I am an artist, researcher, thinker, maintainer, mediator, documentarian...
working between arts, cultures, thoughts, humanities, people, languages, technologies, machines, systems...
I hope to look for and work with different perspectives of literacy, tactics, aesthetics, and pedagogy...
to realize our different means of agency as we float between worlds.
滑惜子 is my name, or Xizi Hua on English documents; Xizi “Cecilia” Hua and Cecilia Hua at events. Pondering over generations of the romanization systems, I'm now writing my name out as hua xi zi. 滑/hua is a rare last name dating back to the Zhou dynasty, 惜子/xi zi means “precious child.” C* is for online identities.
A big progression of my work has been inspired by my growing up between China and the US since the age of fifteen, as well as by my studies in cinema, media, and art from American institutions, experiences in photojournalism, tech labor and maintenance work in film and theater productions, participation in alternative spaces and self-organized collectives, interests in underground movements and revolts ..., and every place we've passed by, every encounter I've spent time with...
I live, think, and work between ideologies, political structures, internet envrionments that can be conflicting and exclusive of one another (specifically that between the US and China), but I hope to look for the simultaneous complexities and even temporary moments of lasting time, understanding in seeing, listening, thinking, feeling... I continue to look for ways to “un-expose” while seeking for alternative yet sustaining methods and aesthetics to connect, to be with, and to co-exist across borders of cultures, ideologies, the firewall..., virtually and physically at the same time.
→ bio & cv
This site is self-built/maintained as a practice and for flows of thoughts... ⤵
RECENT THOUGHTS & WRITINGS (updated AUG.2025)
MANIFESTO ON VIDEOGRAPHY
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TEACHING
I built and taught the first "internet art" course "Net Art and Virtual Space" for the Department of Public Art at the East China Normal University (2022 & 2024).
WORKS ⤵ ⤵ ⤵
SATELLITE IMAGE EXCHANGE
This first video sequence ‘The Terminal Vision,’ in total of three tracks, broadcasted on the SCA-1 satellite (NORAD ID 58924) in low earth orbit and was captured by the camera attached to the satellite on May 12th 2025, with the earth and space in the backdrop. This is a first iteration of the network and web-based project, Satellite Image Exchange [satimg.exchange], collaborated with Patrick O'Shea.
The synthesized landscape was a result of generation by inverting the use of a custom AI process—revealing systems of surveillance and algorithmic censorship—and extraction of geolocation metadata from a collection of our personal photographs taken with our phone.
This project explores planetary projections entangling between photographic captures, satellite remote sensing, machine learning, geospatial map-making, distributed networks, and digital archiving. It is also to build an observation protocol that invites others to share and exchange their imagery visions, making a constantly evolving satellite image body public to all: “What is the world you would like us to see?” Each participation becomes reflective of each other’s geopolitical positions and infrastructural contexts.
This project was initiated as a Star Chain of Art Project at the Xu Bing Space Art Residency.
IMAGE EXCHANGE
image_exchange:
a "carrier bag" to exchange images and notes with others, as poetry wishes, Buddhist fortunes (omikuji), and gifts.
the idea of this project emerged from my research in the distributed web and our growing relationship with images--from the act of capturing, scanning, to uploading, downloading--can (the proof of) images allow us to connect more?
The image_exchange project (2023-ongoing) started as a project hoping to interact with the visitors to my solo show 捕/Capture at The Pond Gallery, collaborated and developped with my friend Zhou Qi, engaging with those who wish to leave a trace and exchange with others who are also willing to do so.
PERFORMANCE/CREATIVE PROTOCOLS
How can we really work, think, and create collectively?
- - - > a work-in-progress project "MACHINE THEATER"
I think about how to make art with protocols
-- for "connectivity as material; protocol as aesthetics."
- - - > "a multi-node realtime video protocol"
(project research grant from Summer of Protocols)
the VPN poetics
I'm attempting to theorize and experiment with the "Virtual Private Network."
AI IMAGERY: HOW TO THINK WITH/THROUGH IMAGES?
What really interests me about the use of AI in image production nowadays, as much as it's about generating Midjourney fantasies and Sora simulative time or the replacement in reimagining scenes, characters, movements,
and definitely beyond seeing with photographic machines or making images utilizing digital softwares/visual coding mechanisms,
it is more about the process where we could think with the intellect of the machines while envisioning our worlds simultaneously. Envisioning with the AI is probably about envisioning with the changing systems around us.
Hence, what are you seeing when you're thinking?
How are we seeing differently in our very different ways of thinking?
How can we share the different visions as we see, think, and feel very differently?
How do we see, think, and feel with the Machines?
V.I.T.I.V.
PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURES + VIRTUAL MEDIA
In our everyday interactions with the machines, more and more we have to engage with both the situated physical infrastructure while being taken into the virtual,
such as when scanning local QR codes, tapping for a NFC (Near Field Communication) application... (the physical + virtual experiences are apparent and life-changing in China as we live off QR-code payments, city-bike infrastructures, and portable power-bank stations...)
The experience is both of displacement and grounding at the same time.
With the virtual portal privilege, we're taken to the virtual machines of the imaginations, while it is humbling to be aware of the physical reality we're still standing on our foot upon.
seeing and humming (2021 & 2023)
SITE-SPECIFIC & ESSAYISTIC SPACE: A SOLO EXHIBITION
where I created a essayistic experience for the gallery space, in Chengdu.
CAMERA OBSCURA & VIDEO INSTALLED IN A LIGHTHOUSE
SEE, AGAIN, THE PASSING OF LIGHT / 再び、見る、消え去る光 at the Setouchi Triennale 2019
