CHOI Sin-yi (Emilie) is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her research delves into the elemental and environmental dimensions of media technology by exploring the interplay of geological and sociotechnical imaginaries of water in Hong Kong, South China, and Taiwan. Her study scrutinizes the diverse discursive elements entwined in the material mediation of water, encompassing film and media artworks, architectural designs, government policies, major tech corporations, scientists, environmentalists, and emerging economies. The primary aim of her research is to prompt a reevaluation of the water crisis and its techno-biopolitical implications in the context of ecological politics while contributing to the broader scholarship on the symbiotic relationships between humans and nature in the realms of posthuman and environmental media.
Her interdisciplinary research spans film and media studies, science and technology (STS), and environmental humanities, specifically including critical infrastructure studies, environmental media, digital art and humanities, and the cinephile culture and media networks across East Asia during the Cold War era. Choi’s academic work has been presented at international conferences such as the Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2024 conference and the Association for Asian Studies 2022 conference. She has contributed a chapter in the book The 70s Bi-weekly: Autonomous Media, Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in 1970s Hong Kong (HKU Press, 2023) and a journal paper in the special issue of Global South Cinephilias on Modernism/modernity Print Plus (Apr 2024). Additionally, she is a co-editor of “Post-2019 Hong Kong Cinema: Paradox and Polarization” in the Journal of Chinese Cinema and is working on a forthcoming Hong Kong film anthology. Choi has presented her research at renowned institutions such as transmediale in Berlin, Germany, and the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Beyond academia, Choi actively engages in art criticism and curatorial work, serving on the boards of Videotage and Unlock Dancing Plaza in Hong Kong. She has also curated numerous film programmes and visual arts exhibitions, including Jumping Frames – Hong Kong International Movement-image Festival, Hong Kong Retrospective Documentary Film Festival: From 80s to 1997, Docuthon, Macao Experimental Cinema, and Nothing has Happened. She has been selected for the Curatorial Program for Research 2023: (RE)PRESENTATION IN THE NORDICS.
