Selected Happenings


Selected Projects


Shifting Power in the Informal Economy




2025


With the support of:
Interledger Foundation
MigLAB Ug
Ban Ying e.V.
Migrant*innen für Menschenwürdige Arbeit*
Asociación Rumiñahui
Local anonymous activists in Madrid



Shifting Power in the Informal Economy is a research and advocacy initiative that critically examines the nature, structure, and community understandings of informal economies within Europe, particularly through ethnographic insights and stakeholder mappings from Berlin and Madrid. Challenging conventional assumptions about their scale, visibility, and composition, the project reveals how migrant labor, platform precarity, and translocal networks redefine economic informality beyond traditional metrics. It develops from financial inclusion toward structural financial justice, exploring open payment protocols, data sovereignty tools, and workers-led mechanisms to empower precarious gig and informal workers against platform extraction.


[Publications in Progress]



Often Participatory, Collaborative, and Research-based...


Emotional Futures


2023

Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation.



Emotional Futures is produced by IRL, a gaming collective under the distributed artistic direction of Marcel Darienzo, Carina Erdmann, Steph Holl-Trieu, Andrew Pasquier, Xiaoji Song, Moritz Tontsch and Ingeborg Wie Henriksen. Emotional Futures is a web-based game that invites players to invest in their emotional future through interactions with friends. After each exchange, players evaluate their emotional output, turning them into liquid currencies: Blood, Sweat and Tears. These feed each player's unique Emoxy — an alchemical virtual creature that evolves with every level. The Emoxy accompanies players on their journey, inviting them to continue investing in their own growth while at the same time questioning the game’s logic. This situates the game in critical proximity to self-improvement apps (like mindfulness or wellbeing applications) that measure and gamify personal development. The more players interact with Emotional Futures, the more they are encouraged to reflect on the ways in which technologies are used to manipulate and monetise their emotions.




The Parallel Society



2023
The Parallel Society is a cyberdrama and poetic intervention in the form of a video installation. 

The Parallel Society is based on participatory artistic research on the emotional synergies in relation to money, financial systems, and economic injustice experienced by rural residents and diasporic communities.







Alien without Extraordinary Ability


2020-2025


With the support of:
University of the Underground
Asian Performing Artist Lab
School of Dissident Friendship






Research output realized through research residency at New Politics and Afrofuturism Programme at University of the Underground, guided by Nelly Ben Hayoun and Magid Magid.

Alien without Extraordinary Ability is a research-based board game prototype related to migration and labor practices: on different visa systems, bordering practices related to labor, and how skills and abilities are being evaluated and calculated. The game narrative is set in a factory, and creates two competing incentive structures that motivates the players to choose on which games they wish to follow. The game particularly references the mechanisms lie behind the matrix of quantification through techno-governance tools in border regimes, and creates pathways for media and policy practitioners to reflect on the systemic injustice in such system.

Alien without Extraordinary Ability was later developed as multiple versions of performances, and also submitted to Hawthorn Archive.







Rhythm of Super-Diversity



2019


With the Support of:
Open Set Lab This project was part of my residency at Open Set, as a research output, I gave a presentation during the symposium On the Practice of Tuning-in at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam about the theoretical framework I developed within my research project Rhythm of Super-diversity.





Xiaoji Song (she/they, 1995) is berlin-based artist, activist, and researcher, working to build alternative infrastructure and imaginaries concerning migration, labor, and technology.


Say hi!

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@ciao_ciao_ciao_ciao_netSay hi to me!







selected radio/podcasts






Beyond Currency: Reimagining Money and Digital Futures, in conversation with FinTech strategist Sarah Habib and theatermaker Anuja Ghosalkar, Interledger Salon, 2025

Interview with Dr. Florian Wagner (I): History of Colonial Internationalsm, Worldwide FM (Archived), 2021

Border? Border! A Letter to 2050 (I), in conversation with Adnan Arif and Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa, Worldwide FM, 2021


love:




Comradeship
Sidewalks
My hometown Wuhan
Old internet
Cooperative structures
Autumn



selected writingsTranslocal Workers for Economic Justice, European Alternatives Journal Issue 12, December 2025

Dreaming Feminist Economy, Arbeit Umformen – Intersektionale Einblicke auf Arbeit und Arbeitsmarkt, BIWOC* Rising, 2024


hate:


Border violence
Farewell
Hot summer
Capitalism
Group bigger than 5 and smaller than 50


Cities I have lived in:

Most of people do not know most of them, but in total 10 cities or villages. 

My small town and rural experiences shaped my understanding of center and periphery.

Random jobs I have done:


To make a living & live, I have also worked with research institute, big tech, bubble tea shop, small AI startup, hotpot restaurant, think tank, English teaching&learning platform as waitress, bubble tea maker, tutor, assistant, communication specialist, intern...these experiences have informed my practices.      



other selected public work2025 Workshop: Building the Policy Engines for Alternative Migration Regimes, Salzburg Center for European Union Studies, Salzburg, Austria

2025 Workshop: EXPLORING OUR COMMON GROUNDS: for Pan-Asian Solidarity & Beyond, as part of Rice Complex Collective, BIWOC*Rising, Berlin, Germany

2024 Panel Talk: Financial Inclusion for Undocumented Communities: From Strategies to Practices, moderated by Xiaoji Song, speakers: Malou Lintmeijer, Savannah Koolen, and Eunice de Asis, Stichting Here to Support; Daphnee Prates Iglesias, UN-IGF; Sarah Habib, independent FinTech Strategist, Interledger Summit 2024

2023 Performance "Alien without Extraordinary Ability", as part of APAL AmnAsia residency presentation, Berliner Ringtheater, Berlin, GERMANY

2021 Participation of Group Show "New Politics and Afrofuturism", for the game “Alien without Extraordinary Ability”, University of the Underground, online

2020 Participation of Group Exhibition "Mapping the Rural Soundscape", participating artist, Goethe Institute, BULGARIA

2020 Participation of Group Exhibition "Spectrum Scene Y", participating artist,  Sofia Art Week 2020, Goethe Institute, BULGARIA

2020 Workshop: Digital and Media Literacy Workshop for Elderly Migrants: Understanding Modern Media, supported by Wir Sind Paten Erfurt, GERMANY

2016 Documentary Theater: HOME AGAIN, co-producer, researcher, writer, performer, Thiemeloods Nijmegen, NETHERLANDS





Last Updated 29.01.2026


© Xiaoji Song 2026