practice evolved to incorporate research and expanded collaboration, particularly around the themes of world-building? How was this embodied in your recent research exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow?

Rae-Yen: I have been questioning what research is to my practice. I'm predominantly a maker in quite a solitary way of working in the studio with research and materials before they go out into the world. However, I wanted to explore how I can make more expanded collaborative sense around the ideas of world-building. There was a yearning to approach lots of different wisdoms, to learn and communicate it with other people and be able to experiment and find myself in unexpected places – it's about turning oneself inside out, rather than becoming insular. And that in a way references the book Vampyroteuthis Infernalis (1993) by Vilém Flusser, which reflects on the vampire squid from this distant abyss in the deep ocean. It talks about a point in time when we were closer to them as organisms but started becoming more and more distant. As we went into ourselves to grow a vertebra and become more rigid, the vampire squid became more gelatinous with its whole body turned inside out. For it to move through its environment, it engulfs everything through its sexual organs – it's almost like an orgasmic and sensual conception of its environment; whereas we perceive things as default with our five senses of perception – we are fearful of the foreign and it's not until we understand it that we allow it to be in our space.

I want to use that as a metaphor to explore my knowledge systems and make sense of things for myself and others through touching, feeling and vibrating with it, rather than just trying to have a cerebral or theoretical understanding of it. That turned into this exhibition where people fed that space through the different participations and events, but also things grew and fed the space, including the tea fungus that grew over time in unexpected ways to create this evolving soundscape. This exhibition has brought up questions of how I want to inhabit this world, explore and co-exist with other humans and non-humans. In that shift of exploring what research is, it is a search without definitive answers, with these evolving questions embracing more people and more wisdom.

Shalmali: How did the collaborative nature of your recent exhibition with artists and thinkers coming from diverse disciplines, shape the overall project? Will these learnings and processes be reflected in approaching your upcoming solo show at Tramway in August 2025?

Rae-Yen: The exhibition was a combination of over 20 artists and thinkers, including from foreign practices such as osteoarchaeology, particle physics, geology, sociology and cartography – subjects I don’t know anything about; but people I approached, because their work and ideas around world-building and speculative making resonate with me. It started with my drawing or the blueprint—like an extrapolated map or a dream that came from an ancestral imagining—through which I was exploring ideas. It gradually turned into this migrating beast, exploring all these different lands, concepts, histories, times and spaces. It also became this honed tool of communication with the collaborators, to mutually talk around and find ideas together. In that, there was a joyful resistance to the reality that's imposed on us and allowed a space of togetherness to question capitalist systems. At the essence of world-building, a world is something that is alive, not static. In Daoist thought or quantum physics as well, things aren't static, they are constantly vibrating. I want to hone in on that energy or qi, to use it as a material or tool to form something that lives beyond me and the walls of an exhibition space, in multiple ways.

All of this searching is what I'm continuing into my solo show in Tramway, as opposed to this research and collated exhibition at CCA. It’s that pleasure that I get from making and the pleasure that I want to share as a tool in society. It’s that striving to make something exist, to put my energy into something that forms its own energy for something to just live, be that through other bodies or other organisms, in order to create something organic.

'Life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot', a research and live programme collated by Rae-Yen Song was on view at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow from February 24 - May 18, 2024.