INTERVIEW WITH CHANEY DIAO
By Rebecka Öhrström Kann 23/08/2024
Chaney Diao is a London-based artist whose practice stretches across the fields of installation, performance, music, and gaming to explore themes of desire and bodily capacity. Drawing on her experiences in rave culture and fetish, Diao positions the body as a site of negotiation and transformation, one reimagined and expanded through immersive technologies and subverted environments. We spoke about queerness and horror, navigating a changing practice, and her collaborative curatorial project “Hello Dump.”
Chaney Diao is a London-based artist whose practice stretches across the fields of installation, performance, music, and gaming to explore themes of desire and bodily capacity. Drawing on her experiences in rave culture and fetish, Diao positions the body as a site of negotiation and transformation, one reimagined and expanded through immersive technologies and subverted environments. We spoke about queerness and horror, navigating a changing practice, and her collaborative curatorial project “Hello Dump.”
Rebecka: How would you describe your work/practice to someone who is unfamiliar with it?
Chaney Diao: I feel like my practice really sits in different mediums, including installations, sculptures, sound and performances, oh and also video games. I feel like my practice is always narrated upon desire and fetish and then within those narratives I try to talk about bodily capacity, maintenance, image production and a lot other subject matters. At the same time, I'm also a curious maker and I always try new things and gradually my practice seems to evolve based on that.
R: It seems very much like a living practice. I know a lot of your work also builds on other parts of your life such as rave culture and DJing. Could you talk a little bit about the role rave culture and DJing plays in your practice?
CD: When I first started doing art, I hadn’t thought about doing DJ. It was probably only in like 2020 when my friend asked me “hey, I got this private view, do you want to play some music?” And I say yeah, why not?, and I started doing more DJ stuff afterwards. I just thought it's fun because people forgot about it afterwards, so there’s a lot of room to make mistakes. So you don't have to like, put so much pressure on yourself.
Chaney Diao: I feel like my practice really sits in different mediums, including installations, sculptures, sound and performances, oh and also video games. I feel like my practice is always narrated upon desire and fetish and then within those narratives I try to talk about bodily capacity, maintenance, image production and a lot other subject matters. At the same time, I'm also a curious maker and I always try new things and gradually my practice seems to evolve based on that.
R: It seems very much like a living practice. I know a lot of your work also builds on other parts of your life such as rave culture and DJing. Could you talk a little bit about the role rave culture and DJing plays in your practice?
CD: When I first started doing art, I hadn’t thought about doing DJ. It was probably only in like 2020 when my friend asked me “hey, I got this private view, do you want to play some music?” And I say yeah, why not?, and I started doing more DJ stuff afterwards. I just thought it's fun because people forgot about it afterwards, so there’s a lot of room to make mistakes. So you don't have to like, put so much pressure on yourself.
But then I find it quite interesting theoretically because, with mixing, it's almost like producing something that's aesthetic (or vibe) based. By quoting from existing songs and piecing them together, mixing gives room for something “original” to emerge, which affirms to the aesthetic theory such as the new term immediacy. Mutatious concepts can also be explored within this mixing practice as well, together with the usage of hashtags in sourcing sound, this mixing practice is allowing me to reflect the concept of production within the contemporary context of a fast-paced Internet culture.
![Chaney Diao, mega ferocity, 2024. Image by Yu Li.]()
R: That relation to internet culture is really interesting, perhaps even the experience of scrolling could be considered a form of fragmentation?
CD: Yeah! And it's really interesting when you search for music or even listing your own music, Both on SoundCloud, Discogs, and BandCamps, you are using tags. You have to type in “techno and industrial” and use a set of hashtags to find things. I find it quite interesting how people use that as a way of describing music that can be so different to what I imagine it to be. How the genres are being defined through those tags and or people just inventing new ones because there's a new trend going on in like #business. I guess #business is related to what's trending on the internet and what people's being like circulating.
![Chaney Diao, Tease and Denial, a disfunctioned dec, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.]()
R: Your work often deals with materialities of representations and how these can be altered or manipulated through media, perhaps as a form of transhumanist queer “becoming”, perhaps as a means to exceed or transcend physical forms and identities. Could you speak a little about the interplay between the materialities of representation and technology in your work?
CD: I feel like my work has shifted a bit since I wrote that into my bio, haha. I guess the thing that's been defined as material or materiality within my work has always been related to the body.
Within some of my fashion practice back in 2022 during COVID, for instance, I used fashion as a way to challenge the philosophical idea between what identity can be beyond how you see me as a physical person. Moving from that into fine art, I was thinking about the materiality of the body within rave culture and I was mainly referencing the studies on how identity can break through the body within the movements of dancing in rave scenarios. I also tried some mark making with the body in order to generate images from my body movement as part of an experimentation history not many people know (hehe).
Although the interest in the body has been consistent, since the end of 2022 my interest has slightly shifted from queer studies to be more centered around desire and fetish.
![Chaney Diao, Who Are They Now?, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.]()
I guess before 2022, there were critical moments within queer movement where I was quite actively involved. But later on, I’ve felt like my understanding of my practice has deepened into things beyond something that's purely gender related. So I found it quite nice to be currently moving slightly away from identity, representation and materiality, and more just around the idea of bodily capacity and becoming…
I haven't got so much written stuff around it yet, so I don't know how to articulate those thoughts well enough, but I do feel this shift and I guess it’s interesting in relation to how technology was used within Threshold, my degree show. And then I guess it's definitely one of the interests I want to explore in how the body, desire and fetish stands within two different realms, and how it's been conceived differently.
R: That connects well to what you were talking about in the beginning of our conversation about being inspired by video games which I know you incorporated in Threshold to stage this kind of alternative present. Could you speak a little about that and also the role of collaboration in that process?
R: That relation to internet culture is really interesting, perhaps even the experience of scrolling could be considered a form of fragmentation?
CD: Yeah! And it's really interesting when you search for music or even listing your own music, Both on SoundCloud, Discogs, and BandCamps, you are using tags. You have to type in “techno and industrial” and use a set of hashtags to find things. I find it quite interesting how people use that as a way of describing music that can be so different to what I imagine it to be. How the genres are being defined through those tags and or people just inventing new ones because there's a new trend going on in like #business. I guess #business is related to what's trending on the internet and what people's being like circulating.
R: Your work often deals with materialities of representations and how these can be altered or manipulated through media, perhaps as a form of transhumanist queer “becoming”, perhaps as a means to exceed or transcend physical forms and identities. Could you speak a little about the interplay between the materialities of representation and technology in your work?
CD: I feel like my work has shifted a bit since I wrote that into my bio, haha. I guess the thing that's been defined as material or materiality within my work has always been related to the body.
Within some of my fashion practice back in 2022 during COVID, for instance, I used fashion as a way to challenge the philosophical idea between what identity can be beyond how you see me as a physical person. Moving from that into fine art, I was thinking about the materiality of the body within rave culture and I was mainly referencing the studies on how identity can break through the body within the movements of dancing in rave scenarios. I also tried some mark making with the body in order to generate images from my body movement as part of an experimentation history not many people know (hehe).
Although the interest in the body has been consistent, since the end of 2022 my interest has slightly shifted from queer studies to be more centered around desire and fetish.
I guess before 2022, there were critical moments within queer movement where I was quite actively involved. But later on, I’ve felt like my understanding of my practice has deepened into things beyond something that's purely gender related. So I found it quite nice to be currently moving slightly away from identity, representation and materiality, and more just around the idea of bodily capacity and becoming…
I haven't got so much written stuff around it yet, so I don't know how to articulate those thoughts well enough, but I do feel this shift and I guess it’s interesting in relation to how technology was used within Threshold, my degree show. And then I guess it's definitely one of the interests I want to explore in how the body, desire and fetish stands within two different realms, and how it's been conceived differently.
R: That connects well to what you were talking about in the beginning of our conversation about being inspired by video games which I know you incorporated in Threshold to stage this kind of alternative present. Could you speak a little about that and also the role of collaboration in that process?
CD: I guess at the beginning, I questioned the idea of bringing rave culture into Slade - into a gallery space. Although Slade as an art school is in many ways not a conventional gallery space, it's still definitely a space that holds a lot of history, and holds a lot of hierarchies in terms of who can get into the space which is normally related to money, power and identification of art as well. So when I decided to bring rave culture, a non-binary subculture into this historically white and prestigious space, I cared very much about the context. In order to bring subversion to this history, one of the things I thought a lot about was staging something that was altering how people conceive this space and questioning the power system that existed within this building already, and that's kind of the foundation of why the game had to be kind of morphed into the real space. To do this, Freddie and I scanned some of the corridors and classrooms which visitors are not allowed to enter, labeled with no entry signs for instance. So it's quite interesting how the relationship of what we can do and how far we can go, was recreated and layered within the game in parallel to the actual gallery room where the game is installed.
The other thing that I thought about a lot within this game was the body. It was quite important to make the stool as a digital twinning, instead of a traditional sculpture piece that is casted upon my body. This digital twinning idea opens up a lot of later conversation and reflections on how fantasies can be explored relating to varied realms differently.
The work was a collaboration with Freddie Sanders, who was at the time a year below me at Slade and a final year graduate from Slade this year.
Freddie is definitely a digital wizard to me, who brought in all the tech and skills in terms of game building, 3d modeling and world building. The entire collaboration process was very collaborative and casual in many ways - we had an open doc and we added ideas on characters, music, visuals and game formats together. We also wrote a lot of dialogues and texts in this game together based on our own rave experiences.
R: Who/or what are some of your influences that helped you develop the language of your work?
CD: I thought really hard about the influences and it’s a very hard question to answer to me as I barely reference people within my art making process.
But there's one name that always I want to drop, which is Reba Maybury. She was one of the tutors when I was in CSM in my BA final year. She comes from a fashion history critique background, apart from that, she's also a dominatrix and she used that as a way to build interesting conversations with men and write about it. And then later on she became more of like an artist, doing readings or performances where she set up the men to do it for her as a role play or a sexual play, which became a part of the work to study power and social relationships.
I found her experience and practice really really intriguing. At the time when I met her, she was the only person in my life who talked about sex in a way which made you understand that there are so many layers to it. There's so much creative language you can use in relation to that to make people think about other things. And then she's just a strong person. That kind of confrontational energy that she possessed was something that was missing in my life and I found it very inspirational in terms of finding the direction of my artistic interest and also me understanding there's always a way to be who I am.
That’s the main person I would mention but then in terms of references or inspiration in producing my work...I guess recently I've been quite busy so I haven't been reading much to be fair. Because my practice is always a bit erotic or fetish related, I feel like Pornhub is oftentimes a very important reference pot I'd have to go to. I've also been quite interested in the DIY culture around it so sometimes YouTube is really fascinating because people share knowledge about how they build things like a vacuum bed.
R: That early mentorship is really important I think. Like perhaps you don't realize it at the moment, but people can have such a big impact on your practice early on and I think it's so important to find someone like that…Some of your work references or employs elements of horror such as Tease and Denial (2023), Beyond Capacity (2020), and Inhale at the Gateway (2022). Could you speak a little bit about your interest in horror in relation to the body and how this has shifted in your practice over the years?
CD: Yeah, it’s definitely shifted. When I made Beyond Capacity in 2020, my work was very much related to the movement of queer identity and queer theory. It involved a lot of research into science fiction and the making of monstrosity and how the body is blended into like other creatures or machines. In theory, fromm 2020 to 2021,I was interested in the studies of queerness within those science fiction genres, and I looked particularly into horror within this context.
Since then, horror has stayed and expanded within my practice and even becomes a sort of an aesthetic that really speaks to me. There's one thing that's really interesting to me now when I think about horror - I think BDSM sex, or any extreme sex, has been one of the major references to my practice. Although in some works it may not be the most obvious reference, it has always been the undercurrent of almost every work I've made. It's interesting to see the similarity, within, like BDSM, for instance, the extreme latex bondage or people playing dog or even like the body “configurations” into furniture. I feel like so much of that already indicates transformations of the body. It's almost a process of becoming monsters aligning with those science fictions. So for the BDSM context, I found it quite interesting as it is kind of a limbo area between fiction and nonfiction. In BDSM fantasies, there are many kinks or desires that might go beyond your body's limit and you might just die from it, therefore somehow fictional. But then it's interesting to also embrace that actual practice where those fantasies meet the limitations of the body and I guess horror is interpreted in this way as a form of intensity and violence.
Since then, horror has stayed and expanded within my practice and even becomes a sort of an aesthetic that really speaks to me. There's one thing that's really interesting to me now when I think about horror - I think BDSM sex, or any extreme sex, has been one of the major references to my practice. Although in some works it may not be the most obvious reference, it has always been the undercurrent of almost every work I've made. It's interesting to see the similarity, within, like BDSM, for instance, the extreme latex bondage or people playing dog or even like the body “configurations” into furniture. I feel like so much of that already indicates transformations of the body. It's almost a process of becoming monsters aligning with those science fictions. So for the BDSM context, I found it quite interesting as it is kind of a limbo area between fiction and nonfiction. In BDSM fantasies, there are many kinks or desires that might go beyond your body's limit and you might just die from it, therefore somehow fictional. But then it's interesting to also embrace that actual practice where those fantasies meet the limitations of the body and I guess horror is interpreted in this way as a form of intensity and violence.
R: What’s your approach to art making/being creative? Where do you find motivation and inspiration?
CD: Since I graduated last year, everything has been slightly different to pre-graduation. Before I was mainly doing art full time so there was more consistency like maybe I was reading something specific and then I would work on that material throughout several pieces. There were always these consistent studio tims to reflect on what I'd been reading and then what I'd been doing. Then there was also immediate feedback between peer students where I could test out something and if something worked I might carry it into other things. Within those basic settings, the way I work could be quite spontaneous and playful, which has been quite reflective to those experimentations I carried out.
But since graduating I haven't got as much time. I’ve had to work part time on my fine art and then part-time on a job to financially support myself. Within those reduced studio time, the production of new works are forced to be shaped by deadlines and commissions which oftentimes come with a degree of restrictions such as “they want a performance”, or showing in a group show in light space.
![Chaney Diao, Clamp, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.]()
So it becomes more difficult in terms of being more restricted about what I should be producing in order to attend all those things. And then my process of work has also shifted. I like to collect things from time to time and if I see something interesting, I put it in my notes and then I just pull from these things and then try to combine materials together. This made me sometimes quite sad, as I do feel I tend to work in a very ambitious way, but then the majority of the time post-uni those types of works are not easily to be showabe. On the side note, I also just realized it's not really good for my mental health and not good for my overall health as well to be pushing my practice’s boundary everytime when I produce. But I guess in the end it is a mixture of feeling, as in the ideal scenario I would keep going with the “hardcore”.
R: I really appreciate you bringing up the practical aspects of making work because I feel like it's not something that people talk about that much and it's so real, especially if you work with media and you don’t have access to electricity. Your circumstances really shape the work you are able to make, I think. Alongside your artistic practice you run the curatorial project “Hello Dump” together with Yu Li. I was curious about how this project came about and perhaps how it feeds into your other work?
CD: Yu and I first met at Slade but the project came about the final day when we were moving out from the studio and a lot of people were just throwing things away and then we were like, oh actually we can save it because we rented a storage space together. So we message people being like, “can we save it?” And they were like, yeah, fine. We saved all the work but we also thought that we should do something with it because people were throwing things we thought were art. So we did an open call and we got 150 or something submissions and then we ended up showing 28 of them. So that's how we started but then we're just trying to archive more works that would otherwise have been thrown away, not trash, but things people want to keep, but they just struggle with.
I guess I'm still trying to find a good relationship with this project. Sometimes I’ve been working with it and sometimes I've been away because I've been busy working on my own stuff. One thing that really feeds into my practice is that through this project we really got to know a lot of different people who’ve shared their stories about why they have to throw these works. Because people hold a different practice from us and they understand their materials quite differently to how I understand my materials. I usually don't repurpose my work but then some people only repurpose their work. So it's really interesting to know these aspects. Sometimes it’s a good strategy to save money, but sometimes you're just seeing what kind of environment we're all dealing with and it's good to know these things from other people to better understand it. In my own situation, I think it's really encouraging to know these people and to know what everyone's been struggling with currently. Sometimes it's the system itself rather than what we haven't done properly.
We're also trying to do a digital archive as well, and hopefully that will be something more that could feed back into me as well perhaps that can be a game at some point. Freddie and I will potentially collaborate on that as well. We're currently applying for funding, so if we can get it, we'll definitely do it together. It's good to work with someone that I've collaborated with before and to do something game related again.
(this side notes come from chaney few weeks later when this interview is in the editing process: she just want to share that they got the arts council funding for this digital archive, they are going to make a game, and freddie will be onboard again x)
R: I really like the idea of the video game. Would you incorporate all the stories as well?
CD: Yeah! We want to archive everything that's coming over then with things that we can't actually archive physically, we could potentially archive it digitally. But we're still at the very beginning stage. If we can get the funding, then definitely it will be this year, and if not, we'll see if we can go for a second round hopefully soon.
R: Super cool. I wasn't aware of the origin story of the project but now the name makes so much more sense. I was also curious if you could share a little bit about what's next for you or things you are working on at the moment?
CD: Yeah! I have a show coming up this Saturday, actually (at the time of the interview in June). It's the one with no electricity…
R: Perfect [laughs].
CD: Yeah [laughs]. And then I have some DJ stuff at the end of July and Hello Dump is having our second show in the final week of August. The show will be at Filet Space, PV is on the 22nd Aug, show’s continues to 25th Aug. If anyone reads this wanna come, you are more than welcome x.
Apart from that, I'm just looking to take some time and do the work that I want to do. I've been working through that for so long and I need some time just to work out things by myself.
Hello Dump’s exhibition DUMP02 is currently up at Filet, London, UK, until August 25th.
CD: Since I graduated last year, everything has been slightly different to pre-graduation. Before I was mainly doing art full time so there was more consistency like maybe I was reading something specific and then I would work on that material throughout several pieces. There were always these consistent studio tims to reflect on what I'd been reading and then what I'd been doing. Then there was also immediate feedback between peer students where I could test out something and if something worked I might carry it into other things. Within those basic settings, the way I work could be quite spontaneous and playful, which has been quite reflective to those experimentations I carried out.
But since graduating I haven't got as much time. I’ve had to work part time on my fine art and then part-time on a job to financially support myself. Within those reduced studio time, the production of new works are forced to be shaped by deadlines and commissions which oftentimes come with a degree of restrictions such as “they want a performance”, or showing in a group show in light space.
So it becomes more difficult in terms of being more restricted about what I should be producing in order to attend all those things. And then my process of work has also shifted. I like to collect things from time to time and if I see something interesting, I put it in my notes and then I just pull from these things and then try to combine materials together. This made me sometimes quite sad, as I do feel I tend to work in a very ambitious way, but then the majority of the time post-uni those types of works are not easily to be showabe. On the side note, I also just realized it's not really good for my mental health and not good for my overall health as well to be pushing my practice’s boundary everytime when I produce. But I guess in the end it is a mixture of feeling, as in the ideal scenario I would keep going with the “hardcore”.
R: I really appreciate you bringing up the practical aspects of making work because I feel like it's not something that people talk about that much and it's so real, especially if you work with media and you don’t have access to electricity. Your circumstances really shape the work you are able to make, I think. Alongside your artistic practice you run the curatorial project “Hello Dump” together with Yu Li. I was curious about how this project came about and perhaps how it feeds into your other work?
CD: Yu and I first met at Slade but the project came about the final day when we were moving out from the studio and a lot of people were just throwing things away and then we were like, oh actually we can save it because we rented a storage space together. So we message people being like, “can we save it?” And they were like, yeah, fine. We saved all the work but we also thought that we should do something with it because people were throwing things we thought were art. So we did an open call and we got 150 or something submissions and then we ended up showing 28 of them. So that's how we started but then we're just trying to archive more works that would otherwise have been thrown away, not trash, but things people want to keep, but they just struggle with.
I guess I'm still trying to find a good relationship with this project. Sometimes I’ve been working with it and sometimes I've been away because I've been busy working on my own stuff. One thing that really feeds into my practice is that through this project we really got to know a lot of different people who’ve shared their stories about why they have to throw these works. Because people hold a different practice from us and they understand their materials quite differently to how I understand my materials. I usually don't repurpose my work but then some people only repurpose their work. So it's really interesting to know these aspects. Sometimes it’s a good strategy to save money, but sometimes you're just seeing what kind of environment we're all dealing with and it's good to know these things from other people to better understand it. In my own situation, I think it's really encouraging to know these people and to know what everyone's been struggling with currently. Sometimes it's the system itself rather than what we haven't done properly.
We're also trying to do a digital archive as well, and hopefully that will be something more that could feed back into me as well perhaps that can be a game at some point. Freddie and I will potentially collaborate on that as well. We're currently applying for funding, so if we can get it, we'll definitely do it together. It's good to work with someone that I've collaborated with before and to do something game related again.
(this side notes come from chaney few weeks later when this interview is in the editing process: she just want to share that they got the arts council funding for this digital archive, they are going to make a game, and freddie will be onboard again x)
R: I really like the idea of the video game. Would you incorporate all the stories as well?
CD: Yeah! We want to archive everything that's coming over then with things that we can't actually archive physically, we could potentially archive it digitally. But we're still at the very beginning stage. If we can get the funding, then definitely it will be this year, and if not, we'll see if we can go for a second round hopefully soon.
R: Super cool. I wasn't aware of the origin story of the project but now the name makes so much more sense. I was also curious if you could share a little bit about what's next for you or things you are working on at the moment?
CD: Yeah! I have a show coming up this Saturday, actually (at the time of the interview in June). It's the one with no electricity…
R: Perfect [laughs].
CD: Yeah [laughs]. And then I have some DJ stuff at the end of July and Hello Dump is having our second show in the final week of August. The show will be at Filet Space, PV is on the 22nd Aug, show’s continues to 25th Aug. If anyone reads this wanna come, you are more than welcome x.
Apart from that, I'm just looking to take some time and do the work that I want to do. I've been working through that for so long and I need some time just to work out things by myself.
Hello Dump’s exhibition DUMP02 is currently up at Filet, London, UK, until August 25th.