Regenerative Artivism

Meiqin Wang

Regenerative Artivism is a podcast about how Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers use creative, place-based practice to confront social and environmental injustice and shape more livable futures. Drawing on long-term field research in East Asia, with a strong focus on the Greater China region, art historian Meiqin Wang traces how socially engaged and ecological art grows from struggles over land and water, migration and memory, the everyday work of care, among others. Each episode is a guided case study of one practitioner or project, with close attention to process: how collaborations are built, what frictions they face, what kinds of care and maintenance are required, and what regeneration looks like when it is slow, contested, and material.  Season 1 is being released, with six main episodes that moves through watersheds, eco-pedagogy, farms, community building, soil practices, and disaster recovery. Keywords: socially engaged art; ecological art; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; community art; environmental justice

  1. 3d ago

    Debbie Tai: Playback Theatre and the Practice of Zero Distance Care

    In this episode, I introduce Dai Biyun 戴碧筠, also known as Debbie Tai, a Macau theatre-maker and the co-founder, resident choreographer, and artistic director of Zero Distance Cooperative (ZDC, 零距離合作社). Working in a casino city shaped by speed, shift labor, and constant tourist traffic, Tai uses playback theatre to build something rare and necessary: a durable practice of public listening, where everyday experience can be spoken, witnessed, and held with care rather than consumed as spectacle. The episode follows three key bodies of work. Caretakers (照顧者), developed with Comuna de Pedra (石頭公社), draws on years of story collection to stage the emotional and social realities of long-term care. Dialogues in Macau (植言物語) relocates playback theatre outdoors in Coloane, combining five-sense environmental experience, photography and writing, and live story performance to re-knit relationships among people, plants, animals, and place, especially in the wake of typhoon seasons. The Distance between the Ocean and Us, presented at the Macao City Fringe Festival, transforms cleaned marine debris into puppets for an improvised mini-stage performance, followed by participatory making and exhibition, closing the gap between coastal life and the ocean’s returning waste. Keywords Dai Biyun 戴碧筠, Zero Distance Cooperative (零距離合作社), Macau (澳门)，Coloane (路环), playback theatre, One-Person-One-Story theatre (一人一故事剧场), Caretakers (照顧者), Comuna de Pedra (石頭公社), applied theatre, participatory performance, community storytelling, listening as infrastructure, care labor, caregiving, long-term care, Dialogues in Macau (植言物語), typhoon memory, ecological grief, Pearl River Delta, marine debris, puppetry, marine waste transformation Key references  Zero Distance Cooperative. https://zdc.mo/home/ Zero Distance Cooperative. “植言物語 Dialogues in Macau.” https://zdc.mo/dialogue_in_macau/ Macao City Fringe Festival. “The Distance between the Ocean and Us – Puppetry Playback Theatre.” https://www.macaucityfringe.gov.mo/2021/en/event/8496 Macao Cultural Centre. “‘De-corps-struction’ Series 2023 – ‘Narratives’ Caretakers.” https://www.ccm.gov.mo/en/othershow/75322 International Playback Theatre Network. “What Is Playback Theatre.” https://playbacktheatrenetwork.org/what-is-playback-theatre/ Salas, Jo. Improvising Real Life: Personal Story in Playback Theatre. 20th Anniversary ed. New Paltz, NY: Tusitala Publishing, 2013.   Fox, Jonathan, and Jo Salas. Personal Stories in Public Spaces: Essays on Playback Theatre by Its Founders. New Paltz, NY: Tusitala Publishing, 2021. Thompson, James. Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.  Li, Edmund Sheng, Anning Zhang, and Yechang Yin. “A City Profile of Macau—The Rise and Fall of a Casino City.” Cities 141 (2023): 104431.   Zhou, Long, Yu Qin, Jialin Cheng, Huiyu Zhu, Muhan Li, Jiabin Zhang, Charlene LeBleu, Guoqiang Shen, Tian Chen, and Yu Liu. “Urban Ecosystem Services, Ecological Security Patterns and Ecological Resilience in Coastal Cities: The Impact of Land Reclamation in Macao SAR.” Journal of Environmental Management 373 (2025): 123750.   My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  2. Jun 30

    Liu Yang: The Porous Institution and the Museum as Neighborhood Commons

    This episode follows curator and public-program organizer Liu Yang (刘阳) into Huangbian Village (黄边村), an urban village in Guangzhou. Set beside Guangdong Times Museum (广东时代美术馆), a contemporary art museum embedded in a residential complex, Liu’s work unfolds across two scales at once: the architectural institution above, and the lane-level commons below. The episode focuses on two adjacent micro-spaces in Zhongheli Lane (中和里)—Times 101 (时代101) and Huangbian Intelligence Station (黄边情报小站)—where a tiny artist residency room and a neighbor reading room become everyday infrastructure for staying, learning, and meeting. From there, the episode traces how these micro-institutions hold cultural life in place through repeatable formats rather than one-off events: residencies that borrow familiar village forms like a storefront, experiments that probe artistic value through circulation and non-monetary exchange, and children’s programs that translate museum thinking into domestic and neighborhood space. A final turn considers Sunset Concerts (日落音乐会) and its engagement with seasonal time and local performance traditions, including Di Shui Nanyin (地水南音). Throughout, regenerative aesthetics appears not as a style but as a practice of maintenance. Keywords Liu Yang (刘阳), Guangdong Times Museum, Huangbian Village, urban village (城中村), handshake buildings (握手楼), Times 101( 时代101), Huangbian Intelligence Station (黄边情报小站), Zhongheli Lane (中和里), micro-institutions, public programs, community art, artist residency, Huangbian General Store (黄边万事屋), Reasonable Gallery (合理画廊), Artoo Classroom (arToo课堂), My Home Branch Museum (我家分馆), Museum On A Suitcase (拉杆箱上的美术馆), children’s museum education, Sunset Concerts, Di Shui Nanyin, commons, everyday infrastructure, regenerative aesthetics, maintenance Key references  Al, Stefan, Wang Bo, and Paolo Tombesi. Villages in the City: A Guide to South China’s Informal Settlements. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014. Asia Art Archive in America. “A Report on the Times Museum, Guangzhou, China.” Talk, January 23, 2012. https://www.aaa-a.org/programs/a-report-on-the-times-museum-guangzhou-china.  Chen, Chuan陈川. “第五届时代美术馆社区艺术节来了” [The Fifth Times Museum Community Art Festival Is Here]. Sohu, December 20, 2020. https://www.sohu.com/a/439630333_120091004.  Ding, Yannan. Urban Informal Settlements: Chengzhongcun and Chinese Urbanism. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Guangdong Times Museum [广东时代美术馆]. “About.” https://timesmuseum.org/en/about.    Guangdong Times Museum [广东时代美术馆]. “Luya LIU Yang.” https://timesmuseum.org/en/people/luya-yang-liu.  ArtAsiaPacific. “Private Art Museum in Guangzhou Closes after 19 Years.” August 22, 2022. https://artasiapacific.com/news/private-art-museum-in-guangzhou-closes-after-19-years.  Ho, Chui-fun Selina. Museum Processes in China:. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. Papastergiadis, Nikos. Museums of the Commons: L’Internationale and the Crisis of Europe. New York: Routledge, 2020. Times 101. “Times 101: Urban Village Artist-in-Residence Program” [时代101驻村计划]. https://foil-finch-755.notion.site/101-Times-101-Urban-village-Artist-in-residence-Program-958328f05d09427a82e1255053c29069. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  3. Jun 16

    Ge Huichao: Building Body On&On and Making Access

    In this episode, I stay with the Beijing-based curator and producer Ge Huichao 葛慧超, also known as Dew Ge, the founder of Body On&On (身身不息). The episode frames her work through a simple but consequential proposition: access is not an add-on to art, but a craft that shapes how public culture is made. Read through the lens of regenerative aesthetics, access becomes an aesthetic practice of livability—pacing, legibility, rest, and multiple modes of communication—so that different bodies can remain in the room together. Moving through Body On&On’s programs, the episode traces how inclusive arts are built as infrastructure rather than isolated events: the Luminous Festival and its workshops, the exhibition To See the Other at Drum Tower West Theater, and the development of the China/UK/Singapore d Monologues, presented as And Suddenly I Disappear, where aesthetics of access become part of performance form. It also follows Dew Ge’s field-building work through the UK–China Disability Arts Forum and the Access for Change platform, and highlights major productions such as Handling Hands. The episode closes by considering Body On&On’s recent programming at the intersection of climate, mental health, and cultural participation, including the Down to Earth theme and the staging of Latour and Aït-Touati’s Terrestrial Trilogy, asking what kinds of public life become possible when access is treated as a shared social practice. Keywords Ge Huichao 葛慧超, Dew Ge, Body On&On 身身不息, inclusive arts, disability arts, accessibility, aesthetics of access, regenerative aesthetics, Luminous Festival 星空艺术节, To See the Other 看见他者, Drum Tower West Theater 鼓楼西剧场, sign language poetry, sensory integration, d Monologues, And Suddenly I Disappear, Touch Contact Improvisation Festival, UK–China Disability Arts Forum, Access for Change 艺术无障碍, Handling Hands, Terrestrial Trilogy, Down to Earth, Women In Motion at West Bund, Body Matters Key references  British Council. “And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore ‘d’ Monologues.”  https://www.britishcouncil.cn/en/ccu/arts/theatre-kaite. British Council. “The 5th UK–China Disability Arts Forum Launched in Guangzhou.” December 2, 2023.  https://www.britishcouncil.cn/en/about/press/5th-uk-china-disability-arts-forum-launched-guangzhou. Cheng, Yuezhu. “Beijing Exhibition Celebrates Inclusive Arts and Cultural Exchange.” China Daily, May 20, 2024.  Cheng, Yuezhu. “Cross-cultural Collaboration Takes Center Stage.” China Daily, July 5, 2024.   Cheng, Yuezhu. “Luminous Festival Lights Up Beijing.” China Daily, August 28, 2024.  Hamraie, Aimi. Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Kering. “Kering Announces the 3rd Edition of Women In Motion at West Bund Initiative, in Partnership with the West Bund Museum, Celebrating Women’s Creativity in Choreography.” September 6, 2024.  Latour, Bruno. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Polity, 2018. Lu, Jiajun. “Art from the Heart.” Beijing Review, December 13, 2023.  https://www.bjreview.com/Lifestyle/202312/t20231213_800351716.html. UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. “The 5th Luminous Festival Series of Events” [UCCA × 第五届星空艺术节系列活动].  https://ucca.org.cn/program/the-fifth-luminous-festival/. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  4. Jun 2

    Chen Yun: Curating As Mutual Aid and The Infrastructure of Minor Histories

    In this episode, we follow Shanghai-based curator and organizer Chen Yun 陈韵 and ask what happens when curating stops being an exhibition format and becomes a way of living with neighbors under demolition pressure. The story begins in Dinghaiqiao 定海桥, a working-class neighborhood shaped by redevelopment, where Chen and collaborators turned a modest rented apartment into the Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society 定海桥互助社(DMAS): a small commons for talks, shared meals, study, community research, and everyday support. The episode frames DMAS as curatorial work built from maintenance and reciprocity—an infrastructure of attention that treats minor histories as worth holding onto when the city’s ground rules are shifting. The second movement widens to the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016–17) and Chen’s coordination of 51 Personae, a city-wide series of gatherings that reposition cultural authority away from the museum and toward encounters on chosen ground. We then follow the project’s afterlife into publishing, where books and process-based documentation become portable infrastructure for minor histories that would otherwise be erased by redevelopment and the speed of urban change. The episode also stays with a hard reality: DMAS’s physical venue could not last under rising rents and urban renewal pressures, sharpening the question of what it means for regenerative artivism to persist after a room closes.  Keywords Chen Yun 陈韵, Dinghaiqiao 定海桥, Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society 定海桥互助社, DMAS, mutual aid, commons, socially engaged art, curating as infrastructure, neighborhood knowledge, redevelopment, demolition pressure, migrant urban life, minor histories, 51 Personae, Shanghai Biennale, infra-curatorial, publishing as artistic practice, archives, regenerative artivism, regenerative aesthetics Key references  Biennial Foundation. “The 11th Shanghai Biennale full list of artists and exhibitions.” Biennial Foundation, September 13, 2016. https://www.biennialfoundation.org/2016/09/11th-shanghai-biennale-announces-full-list-artists-exhibitions/. Chen, Yun. “Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society: Negotiating the Common with/by/through the Urban Daily.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 19, no. 3 (2018): 480–93. Chen, Yun. “West Heavens: India-China Cultural Exchange Program.” The Newsletter 76 (Spring 2017). International Institute for Asian Studies. Accessed January 10, 2026. Gu, Peng 顾芃, and Zhu Libing 朱骊冰. “Dinghaiqiao shantytown: A group of young people’s mutual-aid jianghu” [定海桥棚户区：一群年轻人的‘互助’江湖]. The Paper [澎湃新闻], October 11, 2021. https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_14831931. Jackson, Shannon. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. New York: Routledge, 2011. Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Raqs Media Collective. “51 Personae.” Works: Raqs Media Collective (project page), 2017.  Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). London: Verso, 2020. Zhou, Yanhua. “When Public Art Becomes the ‘Mass Line’: A Case Study of Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society.” In Socially Engaged Public Art in East Asia: Space, Place, and Community in Action, edited by Meiqin Wang, 149–80. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2022. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  5. May 19

    Hsiao Li-Hung: From Chicken Farm to Creative Ecology on the Tamsui River

    Hsiao Li-Hung (蕭麗虹), also known as Margaret Hsiao, built one of Taiwan’s most influential platforms for socially engaged and ecological art by starting with what was available: a repurposed chicken coop on the river’s edge in Zhuwei, near the Tamsui River system. This episode traces how Bamboo Curtain Studio (竹圍工作室) grew from a making-centered ceramics site into a porous cultural commons—one that treats residency, reuse, and neighborhood exchange as core artistic media rather than supporting logistics. From that riverbank base, we follow the long-running cultural action Art as Environment at Plum Tree Creek (樹梅坑溪環境藝術行動), developed with artist and curator Wu Mali. The project refuses the idea that public art is simply an object placed outdoors. Instead, it rebuilds public life around a neglected waterway through school programs, community planning experiments, and monthly breakfast gatherings that use seasonal food as a way to convene, listen, and stay. Along the way, the episode reflects on ecofeminist care, the cultural texture of everyday ritual, and why institutions matter not only for what they present, but for what they can hold over time. Keywords Hsiao Li-Hung 蕭麗虹, Margaret Hsiao, Bamboo Curtain Studio竹圍工作室, Zhuwei 竹圍, Tamsui River 淡水河, Plum Tree Creek 樹梅坑溪, Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek樹梅坑溪環境藝術行動, Wu Mali 吳瑪悧, artist residency, alternative space, cultural action, commons, new genre public art, environmental pedagogy, breakfast gatherings, repair and reuse, ecofeminism, civic infrastructure, archiving Key references  Bamboo Curtain Studio (竹圍工作室). “About Founder | The Bamboo Curtain Studio.” https://bambooculture.com/en/project/4152.html. Bamboo Curtain Studio (竹圍工作室). “Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” https://bambooculture.com/en/project/2004.html. Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.  Ministry of Culture, Taiwan (文化部). “Culture Minister Offers Condolences on Bamboo Curtain Studio Founder Margaret Shiu’s Passing.” August 30, 2021. https://www.moc.gov.tw/en/News_Content2.aspx?n=467&s=16056. New Taipei City Art Museum (新北市美術館). “Archive Content Construction for Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” https://ntcart.museum/EN/collections_research_subject.aspx. Purtill, Corinne. “Artist Gives New Life to a Polluted Taiwan Stream.” Dialogue Earth, April 29, 2013 (updated May 14, 2020). https://dialogue.earth/en/pollution/5832-artist-gives-new-life-to-a-polluted-taiwan-stream/. Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館). Small Is Bountiful: Margaret Shiu’s Contemporary Art Collection. Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum. 2022. Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture (台新銀行文化藝術基金會). “Art as Environment—A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” Taishin Arts Award. https://www.taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-detail/2012/463. Tung, Wei Hsiu (董維琇). “Art and Aesthetic Environmental Awakening at Plum Tree Creek.” The Newsletter 76 (Spring 2017), International Institute for Asian Studies.  My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  6. May 5

    Prologue: What Makes Regenerative Work Last

    In this short prologue for Season 2 of Regenerative Artivism, I introduce the guiding question for Season 2: what makes regenerative artivism last. Staying in the Greater China region, the season shifts from landscapes of repair to the infrastructures that make care and creativity durable over time. Infrastructures here does not mean only highways and dams. It means enabling conditions: residencies that treat place as more than a backdrop, neighborhood apartments that become archives and mutual-aid stations, disability-led performance platforms where access becomes part of artistic form, museums that operate like small commons, community theater that turns listening into social ecology, and heritage networks that try to protect local life as development and tourism push in. How to listen this season: three lenses Material infrastructure: where the work happens, who funds and maintains it, and what limits shape itSocial infrastructure: trust, routines, accountability, conflict, burnout, and the labor of careEpistemic infrastructure: archives, publications, protocols, and teaching methods that keep minor histories from being erasedSeason 2 episode guide Episode 1: Xiao Lihong, Bamboo Curtain Studio (near Taipei) — building a residency as a living ecological institutionEpisode 2: Chen Yun, Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society (Shanghai) — staying with neighbors amid demolition and redevelopmentEpisode 3: Ge Huichao (Beijing) — disability arts and access as creative grammarEpisode 4: Liu Yang (Guangzhou) — the museum as neighborhood commons at the scale of a tiny roomEpisode 5: Debbie Tai, Zero Distance Cooperative (Macau) — playback theater as social repair and ecological careEpisode 6: Zheng Dazhen (Quanzhou) — heritage as a living commons, and the risks of branding and displacementKeywords socially engaged art; ecological art; disability arts; mutual aid; urban commons; heritage and tourism; Greater China; Taiwan; Shanghai; Beijing; Guangzhou; Macau; Quanzhou My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  7. Season 2, Episode 1 Trailer

    Season 2 Trailer: What Makes Regenerative Work Last?

    Season 2 of Regenerative Artivism follows Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers working across the Greater China region to build the social and cultural infrastructures that make care and creativity durable. This trailer previews six episodes that move from northern Taiwan to Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau, and Quanzhou, tracing how regenerative practice takes shape through long-term cultural ecologies, mutual-aid and neighborhood archiving, disability-led performance platforms, community institutions, and storytelling as a technology of care. Release schedule: the season 2 introduction arrives on May 5, 2026, followed by season 2, episode 1 on May 19, 2026. If you are not already following the show, please subscribe so you do not miss the new season. Keywords: Regenerative Artivism, socially engaged art, ecological art, environmental humanities, Asian women, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau, Quanzhou, care, infrastructure, mutual aid, community archives, disability arts, access, storytelling, ecological grief, heritage regeneration My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

  8. Mar 24 ·  Bonus

    Season 1 Closing: What Regeneration Asks of Us

    In this short season finale, I reflect on what season 1 has been doing at its core: practicing a slower, more accountable way of paying attention. Rather than chasing crisis headlines, the season lingered with place-based creative work that often hides in plain sight, in classrooms, farms, creeks, kitchens, improvised studios, and everyday gathering spaces. Across these sites, regenerative artivism appears less as spectacle and more as practice: pedagogy, ecological care, institutional friction, soil as moral witness, and repair after disaster. The finale also names three takeaways to carry forward: regeneration has a timescale, regeneration is relational, and regeneration is infrastructural. Looking ahead, Regenerative Artivism returns on April 21, 2026, with a trailer, followed by the season 2 introduction on May 5 and season 2, episode 1 on May 19. Season 2 stays anchored in the Greater China region and asks what makes regenerative work last, focusing on the social and cultural infrastructures that hold care in place, from art spaces built like ecologies to mutual-aid rooms, disability-led performance platforms, and community storytelling practices. Keywords: regenerative artivism, socially engaged art, ecological art, environmental humanities, Asian women artists, care, maintenance, mutual aid, community archives, disability arts, access, infrastructure, place-based practice, Greater China, Taiwan, mainland China, Macau, heritage regeneration, urban villages, ecological grief, storytelling My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang

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About

Regenerative Artivism is a podcast about how Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers use creative, place-based practice to confront social and environmental injustice and shape more livable futures. Drawing on long-term field research in East Asia, with a strong focus on the Greater China region, art historian Meiqin Wang traces how socially engaged and ecological art grows from struggles over land and water, migration and memory, the everyday work of care, among others. Each episode is a guided case study of one practitioner or project, with close attention to process: how collaborations are built, what frictions they face, what kinds of care and maintenance are required, and what regeneration looks like when it is slow, contested, and material.  Season 1 is being released, with six main episodes that moves through watersheds, eco-pedagogy, farms, community building, soil practices, and disaster recovery. Keywords: socially engaged art; ecological art; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; community art; environmental justice

Information

  • Creator
    Meiqin Wang
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Regenerative Artivism
  • Show Website
    Regenerative Artivism