Creating Artwork Together with Non-Human Species: Liang Shaoji and His Silkworm Collaborators

Liang Shaoji, a Chinese artist, has worked with silkworms to create artistic installations for more than ten years. Based on the visual/textual analysis and ethnography, the essay will discuss the role and ethics of the artist, as well as the agency and flexibility of the silkworms, in their process of art-making. Inquires will be made to the following questions: To what extent can Liang realise his own 'designs' while recognising and acknowledging silkworms’ intentionality? Is there any hierarchy or power dominance in the interactions? How to balance the dilemma between detachment and engagement, cooperation and exploitation, inter-patience and interference in his everyday micro-practice with silkworms (e.g. any conflict or compromise)? How to understand the flexibility and capacity of non-human agencies in the flowing field, especially in the scope of posthuman theoretical turn? Moreover, the validity, authorship and artist’s statement (in this case the Daoist idea of Yuan) should be reassessed in artworks co-produced by multi-agencies.