In experimental hyaline, x/o and gooie move between solids, liquids, and everything in between
Through music and movement, the pair explore nature, transformation, and the transitory nature of goo
x/o and gooie performing hyaline. Photo by Tôn Tôn Bo.
Notebook Platform and Chapel Sound Art Foundation present hyaline at VIVO Media Arts Centre on April 30 at 7:30 pm.
ELECTRONIC MUSIC PRODUCER x/o (Veron Xio) and interdisciplinary artist gooie (Julia Weiner) have come together for hyaline, a live performance that combines queer ecology and experimentation through materials—solids, liquids, and everything in between. In a clash of opposites, the project has become the Vancouver-based duo’s own experiment in fusing movement with their artist practices.
“Veron has always had this interest in nature and transformation, these motifs of morphing into different versions in nature,” says Weiner alongside Xio in conversation with Stir. “Goo is a very transitory substance, and we aligned well in these kinds of conflicting ideas, like something very hard and intense juxtaposed with something soft. That kind of worked for us.”
Shortly after meeting each other, Xio and Weiner began to explore collaborating on artistic projects, drawing on Xio’s background as a musician and Weiner’s interest in wearable and sculptural works. Xio, who is Vietnamese-Canadian, is mostly self-taught and came up as a musician playing in bands before finding their passion in producing electronic music. Being a self-starter has taken Xio deeper inside the global experimental club scene and brought them closer to their ancestral home. After visiting Vietnam for their research project on traditional Vietnamese instruments, Xio knew they had to come back.
“After I came back, I told Julia, ‘This place is so incredible,’” Xio recalls, highlighting Vietnam’s dynamic music, art, fashion, and queer scene. “I was like, ‘If we do a residency, let’s go back to Vietnam to do it.’”
The duo developed hyaline early last year at the A. Farm artist residency based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where they presented it as a work-in-progress performance. They drew on slug mating rituals, butterfly mottling processes, and mycelial networks to explore the line between humans and nonhumans. In their expansion into movement work, Weiner and Xio work with performance and movement artist Jas Lin as their movement coach, particularly leading up to their performance at VIVO Media Arts Centre.
“We’re both doing improvised movements and biomimetic choreography,” Xio explains. “It’s an experiment, and we’re exploring different rituals that happen with nonhumans, and what that could mean.”
Though they draw on different skillsets and interests, their shared performance practice as x/o and gooie reflects their parallel paths as self-taught artists. Weiner’s materials practice began out of necessity, shaped by both the cost of latex and its limited design options. Once she began creating pieces for herself, experimentation soon followed, and her designs became “less wearable and more conceptual”.
“I think over time, I kind of grew in that way,” says Weiner. For her, Xio’s support as a collaborator has been integral to a project that is rooted in trial and error. “A lot of good things come from failure, so for me, it has been letting go of perfectionism and allow things to be imperfect.”
As the sonic element of the performance, Xio teases new experimentations that will explore syncing music and light, as well as biosonification technology, which turns bioelectrical signals into sound and MIDI data. Similarly, Weiner’s interest in fashion and fetish rituals, and her exploration of materials as a way of creating intimacy, can be seen across hyaline’s sequence of acts, beginning with ‘genesis’ and ending with ‘transcendence’.
An upcoming album, also titled hyaline, is set to be released this year, through the experimental music label Precious Metals. Xio hints at additional musical collaborators for the album release and highlights the live performance as one iteration of the project.
“It’ll be like the soundtrack for this performance, but you will be able to listen to it on its own as well,” says Xio. “[It] can have its own body, but everything is interconnected, so you could experience it one way, then experience it another way.”
As their work continues to evolve, Xio sees their DIY spirit and self-development as an advantage rather than a limitation.
“I think there’s something to not having a traditional, formalized educational background, because sometimes the sky’s the limit, and ideas can truly come from anything,” they affirm. “I’ve heard people say from classical music backgrounds that sometimes you have to break what you’ve learned to create more freely. There can be pros and cons to it all.” 
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