Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Digital Media
First Advisor
Shawn Greenlee
Second Advisor
Maralie Armstrong
Third Advisor
Laine Rettmer
Abstract
This collection of writings arises from encounters with intensity and embodied practice — moments that reveal the body’s capacity for transformation.
Last year, I experienced ego death The intensity of the vibration and movement evoked deconstruction, reconstruction, and liberation. It felt like a vibrational reorganization of my physical body and all surrounding matter. During this past summer, I started embodied practices. One day, I held hands with a group of people and slowly walked from the beach into the ocean. It took us one hour. One evening, I was alone in the studio with a huge window facing the jungle. I moved erratically and freely in complete darkness, with no camera, no gaze—I could not even see what I was doing. These experiences made me realize that there can be new ways of inhabiting the body. The body that has historically been the site of trauma and control can be transcended and liberated.
The encounter itself is a state of flux and all possibilities, one that challenges the boundaries of language. This leads to the format of the writings. Through various forms of text, non-text, and anti-text—manifestos, diagrams, scores, theoretical essays, prose, and shattered subjective recounts of experiences—it aims to shed light on gaps, absences, and unlikely rhizomatic connections.
This is a site of deconstruction and reconstruction, of decay and regeneration.
Recommended Citation
Yueting, Wu, "Of Primal Substance" (2025). Masters Theses. 1368.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1368
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.