A Conversation with Iris Su

In the fourth episode of the PLEJ Podcast explore how Slade Art School Graduate, Iris, has come to terms with the concept of trash. How can we draw attention to the topics and objects that we often ignore? Through a multimodal approach, Iris’s representation of trash serves as a visual interpretation of language and its hierarchies. In reclaiming the term ‘trash’, Iris prompts us to question our preconceptions and inquire lessons from the everyday objects which end up beneath our feet. We discuss how art can locate the in-between, translating life visually through our habits, movements, and that which we leave behind.  

About Iris: 

Please visit: Iris Su, Jiayi 

About Hayley: 

Hayley was Student Associate for PLEJ and is a current MA student of Languages and Cultures Across Borders at the University of London. She graduated from UCL in September 2025 with a degree in European Social and Political Studies, specialising in Hungarian and History. She is due to begin an MPhil/PhD at SSEES in September, focusing on multilingualism, minoritisation and marginalisation in South-East Slovakia.  

What is The PLEJ Podcast?

The Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (PLEJ) aims to place socio-cultural linguistic research at the centre among the interdisciplinary areas of enquiry with social impact at SSEES, UCL, and beyond. Among the questions that stand at the heart of PLEJ’s explorations are: How are forms of domination and resistance conveyed through discourse and multi-modal forms of interaction? How can we address the impact of uneven local and global power dynamics? In the PLEJ Podcast series, Student Associate Hayley Anderson speaks to UCL’s students and early career researchers who strive to address these questions across disciplines, geographical and educational spaces, and time.

Hayley: Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice, or PLEJ for short. My name is Hayley Anderson and I am the Student Associate here at PLEJ. I'll give some more background on the Centre shortly, but first I would love to give the warmest welcome to our guest, Iris Su. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Iris: Thank you for having me.

Hayley: So, before we jump into a conversation about how you've engaged with issues surrounding language in your research or everyday experiences, I'll provide a brief introduction to PLEJ and the centres aims and purposes. PLEJ was established in 2024 by three principal investigators at SSEES, Dr. Riitta Valijarvi, Dr. Jelena Calic, and Dr. Eszter Tarsoly. The platform engages with socio-linguistic research and themes relating to languages in practise including minoritisation, linguistic diversity and endangerment and marginalisation in social and linguistic forms. If you've ever wondered why some languages and forms of expertise gained precedence over others, and how we can best highlight the languages and their speakers who are often overshadowed, PLEJ is interested in exploring these questions. So, moving into our

conversation, Iris, would you be able to introduce yourself and your research interests and give us a bit of an insight into what led you to this topic?

Iris: I'm a video artist and I just graduated from Slade School of Fine Art. I'm kind of like a mixed media artist and exploring about the materiality and the metaphorical quality of the trash and consider it as a lens to explore the hierarchy in human societies. So, trash is kind of like a starting point in my practice, and I investigate a lot about the cultural, historical, and political terms based on these words. And I kind of used that sort of lens to investigate about the images. I'm really interested in a lot of medium transformation to see how images got transferred through this. And I feel like this, the whole thing is very like metaphorical, and a way of resistance, revaluation, redefinition.

So yeah, that's quite messy.

Hayley: No, but that's super interesting. And also, congratulations on graduating. That's awesome.

Iris: Thank you.

Hayley: So among other topics, we here at PLEJ engage with the way that language has been used as a tool of oppression to perpetuate systems of domination, but also how language has the potential to enhance the social and democratic participation of oppressed and marginalized groups. Why do these themes matter to you and where have they appeared in your work?

Iris: I feel like it's kind of like a long time, like it's kind of a long time story. And I'm sure that every artist, you know, got a lot of inspiration from their personal experience. So for me, I think like the reason why I'm really interested in trash is because like, well somehow, I feel like myself is trash, especially my identity. And I feel like it's kind of like a repressed feeling in my whole life. And I feel like this is kind of like how I consider myself and how I consider this world through the lens of trash. So I can talk about more experience about my identity in this case. It's like, when I was young, I was not marginalized, but I studied in mainland China. It's kind of a small town. And I remember my classmates, they were speaking Cantonese and mixing with Mandarin as well. And I was born in there, but they kind of like, oh, you're not literally born in there. You, because of your accent, your Cantonese doesn't sound about right. And also like your skin colour looks too pale, so you're definitely not from this town or something. I just feel so, I don't know, that sort of feeling just like, oh, I was doing something wrong and I feel like I need to do something to hide myself to, you know, have some sort of like some stuff to protect myself. So started to mock the accident, started to change the way I look. And I think this is a very like childhood experience. And after 18, I moved to Hong Kong for my undergrad studies and it was even horrible actually. And I was like, because it was social movement at the time and I wasn't aware of anything because like my previous life was, you know, living mainly in China or something, but it didn't matter. But I just feel like I got so many, you know, there's sort of feeling that people don't like me and people will judge you there because of the way how you look, the way how you speak. And I, for doing that, I even hide my identity for longer, like two years, because I don't want them to recognize me as a mainlander. I think it's a really bad experience. And since I realized that after moving to London, and I realized that actually, no matter which, what identity you are in a, you know, more like broader international context, actually people, in the other side of people may think you are the same as other people because you guys are having the [same] skin colour or something. So it makes me feel more vulnerable in that way. And I kind of started to realize that, oh, that's sort of relevance, relativity. Like, you know, like the way how we perceive the things, the way how we, you know, look at the world is always just having both sides. And people prefer to stand in one side to judge another side. And also, like, I feel I'm not sure about that, but this is what I feel like, you know, the whole humanity, like the how the human society constructs, it's like it's always having hierarchy and we always need to look down on something. So for example, like, oh, no offense, but when I say something, oh, you're trash. And yeah, so that's sort of the linguistic you know, the kind of thing just made me think about like, oh, it just, it's not right. It's just like, it's always about bias and prejudice and it's just all about, you know, choosing sides of something. So I think this, that kind of experience that, you know, kind of inspires me to develop my research and art practice. I think it's very important also.

Hayley: For sure. And that's such a tough experience in the fact that there's different forms of oppression that you felt depending on which place you were in. And somehow, depending on who's perceiving you, because they perceive you in different ways, there are different things that are pointed out about you that add to that marginalisation. It's so tough. And how has art allowed you to come to terms with this experience?

Has it been a way for you to be able to reconcile with this experience of being on the margins? And is it a way to explore exactly the intricacies of these hierarchies and biases?

Iris: So, as you know, my research is mainly about trash, and at the beginning of all my practice, I kind of consider trash as, objects like, Oh, I took a lot of pictures and videos about those sort of trash objects on the river and canal, etcetera. And I just feel like I realized that, I always consider the trash as, some object or someone else. It's just kind of like I kind of use the sort of perspective that I look down. Also, this is quite interesting. And I realized that, so I kind of trace back to what I experienced in my life. Like, not like for the content we talk about, it's more about, you know, the trashy stuff, that I ignore in my practice. And I realized that when I did the scribble, the automatic drawing, and it was a really big part, abandoned in my practice, but actually it's very important because it's kind of like a trial, scribble some stuff on somewhere, on the floor, on paper or something, but people,

don't care about that because I think, oh, it's just trash.

It doesn't have any meaning on it or something. But actually, it kind of constructs what we think in our very inner mind. So I kind of highlight that part in my practice. And yeah, so this is kind of like how I start from the approaches, you know, how to consider that sort of hierarchies. And also like the main things I do in the practice, like

I kind of don't use a lot of intervention for those materials. And I allow those materials, those images to grow by themselves. And I found out those are the images, which always starts from my, you know, trashy drawing. And they kind of grow by themselves via every medium transformation. For example, like I transform my drawing into some sculptural languages and then transform into some, dark room film prints and transform to sound. It's kind of like very like 3D dimensional in some way instead of like everything happening in a surface. And then

Every time it transforms, I feel like the images are changing as well.

And it's very organic and then the feeling that gives to the viewer is also different as well. Like I feel like, oh, that kind of methodology, that kind of process maybe is the key to break out the hierarchies because like every time we look at the images and we may think, Oh, what is that? What's happening here? And when we have this sort of thoughts, when we have that kind of doubt, it means that we started to abandon our old prejudice and old bias to have a new look of those things happening.

So I feel like this is kind of very like an abstract interpretation from what I think in my philosophy, et cetera, that kind of thing. But I feel like maybe in the material art languages, this is a way to kind of break out the hierarchies, to have some stance to talk through it, talk about themselves. It's kind of like, They may consider it as trash by ourselves, but throughout the transformation. transformation, we may not, we don't consider them as trash because they're growing, you know, something is happening and they try to refuel their value heritage from themselves. So I feel like that process kind of supports what I think about for the whole topic.

Hayley: It's also interesting because I feel like very often we associate artists with a specific art form that like this artist produces art from this particular medium. What's the value for you in being able to kind of break those boundaries and work multi-medium or multimodally? And are you, do you feel as though you're reclaiming the trash term in your artwork?

Iris: I think so. And I will not say like, yeah, I think reclaiming definitely. And I kind of, in my critical study, what I think about the whole practice is kind of like, trashification, the process is trashifying, but also when it's trashifying by using this sort of medium transformation, it kind of, it's kind of like, it's kind of self-contradicted. And when it's trashifying, actually it's detrashifying. And I think it kind of relates to Eastern philosophy, like Ming, Middle Way, that kind of thing. At the beginning, we talk about, you know, choosing sides. And then when I talk about, why do we always need to choose a side? And also like when we think about sides, it's always about black, white, male, female, good, bad. those are just like just only two sides. And it makes me think about something in between. And those are the in between probably is the, you know, is some sort of things we always ignore. And also it kind of relates to, the mass media we have right now, like some like Twitter and other social media platforms. They're more and more polarized and they're more extreme. It's kind of like, you know, people are choosing sites to make them probably feel better in some way.

And, but some at the same time, they kind of ignore the stuff in between. So I feel like that's something in between. It's like a thing in my practice also. And a lot of Eastern philosophy like Buddhism and Taoism also, like they mentioned that sort of ideas, how they try to make it, you know, in a more peaceful way to resolve some problems. So, yeah.

Hayley: You're right. In the modern day, we encounter so many binaries.

and so much polarisation. And I think that by exploring the grey area, you explore the nuance. And I think more generally, there's such an important place, but maybe an underrepresented place for art in linguistics. And it's interesting to look at our own perspectives and perceptions towards art in this exploration of epistemic justice or injustice. How does your work highlight the message or the argument that you're trying to foreground?

Iris: So, everything's about trash, and I feel like the way how we perceive trash, how we deal with trash, is similar to how we interact with other human beings. The accumulation of trash is making or is kind of like a representative of human civilization in some way, and I quite got a lot of inspiration from it. Oh yeah, I think Junkspace by Rem Koolhaas, this kind of architect who, you know, who kind of uses a lot of junk, trash-based method to talk about that. But yeah, this is kind of like a bit off topic. And yeah, so as I investigate more about trash in each visual way and I found out, you know, the way how they gather together is very chaotic, very messy and very disordered. And I feel like this is kind of like a power they're representing. And I think this power probably can be something that we can change the world. And you know something's happening. And also I think it quite reflects to the human history also, like, a lot of times, those collapses, those, the [masses] are gathering together and they're trying to do something new to, go against the old system, et cetera. This is what I think of when I, deal with the chaotic assemblage’s aesthetic. So talking back to linguistic and social justice also, so, I mean, I'm not sure about a broader context. I feel like I don't want to, offend any groups of people, but for me, I think like whether, whether living system like which is like based in one language, I need to use a way to, kind of highlight that, this is not right, but at the same time, I cannot say that, oh, this is not right by using their language. And I think for me, the scribbling, the drawing is my way to resist this. It's the way to, you know, fight for justice, fight for, you know, the equalness, et cetera, that kind of things.

Hayley: Incredible. And I'd love to hear more about your most recent installation and your process of setting that up, of establishing it.

of finding objects. Because I think as well, there's a role of cultural heritage and art in preserving epistemologies, in preserving, you know, all the chaos that comes along with linguistic knowledge and experience.

So yeah, just if you could talk through the process of establishing your most recent installation.

Iris: Yeah, I think the most, the most recent installation I did was in my degree show, which is just finished. So, I made kind of like atmospheric space and including loads or loads of mediums. Those are the materials what has happened in two years. And then I think the main work is a video installation and it's kind of three channel video and the images are flowing like a river from one TV screen to another screen. And those TVs are placed on the floor with the wooden crate beneath it. And then the images are some films I did when I was in Hong Kong, the place called Junk Bay, literally like drum base, like a lot of trash on the shore, and that was kind of like a place that I did a lot of research about. So I went back there and then I used the trash with the sea plants, intertwining the sea plants there as the material to put on the film to do some exposure. It's kind of like a camera-less technique, techniques called phytogram. And then, those materials, those trashy materials, they created the patterns by themselves, and it got exposed from the film. And I developed them and then I scanned them and then I enlarged them and then I kind of make it as some sort of moving images.

I actually still, but I kind of like just make moving images, with the black background behind that. And then it just kind of flows like a river from one screen to another screen. And also, for the sound part, I use some sort of technology to turn the image, the film, I'm just, the patterns to the sound. So that way is called spectrogram- it sounds a bit nerdy, but this is kind of like how that sort of space constructed of like, you know, those materials are kind of making a voice for themselves by using their own languages. And what I'm doing is like, oh, I just kind of just give it an approach. And I feel like my role is kind of like, I cannot say decomposer, but I'm not sure, maybe. Yeah, you’re just kind of like, a cooperator with them. It's like allowing them to make their own voice. So this is kind of like my recent installation I made.

Hayley: Is this something that has been a long journey where you feel like you've developed this idea for a long time? Or was there a specific turning point that made you realize, this is the way I want to represent my thoughts, my work, and this is the way that I'm going to dismantle this hierarchy? Was it like a long process or did it happened quite quickly?

Iris: I think no, definitely it's a long process. And I think it was happening like, maybe like two years ago. And I was just walking around, I was just feel, I felt quite miserable at the time. It's just like a lot of things happening in my life and you know I’m still digesting, I was quite young as well. And I was just walking around my hometown and there was just an unknown river and I just stopped by and because I just felt, oh, It's so peaceful, even though it has so many trash flowing, floating on the surface of the river, and it just floated very slowly. But there's sort of ways of, you know, gathering the sort of ways of assemblages by the trash themselves. It's just so satisfying in some way, and it was quite intuitive. I just took a documentation immediately, and I was having a, I was holding my camera. And yeah, I think that was kind of the main starting point. I mainly focus on researching about trash and the relation between trash and human beings. And yeah, and also like a lot of thoughts like hierarchy, value system is more about like the way that I use different approaches to, you know, to dig out this object. Also, you know, this sort of research kind of reflects on myself as well. And I kind of miss with a lot of my own experience and also like I just started to investigate more and more and I just feel like, yeah, it's a really organic object, trash. And it's a very big topic, of course, but it has some sort of common point, common sense, you know, to a lot of topics. And then now I just feel like trash is kind of like my lifetime topic.

Why not? It just, yeah, it's just so beautiful. It's just so amazing.

I mean, it sounds ridiculous because a lot of people think, oh, trash is very ugly, it's very stinky, but as I research more, it's just really beautiful. It's very powerful, it's very, yeah, chaotic, but peaceful.

It is like, you know, that's the relativity. Yeah, it is very interesting.

Hayley: I feel like I'm going to look at trash differently now with the perspective that you've imbued in me, because you're right, it's this thing that we sort of take for granted. We either ignore it or we seem to look down on it rather than kind of addressing where it's come from, how it's transformed. I mean, that's super interesting to me. And moving on to the next question, I was wondering, what do you want the impact of your work to be and what do you hope people feel when they look at your artwork?

Iris: Yeah, that's a good question. So actually, I don't expect people to feel or to think as the way I think, because I feel like for me, I think if a work, if something is, you know, is valuable, it kind of means that, you know, people can have different kind of interpretation. So I didn't put any, you know, description or information apart from title or medium, I didn't put like, the explanation of what I'm doing, what I was doing in my degree show, because I feel like, you know, using human language may kind of impact what people think in, you know, unconsciously in some way.

This is what I think. And I didn't put any like human words, human sentences or languages there in that space. I just want Trash as the main character. They are speaking for themselves. They are voicing themselves.

So it's quite interesting, like, you know, a lot of people tell me that, oh, I really like your work. What is it about? And I just usually ask them, oh, what do you think of them first? And it's so interesting that everyone has different interpretation. And after that, when I talk about actually what I start with, investigating about trash and then say, now it makes sense. And just like, yeah. So I mean, I just feel like, no, I don't want to do a lot of intervention for that material. So I don't know, it sounds a bit like a limited, but yeah, I think they're speaking for themselves. And I think this is really important. Maybe I consider trash as, I don't know, human. I don't know, maybe.

Hayley: I love that, that you let it have a voice of its own, that you're not limiting it by putting your own voice onto it, but also that you're able to still, I mean, it's your conception and it's your work, and so it still has that personal identity to it as well.

Iris: Yes.

Hayley: And as we begin to move to the end of this podcast, I would love to know what's next for you in regards to future research, future work, and your continued engagement with Trash.

Iris: Yeah, I think like, yeah, this is what I thinking about all the time recently is like, because like the, you know, as we talk about trash is kind of like the way every time we see trash, it's always gathered. It's like that sort of, you know, gathering power makes me realize, oh, if I want to do this deeper, in the deeper context, I should engage with other people also. So, I think like social engagement is my next big step in my practice. So, and also I think, and also I'm involved with a lot of in the education part also. So we have a workshop about, you know, about the similar context in Raven Row Gallery in August. And also I got the funding to engage with a non-profit organization in Indonesia, which is called Sungai Watch, which is like, they turn the trash, they use to collect the waste from the river to turn them into some value, to turn them into some, you know, design furniture and to sell [to] people. And I really like the idea, like the way how they turn trash into something valuable. and also I'll be a volunteer there. I just feel like, and also like, yeah, apart from, and also I will be more engaging in education industry, like, you know, you know, it's kind of like something growing and I would like those sort of power growing also, you know, without judgment, without that sort of, you know, bias and prejudice. I want something happen, I want something happening without, you know, intervening that much. And I feel like something needs to be rooted at the beginning. So yeah, I think this is my future plan, something to enrich my practice, to make it more, it's kind of like a tree, you're growing up. Yeah.

Hayley: That's fantastic. And I love the idea of kind of allowing things to develop naturally and organically. Do you think that, do you have any predictions about how the project will develop depending on who you're collaborating with or, I don't know, what direction it takes?

Iris: It's a big, big question, but I feel like my practice is quite interdisciplinary, so I can feel that I will be more and more academic in some way. But at the same time, actually, I want my roles. I want my role can be more organic also. I don't want to be like, oh, you're just a teacher, you're just an artist. I want to be like, oh, I can be the researcher, I can be the artist. I don't want to be defined like, or I don't want to be entitled by, oh, you're just that role. So which is kind of similar as trash as well. So it's just like, I want to do anything, you know, I want to do things I think is worth it and then just go for it. And I feel like the direction is more like, I don't know. I, yeah, definitely a, you know, like research part and also like, and I'll be the artist, you know, more like a practitioner in visual way and in educational way also. So yeah, I cannot 100% say that, oh, I will be that model, I will be that role in the future. But what I hope for is like, I hope that, you know, we can do something for the existing system, and I hope that we can just have less and less bias and prejudice on people no matter which aspects. I feel like this kind of way of thinking is quite important in the future and this is what I hope for to do so yeah.

Hayley: Yeah, but I completely agree that You are able to embody so much freedom by not boxing yourself into a certain role or industry. And I think that for that reason, I, for one, am so excited to hear about what you go on to do and to hear about the ways in which this project develops. And on that note, thank you so, so much, Iris, for joining us today and for giving us an insight into this research. It was so interesting.

Iris: Thank you so much, Hayley.

Hayley: And if you're listening and interested in learning more about the platform for linguistic and epistemic justice, you can find us on the SSEES website with the links provided in the description. And stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon. Thank you so much for listening.