Symposium Spotlight: Beile Hu

Interviewed on March 1, 2026.

Who are you and where are you located?
Beile Hu, Based in China/USA

What inspires your work?
I am inspired by the ways in which non-human entities retain, transform, and reverberate with human presence, both materially and historically. By tracing the imprints urban life leaves on these materials, and examining how they in turn shape human perception and memory, my practice reveals the porous boundaries and intimate interactions between the built environment, organic materials, found objects and the human bodies.

Tell us a little more about your work for the symposium?
For the Symposium, I will present Making Bioplastics with Memories and Feelings, a workshop derived from my 2025 project Wo(a)ndering Tea. That work investigates how tea from Xiamen connects the Boston Tea Party to the global circulation of Chinese laborers, tracing entanglements between commodity, migration, and power. Developed during my studies in the United States, the project emerged from navigating geopolitical instability alongside personal uncertainty, prompting me to search for anchors within historical narratives.

This hands-on workshop extends that inquiry into material practice. Participants will engage in a multi-sensory exploration of biomaterials by creating sustainable bioplastics using accessible household tools such as a microwave or kettle, along with organic materials including tea, coffee, leaves, eggshells, food coloring, glycerin, and gelatin.

Beyond the technical process, the workshop opens a space for collective reflection. Participants are invited to share personal memories associated with these materials, connecting embodied making with cultural history. The session also situates bioplastics within broader conversations in art and technology, demonstrating how fragile materials can function as living archives of memory.

Do you have any current projects that you're working on that you would like to share?
I am currently developing a live sound performance titled "When Pain Does Not Register", as part of an ongoing series examining pain and the female body. The 2025 iteration draws from recorded testimonies of people with female bodies speaking about their lived experiences of pain. These recordings are layered with my live vocal input during the performance.

Using Max/MSP, I process and transform both the archival voices and my own into an evolving sonic system that continuously registers, distorts, and articulates pain. Rather than representing pain as a fixed narrative, the work treats it as a dynamic signal—one that fluctuates, overlaps, and sometimes fails to be acknowledged. Through live sound manipulation, the performance explores the threshold between voice and noise, recognition and dismissal, presence and erasure.

Link to the work of 2025: https://beile.site/1653-2

What brought you to the New Media Caucus?
I believe the New Media Caucus offers an innovative and generous platform for students to present their work and ideas within a context that is both rigorous and genuinely supportive. The team members I have met are consistently attentive to artists’ needs and concerns, and I especially appreciate the care and intentionality they bring to cultivating dialogue.

Where can we follow your work?
https://beile.site/