Lo Lai Lai Natalie: Art, Farming, and Fermenting Futures in Hong Kong

This episode of regenerative artivism travels to Hong Kong, one of the most densely built cities on earth, to spend time with the practice of artist and ecological practitioner Lo Lai Lai Natalie （劳丽丽）. Working between small farms on the urban fringe, fishpond landscapes in the New Territories, and multi-channel video installations, Lo lives what she calls a half farming, half X life that fuses cultivation, art making, research, and everyday survival.Through Sangwoodgoon, a farming collective born out of resistance to high-speed rail demolition, and works such as Glacier, Deep Flight, Voices from Elsewhere, Voices from Nowhere, The Days Before The Silent Spring, and the exhibition Give no words but mum, we explore how hands-in-soil experience reshapes what art can do. The episode follows Lo’s experiments with multispecies listening in fishpond ecologies, her use of fermentation as a way of thinking about collective life under crisis, and her attention to plants and domestic spaces as sites of more-than-human dependency. Along the way, we consider what regenerative artivism might mean in a city where land speculation, climate volatility, and political unrest are all part of the everyday weather.KeywordsLo Lai Lai Natalie; Hong Kong; Choi Yuen Village; New Territories; Sangwoodgoon; half farming half X; regenerative artivism; socially engaged art; ecological art; environmental humanities; community farming; fishpond landscapes; Tai Sang Wai; multispecies listening; essay film; Glacier; Deep Flight; Voices from Elsewhere; Voices from Nowhere; The Days Before The Silent Spring; Give no words but mum; Slow-so TV; fermentation; climate crisis; urban fringe ecologiesKey referencesEcoArtAsia. “Lo Lai-lai Natalie (b.1983).” EcoArtAsia. https://ecoartasia.net/LLL/LLL_eng.htmlHong Kong Art Gallery Association. “Lo Lai Lai Natalie Interviewed by Hayley Wu.” PDF. https://www.hk-aga.org/uploads/file/202410/Natalie%20Lo%20Lai%20Lai%20Interviewed%20by%20Hayley%20Wu%20Courtesy%20the%20Hong%20Kong%20Art%20Gallery%20Association.pdf  Lee, Christie. “Lo LaiLai Natalie 劳丽丽.” Artomity. https://artomity.art/2020/08/31/lo-lai-lai-natalie-%E5%8B%9E%E9%BA%97%E9%BA%97/ Lo, Lai Lai Natalie. Artist website. https://www.lolailai.com/about Okano, Tami. “Half-Farming, Half-X.” Translated by Yuri Morikawa. Think Daily Report, Think the Earth Project. https://www.thinktheearth.net/thinkdaily/report/2008/08/rpt-40.html. 2008.Tomorrow Maybe / Eaton HK. “Give no words but mum.” Exhibition text. https://tomorrowmaybehk.com/lolailainatalie. 2020. WMA. “Lo Lai Lai Natalie: The Days Before The Silent Spring.” Exhibition description. https://wma.hk/en/projects/the-days-before-the-silent-spring/. 2020. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang