MEMORY PORTAL
Amy Cheung
2025 Spring Residency
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Memory Portal is a participatory worldmaking project that brings together myth, science, and environmental storytelling to explore contemporary ecological crises. Structured in three acts—summoning mythical beings, battling elemental forces, and awakening Will’s consciousness—the work invites audiences into collaborative drawing, gameplay, and dialogue.
At its centre is Will, a hybrid entity—part oyster, part lion—situated between sentient sculpture and amnesiac god. Embedded with enigmatic sensory devices, Will serves as an interface for transmuting real-time environmental data into deep-time awareness.
In the first two acts, participants designed mythic beings and strategic card games that exorcise climate anxiety into monsters and transform geopolitical and ecological conflicts into dynamics of symbiosis rather than confrontation, reimagining archetypes of resilience through the lens of Wuxing (mutual nourishment and mutual destruction) of the five elements: Fire, wood, metal, soil and fire.
In the final performance, a Memory Engineer uses materials drawn from the collective unconscious to resurrect Will’s senses—glacial whispers, wildfire screams, fossilized rainfall—attuning him to deep time, where millennia collapse into moments and erosion becomes tangible through creatures and elements. This awakening unfolds gradually, through sound and vision, revealing how Bill, Will’s brother—the Extractor—monopolized time, erased ancestral wisdom, and decapitated Will.
The project reframes environmental metrics as memories eclipsed by short-term interests, casting storytelling as speculative repair and Will as a vessel for sensory truths —reclaiming agency from silence, unweaving ecological grief, and reimagining futures unbound.
Can such hybrids—born of human yearning yet humming with planetary rhythms — —reconfigure stewardship in this fractured, dissonant age?
At its centre is Will, a hybrid entity—part oyster, part lion—situated between sentient sculpture and amnesiac god. Embedded with enigmatic sensory devices, Will serves as an interface for transmuting real-time environmental data into deep-time awareness.
In the first two acts, participants designed mythic beings and strategic card games that exorcise climate anxiety into monsters and transform geopolitical and ecological conflicts into dynamics of symbiosis rather than confrontation, reimagining archetypes of resilience through the lens of Wuxing (mutual nourishment and mutual destruction) of the five elements: Fire, wood, metal, soil and fire.
In the final performance, a Memory Engineer uses materials drawn from the collective unconscious to resurrect Will’s senses—glacial whispers, wildfire screams, fossilized rainfall—attuning him to deep time, where millennia collapse into moments and erosion becomes tangible through creatures and elements. This awakening unfolds gradually, through sound and vision, revealing how Bill, Will’s brother—the Extractor—monopolized time, erased ancestral wisdom, and decapitated Will.
The project reframes environmental metrics as memories eclipsed by short-term interests, casting storytelling as speculative repair and Will as a vessel for sensory truths —reclaiming agency from silence, unweaving ecological grief, and reimagining futures unbound.
Can such hybrids—born of human yearning yet humming with planetary rhythms — —reconfigure stewardship in this fractured, dissonant age?
COLLABORATORS/SUPPORT
Memory Portal is supported by:
9th Annual NYCPS Office of Energy and Sustainability Project Grant (in the category of Sustainability & Climate Education)
Billion Oyster Project
The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School
Here On Earth
Global Family for Love and Peace
Cultural Vitamin Solutions
First Act - Summoning Our Creatures Workshop:
Dr. Kerry Reid (Research Scientist, Yale University)
Griffin Deans (Environmental Engineer and Biologist, SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry)
Ruoyang Zheng (Storyteller, Here On Earth)
Second Act - Battle of the Elements Workshop:
Dabu Lyu and Herman Fang (NYU Game Center)
Third Act - Designing Will’s Consciousness:
Mauricio Gonzalez and seniors at The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School
Final Performance - Awakening Will:
Erkka Nissinen - Video Design
Oliver Lyons - Sound Design
Special thanks to Lu Chih Lan and Alexis Raskin.
9th Annual NYCPS Office of Energy and Sustainability Project Grant (in the category of Sustainability & Climate Education)
Billion Oyster Project
The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School
Here On Earth
Global Family for Love and Peace
Cultural Vitamin Solutions
First Act - Summoning Our Creatures Workshop:
Dr. Kerry Reid (Research Scientist, Yale University)
Griffin Deans (Environmental Engineer and Biologist, SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry)
Ruoyang Zheng (Storyteller, Here On Earth)
Second Act - Battle of the Elements Workshop:
Dabu Lyu and Herman Fang (NYU Game Center)
Third Act - Designing Will’s Consciousness:
Mauricio Gonzalez and seniors at The Urban Assembly New York Harbor School
Final Performance - Awakening Will:
Erkka Nissinen - Video Design
Oliver Lyons - Sound Design
Special thanks to Lu Chih Lan and Alexis Raskin.
People
