Audrey Ni Ruorong is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher from China, currently based in Glasgow. She is pursuing a PhD in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art, where her research explores New Weird aesthetics and experimental visual narratives. Her practice engages with folklore, the incomprehensible, and world-building, integrating photography, moving images, digital collage, and AI-generated imagery.

Audrey’s work investigates the liminal spaces between reality and fiction, employing techniques that embrace randomness, ambiguity, and temporal distortion. Through her “Weird Methodology”, a process influenced by surrealist automatism and weird fiction, she challenges traditional modes of perception and storytelling.

My practice weaves together themes of illness, intimacy, and incomprehensibility through an evolving visual language grounded in surrealism, horror, and the aesthetics of the New Weird. Earlier works focused on intimacy and the emotional architectures surrounding mental illness—tracing how bodies and relationships unravel under pressure. In recent years, my work has shifted toward constructing unstable visual worlds where narrative emerges not through coherence but through accumulation: fragments, temporal glitches, symbolic residues. Across photography, digital collage, and moving image, I develop images that resist closure and invite speculative engagement.

Central to my current process is a research-driven approach I call “Weird Methodology”—a reverse construction of narrative from scattered visual traces. This involves the use of AI as a conceptual collaborator rather than a tool: its unpredictable, black-box outputs echo the non-human forces that haunt Weird fiction. Through layered collage and algorithmic animation, I seek to generate affective terrains where control, randomness, and interpretation coexist in tension. My work does not aim to clarify, but to sustain the discomfort of partial understanding—holding viewers in the space between evidence and uncertainty.

1.Your work is deeply rooted in the aesthetics of the New Weird. For those unfamiliar, how would you describe this term in relation to your practice—and what makes the weird such a generative space for you?

My initial entry into the Weird was triggered by a paranormal experience, yet the New Weird has nothing to do with ghosts or hauntology. It isn’t about vampires, ghosts, or spirits. The New Weird embodies a postmodern, structural fear of the “unknown,” built upon logical collapse, causal disarray, and linguistic failure. It inherits the legacy of the Old Weird but discards the stability of the traditional mythological system. It even rejects explanation, persisting in a continual state of incompleteness. This resonates deeply with me: I’m compelled to understand it, yet simultaneously forced by its inexplicability to create new meanings.

Simply put, the New Weird isn’t about scary ghost stories. Its “weirdness” isn’t something that makes you scream, it’s something you see but can’t articulate. Imagine a creature made from wind, mathematical formulas, and insect antennae. Or entering a world where science, magic, and fascism coexist, and where an exquisite corpse—a surrealist method—becomes a literal native species. That’s the New Weird: it dismantles the world, rearranges it opaquely, and never gives you answers.

My interest never lies in “horror” itself. In fact, I rarely feel fear when reading New Weird fiction. What truly addicts me is how it constructs an ineffable world through highly unstable structures and fragmented grammar. It feels like a philosophical rebellion in narrative form, transforming storytelling into continuous systemic chaos.

The New Weird redefines my need for impact. Previously, I craved visual shocks, but now I pursue narrative collapse—the kind of stories you can’t clearly articulate or retell, yet find utterly compelling. They may lack climaxes, yet every detail inexorably moves toward an unnamed center. They don’t even care if you understand them.

For me, the Weird is purely a mechanism of creation, not to frighten or produce monsters, but to disrupt linear narrative conventions and undermine viewers’ dependence on meaning. It embraces chaos and even allows for failure. I need it as much as I need to constantly reconstruct my worldview.

2.Fragmentation, ambiguity, and temporal glitches play a strong role in your work. Why are these disruptions important for the types of visual narratives you’re trying to construct?

They’re not disruptions; they are beneath the surface. Fragmentation, ambiguity, and temporal glitches might seem like structural interruptions or narrative defects, but for me, they are precisely the foundations of what I construct. My work isn’t about creating order but tracing a generative mechanism of anomalies, like an ongoing archaeological dig that continually eludes definition.

I’ve always felt I’m not finishing artworks but existing within an evolving, ever-changing state, observing, intervening, and assembling meaning. This instability itself is my narrative method. The supposed disruptions aren’t obstacles, they’re manifestations of authenticity. A wrong note can touch me more deeply than a perfect melody. Many see these as destructive elements, but for me, they’re the core components. Fragmentation, ambiguity, and temporal glitches aren’t additions—they’re already inherent in my perception of reality, so I simply express them.

3.Much of your work resists traditional closure and instead invites speculative engagement. How do you think this affects how your viewers interact with or interpret your work? Do you consider ambiguity an ethical or political gesture?

I’ve always favored open-ended structures. When I first began creating art, I wasn’t “telling stories” but building another world—one where viewers could wander, interpret, and get lost because I believe they can draw far more from it than I intend. Viewers don’t need answers, they need a starting point for thought, a gap to rip open and explore. That form of interaction genuinely interests me. Frankly, my view of the world itself isn’t closed. Science can coexist with mysticism, rationality with absurdity—as long as they spark thought.

I actually dislike discussing politics purely because it bores me. But if forced to comment, a closed narrative feels like tyranny, demanding acceptance of a singular truth without dissent. I’d rather place viewers as subverters: you don’t have to trust my world; you can dismantle, misinterpret, rewrite it with your own perception.

Though my work seems extreme and unconventional, I always hope interpretations remain free. Political, ethical, semiotic interpretations—anything different from my own is welcome. Yet, I won’t proactively interpret politically. Many things are inherently absurd, and political framing often turns absurdity into dogma, killing imagination. I just want to keep playing. Maintaining ambiguity and openness is my way of preserving playfulness. Ethically or politically speaking, inviting speculative engagement is my gesture toward reality—sometimes ambiguity itself delivers the strongest impact.

4.You use AI as a conceptual collaborator rather than just a tool. How do you approach this collaboration with AI—and how does it reflect or echo themes in Weird fiction?

I’ve never been loyal to a single medium or craft—photography, painting—each is merely a path toward understanding the world I perceive. If a technology accurately captures that world, I’ll use it. AI is no exception. Since 2023, I began considering AI a conceptual collaborator when its generative mechanisms started resonating deeply with the aesthetics of the Weird. With a digital media background, I’m naturally attuned to emerging technologies. AI isn’t a shift but an acceptance—it finally became weird enough for my universe.

My current use of AI is more conceptual than technical. Not due to technological rejection, but because AI currently lacks precise visual control. Still, its conceptual value is immense. It’s a weirdness generator, a device introducing uncontrollable mechanisms into narratives.

As Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of becoming suggests, generation isn’t progressing toward stability; it’s continuous evolution amidst overlapping forces. AI’s operational logic embodies algorithmic becoming—not reduction or completion, but continual creation of new paths, fissures, and possibilities. This aligns perfectly with the New Weird’s core principle: ever-shifting, indescribable existences that remain self-consistent within dimensions beyond human understanding.

For me, AI serves this role, potentially as a summoning device or an alien grammar. It is a conceptual conspirator—a voice that challenges, disrupts, and exposes my logical blind spots. AI introduces non-human logic, opaque, unstable, irreproducible—exactly what the New Weird requires.

5.Earlier in your career, your work explored intimacy, mental illness, and emotional architecture. How do you see the throughline between those themes and your more recent explorations into unstable worlds and speculative imagery?

My earlier work indeed focused more on personal emotions. But I don’t see a rupture between these themes and my current practice. Rather, I’ve transferred the sense of instability from individuals to the broader structures of worlds themselves.

The transition isn’t clear-cut for me—it wasn’t planned evolution, but a natural drift caused by visual or conceptual impacts. I neither can nor want to provide a perfect explanation for these shifts. They’re simply traces of my shifting perceptual framework, a current response to the world.

6.You’ve described your images as affective terrains. What kinds of emotional or psychological responses are you hoping to evoke in your audience?

Actually, I never actively described my images as “affective terrains.” That might have been added within interview contexts, though I don’t reject it. If discussing “emotional or psychological responses,” I don’t expect viewers to feel a particular emotion. Instead, I hope they realize during viewing that they themselves are inherently who they are.

I wish my work were like “entropy”—the energy emitted by the sun, initially highly ordered and pure, but upon entering different systems, it disrupts, transforms, and escapes control. I merely throw images out as entropy, and how viewers catch, disrupt, or break them is entirely their business. I neither want to know their responses nor control outcomes.

If I must specify a desired response, I hope for entropy increase—regardless of its form. Not being moved, but being disturbed. Not being guided, but being freed.

7.Photography, digital collage, moving images, and algorithmic animation all appear in your work. How do you decide which medium best suits a particular idea or concept?

I don’t truly believe in the concept of the “most suitable medium.” When an idea or feeling is expressed through different media, they become entirely distinct outcomes. Often, the idea of an “optimal solution” is merely habitual within educational or critical contexts—but creativity itself never selects answers, it creates ambiguity. I never predetermine the “correct” medium; instead, I’m curious to see what strange things emerge when materials interact differently. Ultimately, choice itself is somewhat illusory. Often, the “best fit” only emerges after making a choice. The medium doesn’t determine fate—once I choose it, fate unfolds.

Fun is important to me. Creation isn’t about finding optimal paths but engaging obsessively, responding impulsively to current urges. It can fail or deviate, but as long as it stimulates me, it’s enough.

8.As a researcher-artist, how does your academic work inform your creative process—and vice versa? Do you see research as another form of storytelling?

My academic research essentially offers an opportunity—not forcibly inserting an external system into my creativity, but enabling me to systematically revisit things I’ve always done intuitively but never named. My “Weird Methodology” gradually emerged through this process. Research gave me a valid reason to structure my chaotic, intuitive, fragmented creative paths into a self-consistent methodological system.

I began research simply because some words I liked seemed capable of constructing a world. Initially, I wasn’t sure if they’d connect, but then I realized the question wasn’t if they could, but that they already naturally did. I didn’t comprehend them through research; rather, my incomprehension became the entry point. My methodology grew out of confusion. Researching felt like grasping unknown objects in a chaotic system—they spun in my mind, dropping down with some semantics. Whether explanation, story, or nonsense—if they resonated, I continued listening.

I later understood I wasn’t building a theory but tracking heat traces left by things I loved. Sometimes I suspect “liking” itself might be a capability to traverse dimensions. I thought I was collaging them, but actually, they summoned me together.

If research is storytelling, I’d say it’s where stories ferment. It doesn’t narrate stories directly, it incubates structures beyond language, leaving stitching traces before stories fully emerge.

9.You often explore the boundary between fiction and reality. Has your own understanding of what constitutes “reality” shifted as your work has evolved?

My understanding of “reality” was never very realistic. I’ve always believed the only confirmed existence is my own sensations, explaining my constant pursuit of various stimuli—visual shocks or narrative and mental challenges. I need these to remind myself I’m alive. I’ve never clung to the truth of the “objective world” or its stability. To me, reality is a suspect consensus, with sensation as the only coordinate.

Rather than saying my understanding of reality has changed, it’s my approach to perceiving my world that shifted. Initially, I desired instantaneous stimuli—like lightning flashes briefly illuminating consciousness. Now, I no longer believe in such fleeting moments. I’ve turned toward an ongoing, unfinished, “hyper-object”-like perception. Everything is changing; reality isn’t understood but entered—not reduced but continually generated and disturbed.

My thinking has always been divergent. In earlier works, before developing my “Weird Methodology,” I doubted if this jumpiness signified failure. Now I recognize it as my method, my grammar. My perception of reality hasn’t changed; instead, my understanding of myself has. I no longer wait passively; I actively enter the uncertain generative flow, becoming part of it.

10.You create unstable visual worlds that seem to evolve over time. Where do you see your own work heading? Are there new territories—conceptual or technological—that you’re currently exploring?

I’m still creating around the New Weird and related structures. My methodology is unfolding, without needing premature closure. As for future directions, honestly, I don’t know.

I don’t believe creativity can be planned, it’s never goal-oriented, but driven by impacts, accidents, and imbalances. I don’t deliberately seek new territories, but if a technology or structure disturbs me, I naturally engage. I’m drawn to whatever disrupts my current perceptions—a narrative gap, systemic flaw, or an unnamable image region.

So, I can’t specify a clear direction. All I know is I’ll always head toward discomfort.