Lecture Series Techno Body Practices && – Royce Ng

Techno Body Practices && – Royce Ng (Hong Kong)

Lecture Series / 25.01.2023

This lecture by Hong Kong-based artist Royce Ng presents his current academic research on the relationship between virtual reality and altered states of consciousness. Ng is currently developing VR prototypes which simulate the visualization techniques and body practices used in various meditative traditions. He is also working with a clinical psychologist in the Hong Kong hospital system to create VR therapy platforms for palliative care patients. The theoretical framework Ng is developing around this research proposes that virtual reality technologies can bit situated within older traditions of 'spiritual technologies' which use visualization for transitioning into more-than-human and altered states of consciounsess. It also provides the context for his artistic project in the artist duo Zheng Mahler which explores the use of extended reality (XR) technologies to mediate the transition between human and non-human states, providing an anthropological approach to the question presented in Thomas Nagel's classic philosophy-of-the-mind essay 'what is it like to be a bat?’.

Royce Ng is an artist currently based in Hong Kong working in digital media, film and performance who deals with the intersections of modern Asian history, trans-national trade, drugs, political economy and aesthetics. From 2013-2016 he was artist-in-residence at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich with the anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks where they produced the exhibitions on the economic relationship between Africa and Asia ‘A Season in Shell’ (2014) and ‘Mutual Aid’ (2016). From 2016, he has been presenting a trilogy of performances on the role of opium in the development of the Asian state. Ng's first solo presentation in Japan 'The Death of Manchuria is the Prerequisite for the Birth of Postwas Asia' was shown at ASAKUSA in Tokyo. He is currently engaged in research on the relationship between altered states of consciousness and virtual reality technology.

25.01.2023, 3 pm
Nebenflut, Seg. 7, Am Speicher XI, 28217 Bremen