Sinofuturism as worlding: imagining futures in sinophone digital art

Abstract

This study responds to the prevalence with which politicians, journalists, and opinion makers imagine futures of the Sinophone sphere in either techno-utopian or techno- orientalist terms and as determined by China or “the West.” It studies Sinophone digital art that has gained prominence and that produces nuanced imaginations of the relation between digital technologies and futures that go beyond reductive geopolitical binaries. The study asks: How does Sinophone digital art imagine technology-infused futures in response to techno-utopian and techno-orientalist imaginations of those futures? To answer this question, it adopts a method of cultural analysis grounded in art historical formal and contextual analysis, while also mobilizing ethnographic methods such as interviews and field visits.

The following insights follow from this study’s analysis of how Sinofuturist digital art imagines futures in ways that break with essentialist techno-orientalist and techno- utopian perspectives. Firstly, it becomes clear that the Sinofuturist digital art considered in this study does not imagine the future as a temporally separate realm, but instead understands it as interconnected, in a linear or non-linear manner, with the present and also, in some cases, particular pasts. This disrupts (techno)orientalist perspectives that deny the Sinophone sphere contemporaneity by framing it as being in the temporally separate future. Secondly, when imagining the future of the Sinophone sphere, Sinofuturist digital art does so in a way that is locally situated but not locally determined, thus avoiding both essentializing and universalizing imaginations of those futures. Thirdly, Sinofuturist digital art often worlds the future in relation to the complex and nuanced realities of the present as experienced by regular people in their everyday lives, thereby avoiding the generalizing techno-utopian and techno-dystopian perspectives produced from the systemic perspectives of China or “the West.” Together, these insights produce a more comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted futures that are being imagined and brought into being across the Sinophone sphere.

Date of Thesis submission	2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Jeroen de Kloet (Supervisor), Esther Peeren (Supervisor), Ned Rossiter (Supervisor) & Joshua Wodak (Supervisor)