Yijie Li

Biography

Yijie Li is a practice-based PhD researcher in Scenography at the University of the Arts London. Her research explores how Chinese shadow puppetry can be reconfigured through digital technologies such as virtual reality and mixed reality within a scenographic framework.
Throughout her research, she has examined how Chinese shadow puppetry might continue to develop when some of its conventionally recognised features, particularly the shadow screen and the optical production of shadow, are no longer treated as its determining conditions. Rather than using digital technologies to reproduce an existing performance form, her practice considers how scenography can reorganise the relationships between puppets, puppeteers, participants, spectators and the performance environment.
This research has developed through a series of practice-based experiments moving from physical puppetry to virtual performance and mixed reality. These experiments investigate how the performative mechanisms of Chinese shadow puppetry can be reconstructed when bodily movement, digital puppets and live performers are brought into the same performance. Through this process, she considers scenography as a form of mediation through which figures, bodies and memories are made perceptible.