Yiren Zhao Read Bio Collapse
Yiren Zhao is an educator, researcher and community organiser with a MA degree on psychology and a practice of playback theatre.
Working together since 2021, Yin and Zhao created Live Action Role-Playing game Liquid Dependencies (with Mengyang Zhao) that explore the future of mutual-aid society, and gamification-as-research project Alchemy of Commons which develops future ecosystem for socially engaged art and communal practices. Their collaboration seeks individual healings through systematic change, bringing system design, game-theater, ethnographic research, liberation psychology and community development together and form actionable proposals.
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The current art economy offers little incentive for artists to commit to long-term engagement with communities, as such efforts do not easily translate into professional cachet. Nor does the economy reward artists who share ownership or authorship through collective maintenance. In such an unrewarding environment, artists who commit to long-term change and communal collaboration effectively take the activist approach, making personal investments to pursue the social change they desire even though there is no promise of financial or other returns. This is a systematic inadequacy.