Rieko Whitfield

Regenesis is a container project of world-building and speculative mythology that spans mediums such as moving image, performance, songwriting, and sculpture. The objects within Regenesis serve as mementos from the world created in the project, and were either inspired by or activated within the filming of Regenesis: An Opera Tentacular.

Regenesis: An Opera Tentacular is a non-linear, three-act rock opera of cyclical life, death, embodiment, and community, set in a world healing from the apocalypse.

The narrative is inspired by the Shinto goddess of creation and destruction who burns to death giving birth to the world, and the magical rituals of Noh, a form of traditional Japanese opera. The performances channel supernatural beings who heal the broken body of the earth through collective care.

Act II debuted in the Everything Forever exhibition and was included in separate curatorial selections by Silicon Valet, Anna Souter, and Ambar Quijano. The song "Safe Spaces" from Act II was streamed on Montez Press Radio. Act II has been selected for The Self and the Other, an international student showcase for moving image works organised in partnership with Saatchi Gallery Learning.

Act III debuted in the opening of RCA 2021.

Act I will debut on July 21, 2021 with the opening of the RCA 2021 Contemporary Art Practice Degree Show at Cromwell Place, and available to stream on riekowhitfield.com.

Special thank you to performers Wayne Daniels, Jesse May Fisher, River Cao, and Sofie Manetta, set photographer Ning Zhou, and logo designer Alessandro Moroni.

The objects created for Regenesis are souvenirs from the mythological world where the narrative takes place, and activated through live and pre-recorded performance as set or costume design.

Crocheted mycelial patterns are repeated across various works to draw parallels between the multi-sensory, decentralised intelligence and regenerative properties of both tentacles and mycelial networks.

One of the objects include a found garment unraveled and rewoven into a wearable sculpture, as if the wool jumper were decomposing and reincarnating itself.

Microscopic images of seeds also feature in different iterations as a digitally-printed tapestry on the set of Act III, and as the chroma-key backdrop of Act II.

Contact rieko.whitfield@alumni.rca.ac.uk for sales enquiries.

Diasporas Now is a live-streaming platform for multidisciplinary artists from various non-Western backgrounds that use performance as radical acts of self-representation. The first iteration of Diasporas Now includes artists of Asian, Afro-Caribbean, and Latin American diasporas.  

This event expands the boundaries of performance as a medium by exhibiting a diverse range of forms such as dance, music, spoken word, and installation. The works will be live-streamed as both pre-recorded and real-time performances.  

Diasporas Now is a collective manifestation of personal and often political identities reflecting the multitude of minority voices under the hegemonic culture.

The first iteration of Diasporas Now features works by RCA students and guest artists Whiskey Chow and Chooc Ly Tan.

The platform will launch July 1, 2021 at 16:00 (GMT+1).

Diasporas Now was founded and curated by Rieko Whitfield, Paola Estrella, and Lulu Wang.

Rieko Whitfield is a founding member and workshop facilitator for the Artemisia collective (with Jesse May Fisher and Treeney Harkin), a founding member of the Protozoa collective organising Another World is Possible, a founding member and curator for the Diasporas Now platform (with Paola Estrella and Lulu Wang), and the organiser for the Decentralising Institutions lecture series in conversation with artist Hito Steyerl, Ben Vickers of the Serpentine Galleries, and Dean Kissick of Spike Art Magazine.

"As Microcosm, So Macrocosm" was a performative meditation and participatory reiki workshop commissioned by Gasworks.

This was the opening event for Hear the Light, an exhibition from May 11-17, 2021 curated by Ludovica Bulciolu, David Lisbon, Hyeona Shin, Haoyang Wang, Shiying Wang, Kechun Qin, Duruo Zheng from the Royal College of Art's MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme.

The larger Regenesis project will be complete with the upcoming release of the Regenesis EP, with recordings of all three original songs ("Mother Tongue," "Safe Spaces," and "Ashes to Ashes") and spoken word written and performed by Rieko Whitfield.

The songs from Regenesis will be performed live at the launch of Diasporas Now on July 1, 2021 at 16:00 (GMT+1), and during the RCA 2021 Contemporary Art Practice Degree Show at Cromwell Place between July 21-26, 2021.

Follow riekowhitfield.com and @riekowhitfield for updates on live performances and the Regenesis EP.