10 Questions with Ningrui Liu

Ningrui is a transmedia artist working in and across the creative fields of film, music, performance, dance and spoken word. Originally from Shanghai, China, she was awarded an MA in Information Experience design from the Royal College of Art in London. Her work ranges from feature films and documentaries to interdisciplinary art forms, including set design and storytelling in collaboration with experimental composers, musicians, and choreographers. She explores the frameworks and fictions we create to make sense of the world by fusing aspects of philosophy, science, and the occult. Currently, Akira is collaborating with Noisy Women Presents, crafting visuals for live performances and pushing the boundaries of immersive, interdisciplinary art. Increasingly, Akira is using her creative experience to develop her own performance, music and spoken word skills.

@iimakira

ARTIST STATEMENT

With a background in film editing, she combines narrative precision with experimental practices involving improvisation, generative coding, and community collaboration.

Her work explores speculative narratives and the unknown, drawing on both Chinese cultural frameworks and contemporary sound art. Using sound, movement, and code, she questions the boundaries between sense and structure through chance-based systems and collaborative scores.

In recent years, she has become active in the UK’s experimental and improvised arts scenes, performing with Noisy Women Presents, the Lo-fi Ensemble, and co-founding the Etudes Study Group. She has presented work at Café OTO, Vortex Jazz Club, Almeida Theatre, Bridewell Theatre, Golden Goose Theatre, Hundred Years Gallery, and in community projects such as Oasis One World Choir.

Her editing expertise underpins her visual and documentation practice, with collaborations including the Fourth Portal, Creative Health Camden, and Goldsmiths Confucius Institute. Her short films have been selected or commissioned for public screenings and festivals.

Through the Global Talent Visa, she seeks to continue contributing to the UK’s experimental art landscape, expanding her cross-cultural, interdisciplinary practice and building new collaborations.

Film of Changes, film, 1514 × 848 pixels, 2024 © Ningrui Liu

Film of Changes | Project Description

This project investigates the aesthetics, philosophy and ethics of a traditional Chinese form of cleromancy -I Ching, or book of changes, by writing bespoke coding language and combining this tool with traditional media landscapes like film and creative arts, and related hybrid forms to subvert I Ching's predominant uses.

This generative design audio-visual work encourages the unforeseen in the filming process, which is breaking the filmmaking rules, and relinquishing control from the filmmaker's decision. The current video and audio outcomes are based on the speculation that there is a hunch in the film industry that a systematic approach to cinematic notation is possible, but has yet to be developed. As such, filmmakers could use a system of symbols to build a story, just like the staves and notations used by musicians.

INTERVIEW

You work across film, music, performance, dance, and spoken word. How do you bring all these disciplines together in your practice?

For me, these forms are like different languages of perception. Film carries structure and image; music gives rhythm and atmosphere; performance and dance bring immediacy; spoken word offers voice and narrative. I don’t separate them; I let them overlap, interrupt, and inform each other. Sometimes film feels too distant, bound by the frame, and then I turn to live performance to embrace the intimacy of real time. What ties it all together is a desire to create environments where sound, movement, and image breathe together and invite the audience into uncertainty.

Your background is in film editing. How does that sense of narrative and timing influence your work today?

Editing trained me to think about rhythm and how meaning arises from juxtaposition. Every cut carries countless possibilities, and that idea has stayed with me. Even when I’m improvising, I treat it as “editing in real time” - sensing when to cut, when to let silence breathe, when to shift the energy. That sensitivity also influences how I build speculative structures: less about linear storytelling, more about fragments that accumulate into something larger.

You often use improvisation and chance-based systems. What excites you about letting go of control in your process?

Letting go of control allows me to be surprised. Years of precise editing once made me feel restricted, as if every detail had to be rehearsed in advance. Working with the I Ching taught me to step back, not to surrender completely, but to listen differently. When I cast hexagrams, or when I improvise on stage, I’m allowing myself to be changed by the moment. I no longer direct the images or sounds; I pre-set what I’m going to play, I breathe with them, and I am surprised along with them.

Your work explores the unknown and speculative narratives. What draws you to these themes?

Uncertainty creates space for imagination. In daily life, we are encouraged to seek clarity and resolution, but in art, I findthe most powerful moments come from disruption and not knowing. Speculative narratives let me imagine other logics, systems that are fluid and unresolved. They remind me that not everything has to be explained; some stories reveal themselves through feeling and intuition. For me, mystery itself can be a form of resistance to a world dominated by rational frameworks.

Chinese cultural frameworks appear alongside contemporary sound art in your work. How do you balance tradition and experimentation?

I grew up rooted in Chinese cultural soil, so working with these frameworks feels instinctive. But I don’t reproduce tradition as it is, I re-contextualise it. With Film of Changes, for example, I mapped the hexagrams of the I Ching onto editing techniques and sound treatments, turning an ancient system into a generative method for contemporary film. Tradition becomes a living current that flows with experimentation, creating a dialogue across time.

You collaborate with musicians, composers, and choreographers. What do you enjoy most about working with others across disciplines?

What excites me most is that I know very little about other professions, and that sparks a lot of curiosity. As an editor, I often spend long hours sitting in front of a computer. Then I meet a choreographer whose daily life is the opposite, moving constantly, sometimes even eating and living in rehearsal rooms. I find myself wondering how these different rhythms shape us into different people. Collaboration lets me glimpse those lives, and in turn, it asks me to leave behind my own habits. Each collaborator brings their own language and energy, and together we create something unpredictable. I enjoy the dialogue, how sound shifts when a dancer responds, or how movement transforms when placed inside a sound field. These encounters often push the work into places I could never reach alone.

Sound, movement, and code are central to your art. How do you see these elements speaking to each other?

Sound and movement are embodied and temporal, while code offers structure and algorithms that can transform them. I don’t see machines as mere tools, but as creative partners. Code allows me to introduce systems of chance; movement and sound bring warmth and unpredictability to those systems. Together they form a conversation between body, machine, and imagination, a dance with the unknown.

You’ve performed with collectives like Noisy Women Presents and the Lo-fi Ensemble. How has being part of these communities shaped your practice?

Communities gave me the courage to take risks. Performing with Noisy Women Presents or the Lo-fi Ensemble means stepping into a collective field of listening, improvisation, and experiment. Failure is not feared; it’s welcomed. That spirit has shaped my practice, helping me grow bolder and see collaboration not just as an exchange, but as a way of building community. It brings together artist and non-binary performers across improvised music, dance, spoken word, visual art, and multimedia. Improvisation is at the heart of its work, creating inclusive spaces that celebrate individual expression within liberating encounters. Being part of this community has shown me how creativity can dissolve barriers between professional artists, participants, and audiences, and how collective energy can make art both socially engaged and transformative.

You’ve presented work in both theatres and community projects. Do you approach these contexts differently as an artist?

In my limited theatre practice, I participated in the Almeida Theatre’s community play. Compared to my improvising music groups, theatre usually comes with a clearer frame and structure. My improv community, on the other hand, often blur the boundaries between artist and participant. I adapt how I listen and respond in each, but my underlying aim is always the same: to create presence and to open a space where people can feel engaged, surprised, or connected.

Looking ahead, what new directions or collaborations would you like to explore in your practice?

I want to deepen the relationship between sound, movement, and technology, especially through live performance. I’m also interested in how mystical or speculative systems, like the I Ching, can inform new forms of storytelling in dialogue with digital media. Looking forward, I’d love to work with dancers, coders, or even scientists to stretch the boundaries of what performance can be. Above all, I want to keep breathing with change, to keep searching for my own sense of calm within the flow of creation.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.

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