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lawil: This is the third episode
of the Future Money podcast and

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we're in conversation with Xiaoxiao.

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You might know her as Xiaoxi Song.

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She is an artist, writer, and researcher
currently residing in Berlin, Germany.

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Hollis: In her practice, she focuses
on community centric experiences with

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mediums that range from poetry and text.

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and game design to theater
and live performance.

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In this

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lawil: episode, Xiao Xiao shares what
inspired her to follow a creative pathway.

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Her art became a tool of political
expression, which led her to focus

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on themes close to her heart, such
as migration and financial exclusion.

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Xiaoji: Welcome.

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Hollis: Thank you.

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Xiao Qi, thank you so much for joining
us on the Future Money Podcast.

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I'd love to hear more
about your origin story.

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Like, Where you're from originally, what
first inspired you to a path of artistry,

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as you've been saying, like the themes
that guide your work or migration, um,

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techno politics, like these are meaty
theoretical topics that you've chosen

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to pursue through the medium of art.

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So I'm curious, like how you arrived
to understanding that intersection of.

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Geopolitical phenomena within
your artistic practice.

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Xiaoji: Yeah, thanks for the question.

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I think it's actually super relevant also
for the work that I am currently working

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on commission by Interledger Foundation.

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I grew up in Wuhan, China.

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It's now, let's say, famous city
globally, but I also want to talk

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about it's not just famous for the
reason that everyone knows, but

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it's also the punk city of China.

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I grew up with.

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hearing revolutionary
stories in my history.

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I grew up at, let's say, a societal
fabric that is quite different than

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right now, uh, where civil society
is still quite active and alive.

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And I was always interested in using
art as a tool for political expression,

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as a tool for movement building.

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And it was sort of like also the only way.

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For people like me to kind of
participate in politics and to express

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my political views and to also start
dialogues with people of marginalized

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communities and with people of different
groups and different communities.

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I came from a family of migration.

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That's also why that.

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Um, migration has been such a
central topic of my work, my

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artistic practices as well.

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My grandma was born and
grew up in Indonesia.

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She went to China when she was 14, 15,
when she was just a teenager by boat

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with Her other sisters and brothers and
many of them, it was a different time.

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It was a different time with we imagine
and we see border differently when

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institutions are different, when migration
was seen as differently and the Chinese

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diaspora at that generation, they
went to China to build a new country

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and then cultural revolution happens.

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So that's another story.

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Um, so I think for me, that is in
some way, There were like this talk

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about like intergenerational trauma,
but I've recently learned this term

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intergenerational knowledge system is
by comparing my grandma's migration

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experiences and my own experiences of like
shifting identity from an international

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student to a migrant and also by just
Being in Germany, a democratic society,

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when it was 2015 and 2016, when there
was also like a lot of like changes

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in migration in society, this informed
my points of view and informed my

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understanding about migration integration
as a topic, and that makes it such a

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relevant and important topic for me, both
personally and when it comes to my career.

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What kind of society
that I want to live in.

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Technopolitics, also growing up in
accelerating Chinese society, where

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techno solutionism is sort of like
the only way to go when we grow up.

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I was deeply influenced by
feminist science and technology

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studies during my undergrads.

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That also is one of the major topics
that I'm exploring because of, let's say,

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yeah, it's also quite a personal reason.

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So I'm actually

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lawil: quite curious, especially when you
mentioned the punk background of Wuhan.

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How did that influence, in
combination with the techno

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politics, your own artistic practice?

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Xiaoji: That's really, like, exactly
what I would like to talk about.

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So I grew up in a street that, uh,
basically is considered, I don't

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know how's that called in English,
but we call it like backstreet

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of a school or like a university.

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So it's like the street that is very
close to a university campus where all the

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students hang out, have drinks, and like
do different like, you know, organizing.

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small readings, organized
community events.

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And I grew up in the back
street of the local art school.

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And that's where I went to elementary
school, middle school, high school.

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And that is also a street of the start
of the graffiti culture in my hometown.

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It's also the street with, uh,
like the punk scene is not all

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there, but there were like small
in Chinese, we call actually in

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East Asia, we call it live houses.

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It's like kind of like a music revenue
for, um, small like independent

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concert to have his industry.

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When I grow up, I see a lot
of like urban contestation.

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There were a lot of people
trying to do graffiti.

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Our school student trying to
organize screening films and music.

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This is like a sense of rebellion.

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The sense of like.

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self organization, direct
actions, and like taking care

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of each other in the community.

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It's also the street that not only
with all different subcultures,

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but also one of, let's say, the
most poor area of the old Wuhan.

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I think it reminds me a lot of
like Schiller kids in Berlin.

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I don't grow up with galleries.

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Galleries is like a new gallery.

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New thing for me, but I grow
up with street art and I grow

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up with small music revenue.

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I grow up with different tiny readings
and screens and people campaigning

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in the street So I think that spirit
is still inside me and that's also

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one of the reason I didn't choose
to go to an art school But instead I

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was learning about social sciences.

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I was learning about politics during
my time of studying I mean, of

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course right now my idea about art
has changed a lot and my idea about

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like if art school is something like
I should consider change a lot, but

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originally that's where I come from.

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For me, art is for building
infrastructure of imagination is when

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I grow up, if it's not because of
seeing those subculture things, seeing

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those street art, I will not be here.

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I will not ever think about.

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Going abroad and like coming to
Germany and leaving Europe and maybe

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like go somewhere else in the future.

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Even that's

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Hollis: so great.

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Thank you so much for sharing that.

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I just love that phrase building
infrastructure of imagination.

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I think that like, absolutely
perfectly encapsulates really what

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the future money ethos is and why
interledger is so interested in this

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charge of like, how do we create?

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And be creative around creating
possibility and just as you've said,

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how you personally and your life path
was transformed by encountering and

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being steeped in a city of art that was
inherently political and wasn't gallerized

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and wasn't kind of separated and cut off
from like the politics of everyday life.

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Um, could you tell us more about like
your actual arts practice and medium?

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I know we'll get eventually into the
project that you're developing with.

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the Future Money artist cohort.

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But I'm curious about like
your own personal path in

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terms of your practice and

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Xiaoji: medium.

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When I first came to Europe, like
I would say like my first real art

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project is like a theater project
that happened when I was really young.

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When I just came to Germany, when it was
like 2015, 2016, I started working with

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community theater and documentary theater.

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And it was largely because I was
doing a lot of volunteering work.

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with the local organization that
were helping the refugees incoming.

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And I was also always passionate
about small theater and film and

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cinema, like that was also influenced
by my upbringing in my hometown.

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So for a long time, I was
working with storytelling

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through theater and through film.

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So I was also doing some moving images
work and over the years I started to

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experiment with different mediums.

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So now I'm working with text a lot.

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I work with audio.

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I work with moving image still.

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I still work with performances, but not
strictly theater performances anymore.

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And very interesting lecture performances.

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And also right now I work with game
as a medium, and that is also like the

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project that I'm doing with Interledger.

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Do you have a preference?

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I've been thinking about
that for a long time.

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I think at the moment I am most
interested in text as a medium of

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art and I think that's probably not
necessarily my preference because Of what

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I'm enjoying to create with the most.

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It's probably because that text is not
usually seen as a serious art form.

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Absolutely.

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lawil: How do you then apply the text?

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Because there are
different types of things.

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You can also do, apply it in
that sense, kind of like in a,

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where it's more design based.

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So the focus is more about the aesthetics.

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I'm not saying that the content doesn't
have any aesthetics in them, but there

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are so many different approaches.

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What is your approach in that?

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Xiaoji: I think I'm, I'm very
interested in playing with first

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narratives itself, and I think
that's like a quite a common approach

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when it comes to working with text.

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I'm also very interested in, like, using
different genre of writing, some genre

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of writing that are very often seen as
an institutional symbol, for example,

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to play with those formats about, like,
um, what kind of clashes different

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genres of writing can do to each other.

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So that's something that I also
use with lecture performances and

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in other performances I'm doing.

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Very cool.

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Hollis: So, maybe we can walk our way
up into, like, from that origin of

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theater and documentary theater and
then diving into text, like, how did

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you encounter and begin to explore
games and the creation and design of

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games as your art practice and what have
you discovered through exploring it?

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Xiaoji: The sort of like anarchist
spirit and like anarchist thought behind

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my artistic practice was something
that also brings me to the game.

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So studying like a lot about politics,
I am not very interested in the,

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let's say, in German hierpolitik,
like, um, I like English, maybe real

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politics as an approach to discuss
politics and to describe, let's

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say, how we make, political action.

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I am very interested in prefigurative
politics like as an academic concept.

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It's very closely like associated
with anarchism as an alternative

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framework to examine like how political
change can happen and to as a way to

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describe not just for the The discourse
focusing on alternative on what is

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understood as a consequentialist
way of analyzing political action.

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I'm interested in prefiguration as a
microtransformative structure to kind

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of anticipate on what kind of future
we want to imagine for ourselves.

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lawil: The thing is that sometimes
we could choose mediums and they just

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have a certain type of attachments.

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There is a aesthetic to it as well.

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Xiaoji: I think I find it very often
hard to describe what games means for me

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because I don't grow up playing games.

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When I was a teenager, when we had
our first computer, my dad was always

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playing, uh, you know, this game.

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This game called red alert, you
know, those super aggressive.

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Oh yeah.

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I used to play them as well.

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Yeah, me too.

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But I suck at them.

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So I don't grow up playing this game.

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When I was a kid, when I tried to find
a game for me in the computer, I, I,

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I played with Microsoft PowerPoint.

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I thought that's the most fun thing
in the world and front page so for a

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long time game is not something for me.

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I don't associate with being a gamer.

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I don't grow up playing a lot of games.

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I only started to discover game a few
years ago because of my other project

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Alien without extraordinary ability and
because of that project I was thinking

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Hard and long about what medium I
should choose and like a good friend

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was talking with for a long time about
What do I actually need to do with this?

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And I start to realize like I want to
give a possibility for radical imagination

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through this project I did some writing, I
did some design work and I did a bunch of

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stuff that I have no idea how to combine
them together And at the same point I

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realized that what I need is a game And
I started to design games And I realized

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how much agency I feel in that process.

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Also how much agency that people
feel when they are getting

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engaged with the project itself.

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Because you're not just an
audience, you're not just a

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reader, you're not just a viewer.

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You actually get to interact with it.

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There are other formats that
you also get to interact with.

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But what's special about game for
me is the possibility of world

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building, the possibility of blending
reality and fiction and I started to

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also play like indie games that are
not like crazy strategy war games.

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I wouldn't say I have a personal
attachment to games, it just feels

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like This is a medium that I can
connect so many things together and

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to have the necessary function for
me to have a sort of like critical

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engagement with certain topics.

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I hope that answers the question.

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It answers

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lawil: the question, I completely
understand also because of the, what

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is it, the agency that games create
because you, what is it, with games you

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create rules that people have to follow.

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Hollis: I'd love to transition
into talking about the project

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that you are working on, the
Parallel Society, specifically as

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commissioned by Interledger for
the Future Money Artist Grant.

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Would love to hear about how
your concept of this developed.

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Um, and anything you'd like to share?

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Because I know that this isn't
your first connection point

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with interledger foundation.

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So we'd kind of love to hear how
you arrived at the concept of this

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Xiaoji: project.

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I think like financial
inclusion as a topic for me

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has always been quite relevant.

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I think, um, especially
as a women, women are.

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very often disproportionately
impacted by financial exclusion.

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And even though I grew up in a quite
like urban citizenship, uh, household

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in China, where we have a sort of like
a socialist feminist infrastructure,

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where the double income family in
China were quite high compared to

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many other countries in the world.

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Money has always been a topic that
women are supposedly not talk about.

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Women are very often not the one that
actually like take control and have

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access to a lot of financial services.

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Another entry point for me to understand
financial inclusion was also In

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Europe generally financial inclusion
has been seen as like quite a lot of

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like what western and middle european
country has achieved very high level

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of financial inclusion or almost full
but um as I mentioned before I used to

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work a lot with migrants refugees and
asylum seekers but I know with my own

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eyes, that is not the case for them.

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I know in my own eyes that many of them
are quite excluded from the system.

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They were very limited access for them.

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And even for the Chinese immigrants
community of second or third generations

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in Europe, many of them still has
a fear of the financial systems.

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here and their fear of financial system
exclude them from getting access to it and

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a lot of their needs were not met such as
currency exchange and also handling taxes.

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I've seen the consequences of this sort
of financial exclusion and this is what.

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brings me sort of to this topic
and brings me also to my project,

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the Parallel Society project.

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Parallel Society project as a project is
a storytelling game that kind of explores

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the financial inclusion as a topic by
featuring the fate of the two characters

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and what I What's interesting in this
project was the two characters, one as

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a migrant and one as a rural villager.

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So usually in political discourses,
migrants and local working class people,

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marginalized local populations are
very often pitted against each other.

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I use the concept of parallel society is
also a bit of a play in the world because

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parallel society in the German context is,
maybe in the whole European context is,

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uh, It's a term that is used to usually
describe, like, self organization of,

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like, ethnic or religious minorities.

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And after it was coined, there were a lot
of, like, policy based on it, but there's

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also a lot of controversy around it.

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I am also not a very big fan of this
term because of it puts emphasizes

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on the minorities themselves to bear
the responsibility of integrating

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into a society where there aren't
enough integration infrastructure.

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So there were a lot of like discussion,
like academic critiques of it, um, that is

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used to describe this Group of communities
that were being cut off from very often

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access from the so called mainstream
culture and in those kind of discourse,

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integration and assimilation are usually
used interchangeably, even though

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they mean completely different things.

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So this is a bit of my play
with the word related to this.

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What I want to highlight is not
a parallel society between the

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so called mainstream society.

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and this minority migrants racialized
population society, but the parallel

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society between the migrants who are
often caught up from excess and the local

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marginalized working class population,
rural population, who also often Echoes

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the same struggles as, um, different form
of marginalization and how their parallel

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fates echo with each other, but are very
often not seen as a parallel struggle,

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but they actually are parallel struggles.

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Hollis: Yeah, thank you so
much for sharing all of that.

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There's just so many fantastic lines of
thinking that were really provocative

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and I think just to call out my
appreciation for recognizing that,

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yeah, that, that when we talk about
financial inclusion, we have to look

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beyond this kind of self congratulatory
Western accomplishment and just By this

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concept of just by naming the concept of
financial inclusion that the work is done.

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Um, I just kind of love that call out.

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But I think that what I hear for you
too is like, you're problematizing

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this kind of binary between like,
the migrant versus the local or the

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fallacy of That there's those who are
kind of like native or were of the

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nationality and those that are apart and
recognizing that there actually is so

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much commonality, whether it's between
class or between economic experience.

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And yeah, I'm curious, like to that end.

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I specifically would love to
hear what you've uncovered or

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00:20:49,715 --> 00:20:54,845
learned through developing this
game of the Parallel Society as

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part of the Future Money Cohort.

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Xiaoji: I think like the first thing
is that I am digging deep into, let's

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say, different forms of struggles.

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That are for both groups of people, maybe
just for a little bit of context that I

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came up with this idea also because of,
um, let's say to actual news event and

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one is the collapse of a rural bank in
Henan in 2022 in China and the series

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00:21:25,340 --> 00:21:30,080
of protests that comes with it because
of the collapse of a rural bank and the

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second news is in Spain in Barcelona.

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There was a news about two Chinese
immigrants get millions of euro

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from a group of other Chinese
immigrants who does not have much

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access to the financial systems.

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And they promised to help them boost visa
residency status and they also promised

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to help them with currency exchange.

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Um, and also Managing their funds related
to their businesses that are many of them

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do not really trust the Spanish banks and
have faced like long term discrimination

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and marginalization in the society there.

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There aren't enough focuses put on, let's
say, people who have, On paper, they have

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the access, but why don't they use it?

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Why don't they actually go into that bank?

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Why don't they actually get
in touch with those services?

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These are the topics and like
the struggles that I'm interested

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in highlighting in my work.

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Financial exclusion.

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As their lived experiences, how does
that influence their way of understanding

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00:22:39,680 --> 00:22:44,009
and thinking about finance and how
does that influence their behavior

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00:22:44,009 --> 00:22:50,620
patterns, and how this experiences, if
documented and understood can be used

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00:22:50,629 --> 00:22:52,500
to create better tools to help them.

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So I was doing some research both on
like digging into literature related

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to it, um, such as like how different
migratory phases for a migrant, how

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does that correspond to different
financial needs, what are for majority

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of people the most important needs,
and also about lived experiences of

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like their fears, their struggles,
their experiences of discrimination,

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and their trauma, and their habits.

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These are the things that I have
been learning throughout the

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experiences of doing this project.

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I'm also very interested in the very
like emotional embodied aspects of those

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topics and like another thing that I've
been learning throughout the process

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of my work with the Future Money Artist
cohort is that I felt like it was so

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interesting to see Other artists and
other practitioners, their perspectives

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and their topics and their projects.

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00:24:00,925 --> 00:24:04,665
Because what I am working on
is, I would say, a very, like,

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micro sociological perspective.

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And many of them are taking a
different level of analysis,

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00:24:11,145 --> 00:24:16,765
different level of, like, Extracting
different sort of like materials,

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00:24:16,825 --> 00:24:22,075
different experiences and different
imaginations and how our imaginaries

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of different levels in some way
connects and interlink with each other.

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And that's something
I've been learning a lot.

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throughout the process as well.

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00:24:32,290 --> 00:24:35,840
lawil: I also believe it's very important
to have kind of like these different

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uh levels or these different lenses
on these projects and that's also

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we on purposely within the selection
process kind of like looked at the

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diversity of the cohort as well.

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So everyone's focus is very different.

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I can

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Xiaoji: see that and that's
been really enriching for me.

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00:24:53,725 --> 00:24:56,545
lawil: I do have another question
for you and it's kind of like,

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it's about the current game,
Parallel Societies, of course.

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00:25:00,115 --> 00:25:04,715
I'm very curious when it will be
finalized, but what do you hope

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00:25:04,725 --> 00:25:05,894
people will take away from it?

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00:25:06,604 --> 00:25:11,644
Xiaoji: I think, um, what I wish for
people to take away on it is, I would

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00:25:11,645 --> 00:25:18,620
say first is to sort of having this
understanding about this divide and

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dichotomy between migrant local dichotomy.

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Like I want people to have this
understanding of the arbitrariness

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of this dichotomy, I would say.

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And I'm also very interested in
having, maybe not necessarily,

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00:25:33,430 --> 00:25:37,120
this is not a takeaway that I wish
people to have, but like a dialogue.

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That I wish to have with and around
the topics of financial inclusion

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beyond the very institutional skills,
um, the emotional aspects and the

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00:25:47,850 --> 00:25:53,359
psychological aspects and the micro
sociological aspects of like how being

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financially excluded can influence your.

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00:25:56,790 --> 00:26:01,280
way of thinking, your way of interacting
with yourself, with people around

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00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:05,640
you and with the society and how
the sense of scarcity, how the sense

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of exclusion creates embodiment in
our body that cannot be very easily

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00:26:12,259 --> 00:26:17,809
taken away just because one thing has
changed or one policy has changed.

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00:26:17,810 --> 00:26:20,800
I think that would be the
takeaway that I wish people would

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have after they see my work.

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00:26:23,435 --> 00:26:23,524
I

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lawil: completely agree.

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00:26:24,645 --> 00:26:29,385
I also believe that's something within
the entire conversation of financial

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00:26:29,385 --> 00:26:32,885
inclusion that should be highlighted
more because it's very, it's forgotten.

397
00:26:33,185 --> 00:26:34,735
Xiaoji: Yes, absolutely.

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00:26:35,294 --> 00:26:36,834
lawil: When do you think you'll be ready?

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00:26:37,324 --> 00:26:38,564
Because I really want to

400
00:26:38,884 --> 00:26:39,524
Xiaoji: play the game.

401
00:26:39,715 --> 00:26:43,014
I think it's, uh, next spring sometime.

402
00:26:43,015 --> 00:26:43,785
Okay, cool.

403
00:26:43,935 --> 00:26:45,225
Within the current plan.

404
00:26:45,635 --> 00:26:46,315
So next spring.

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00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:50,600
Hollis: Well, we're really excited to
see your work come to life, and I think

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00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:55,590
as we wind down this conversation,
we're just really grateful for not

407
00:26:55,590 --> 00:27:00,489
only your presence and willingness to
talk to us, but just the depth and the

408
00:27:00,490 --> 00:27:03,429
consideration and the Appreciate it.

409
00:27:03,810 --> 00:27:06,960
Personal sense of purpose that
you have throughout your work.

410
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:12,759
I know I'm, I'm leaving this conversation
feeling really invigorated, and I think

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00:27:12,769 --> 00:27:16,470
I really am interested in the way that
you chose the medium of gaming and

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00:27:16,470 --> 00:27:19,359
just to know that like, oh, gaming
isn't necessarily something that like

413
00:27:19,380 --> 00:27:23,610
I had in my childhood, but just how we
can use more like irreverent mediums

414
00:27:23,610 --> 00:27:28,480
to talk about weighty, you know,
Political and economic issues, and I'm

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00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:29,920
excited to see it all come to light.

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lawil: To learn more about the Interledger
Foundation, visit our website where

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00:27:36,729 --> 00:27:38,120
you can find all of the published

418
00:27:38,159 --> 00:27:41,379
Hollis: episodes and more information
on our guests, grant programs,

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00:27:41,490 --> 00:27:43,409
and our resources at interledger.

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00:27:43,719 --> 00:27:44,159
org.

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Xiaoji: Thank

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00:27:45,289 --> 00:27:46,040
lawil: you for listening.