SIMMR- Student Initiative Recipients Announced
We are excited to announce the recipients of our first SIMMR Initiative supporting student activities with a focus on multimodal approaches. Congratulations to Yun-Pei Hsiung and Xinrong Hu on their innovative proposals. We look forward to seeing their proposals come to life this semester.
Selected Projects:
Future Zoo Making – Yun-Pei Hsiung
Future Zoo Making is an interdisciplinary approach as a research method that integrates participatory design workshops and speculative gaming to reimagine zoos as future heritage. This hands-on method challenges the top-down nature of traditional speculative design and heritage decision-making by positioning participatory gaming as a form of collective speculation. Through interactive workshops, urban residents will engage in reimagining future zoo spaces.
About the Researcher
Yun-Pei is a creator situated on the blurry border between design and art. Graduated from Royal College of Art in Design Product. currently studying at the Leiden University in Critical Heritage Studies supported by IIAS. Social intervention with innovation is the core of his practice. Using a social sculpture method to trigger social actions has been embedded in most of his works, which often touch on queer identity, public space, social housing, neo-capitalism and Taiwan geopolitics.
How to (Un)Name a Tree – Xinrong Hu
Jointly initiated by artist Andong Zheng, researcher Xinrong Hu, and curator Augustina Cai, the site-specific intervention project “How to (Un)Name a Tree” focuses on a Huangshan pine sapling in the “Chinese Garden” of Hortus botanicus Leiden. Closely related to the Taiwan red pine (Pinus taiwanensis) and the Japanese Ryukyu pine (Pinus luchuensis), its transnational journey is embedded in a larger historical network of plant migration, scientific classification, and geopolitical shifts: How did it arrive here? What does its taxonomic label signify?
This spring, pamphlets designed by Zheng, disguised as instruction manuals, will be placed near the Huangshan pine. The publication will provide new insights into plant taxonomy, unveiling the complexities of taxonomic debates and how colonial histories, geopolitical power structures, and ideological frameworks have shaped classifications, contributing to epistemic violence.
The installation will be accompanied by a launch event, including an artist talk and an interdisciplinary panel discussion between the artist, the curator from Decolonial Being Network, and a botanical scientist. The event will delve into further decolonial questions: Does “non-West” equate to “local”? How can we address the debates surrounding the romanticization of indigenous knowledge as a counterforce to imperial frameworks? How can we rename our perspective to ‘(Un)Name’ a tree?
About the Researcher
HU Xinrong is currently an MA student in Art and Culture at Leiden University. As a writer and former editor at The Art Newspaper China, her practice focuses on questioning the narrative and representational relationship between text and visual art, as well as exploring alternative ways of engaging with art beyond institutional frameworks. Her writings have been published in ArtReview, LEAP, Ocula, and other publications.
In collaboration with:
Andong Zheng is a Rotterdam-based artist exploring photography’s role in examining and destabilizing structural systems. With a background in engineering, he shifts between micro details and macro frameworks, using lens-based media to open up new ways of knowing that traverse rationality. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at CRP Hauts-De-France, Times Museum Guangzhou, and Ames Yavuz.
Augustina Cai is an independent curator and researcher, based in Den Haag (NL) and Wuhan (CN). She holds degrees in both Global and Comparative Philosophy and Art History from Leiden University. After pursuing a Mathematics degree at Wuhan University, she transitioned to work as an assistant curator for numerous contemporary photography and art exhibitions.
We look forward to working with both Yun-Pei and Xinrong. Stay tuned for more updates!
