ArtsSociety & CultureEducation

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.

The podcast has completed Seasons 1 and 2 and is currently releasing Season 3, with new episodes published from September through December 2026.

Keywords: socially engaged art; ecological art; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; community art; environmental justice

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S3 · E1
Tuesday · 24 min
Season 3 Prologue: Bodies of Resistance: Feminist Art, Memory, and Refusal
Season 3 of Regenerative Artivism moves from the Greater China region to Japan and Korea, following the podcast’s concerns into a historical terrain shaped by empire, war, militarization, state violence, disaster memory, and feminist refusal. This prologue introduces the season’s central idea: bodies of resistance. Across the season, the body appears not only as a site of protest, but also as archive, monument, witness, stage, mourner, and public presence. Through fieldwork conducted in Japan and Korea in summer 2026, following earlier research, I trace how artists, activists, scholars, and community organizers create forms through which difficult histories can be remembered, confronted, interrupted, and made public. The season begins with Tomiyama Taeko’s feminist antiwar memory and Shimada Yoshiko’s performance interventions into nationalist space, then moves to Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung’s Statue of Peace, Choi Sung-hee’s daily practice of anti-base peace activism in Gangjeong, siren eun young jung’s work on Dongducheon and resistance theater, and Black Jaguar’s ghosts, feminist rage, and embodied mourning. Together, these figures show that art cannot undo empire, sexual violence, militarization, disaster, or social exclusion. But it can create forms through which people gather around unresolved histories, make violence visible without surrendering to despair, and keep public memory from being absorbed into the convenience of power. Keywords regenerative artivism, bodies of resistance, feminist art, memory, refusal, Japan, Korea, East Asia, antiwar art, militarization, state violence, disaster memory, public mourning, comfort women, military sexual slavery, Yasukuni Shrine, Statue of Peace, Gangjeong, Dongducheon, Black Jaguar, siren eun young jung, Tomiyama Taeko, Shimada Yoshiko, Kim Seo-kyung, Kim Eun-sung, Choi Sung-hee, feminist memory, embodied witness, public space, historical responsibility My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S2 · E7
August 11 · 7 min
Season 2 Closing: Building the Conditions for Lasting Work
In this season finale, I return to the guiding question of season 2: what makes regenerative work last? Across six episodes set in northern Taiwan, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau, and Quanzhou, we followed women who build the social, cultural, and institutional conditions that allow creative practice to endure. Their work took the form of an ecological residency, a neighborhood mutual-aid space, disability-led performance platforms, a museum reimagined as a community commons, playback theater as a practice of care, and a heritage network negotiating the pressures of tourism and redevelopment. The episode draws together three central lessons. Durability is designed through spaces, routines, training, shared roles, and protocols of care. Regenerative work also develops through friction, as practitioners negotiate institutions, accessibility barriers, development pressures, and uneven resources without abandoning their ethical commitments. Finally, infrastructure is emotional as well as material: listening, hosting, documenting, mediating conflict, and sustaining attention are skilled forms of cultural labor, much of it feminized and too often treated as background. The podcast will return in September 2026 with season 3. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S2 · E6
July 28 · 30 min
Zheng Dazhen: West Street Good Life and the Politics of Heritage Regeneration
This episode follows a familiar feeling that many heritage streets now produce: the moment when a place shifts from lived neighborhood to curated backdrop. In Quanzhou’s West Street（Xijie，西街）, that shift is intensified by heritage recognition, tourism, and the fast circulation of images. We explore this question through the work of Zheng Dazhen 郑达真, a cultural producer and curator who has spent more than a decade building SUHU Life（舒服生活）, also known as The Good Life Creation Society (美好生活社). Rather than treating culture as a one-off event, Zheng works through small, repeatable social infrastructures: a youth inn, a tavern, a bookshop, and a teahouse that together make room for gathering, learning, and slow time. Two recent projects bring her method into focus: the Big-Tailed Lantern Dragon （大尾灯龙）transforms discarded festival lanterns into a large-scale installation and the Five-Foot-Way Art Market （五脚架艺术市集）, helps us think about how streets become platforms for cultural display and micro-economies. Throughout, the episode keeps the ethical tension in view. Regeneration can rebuild social bonds, but it can also convert living heritage into marketable experience. Cover image: Zheng Dazhen on West Street in Quanzhou, with the historic Kaiyuan Temple pagoda visible in the background. Image courtesy of Zheng Dazhen. Keywords Zheng Dazhen (郑达真), The Good Life Creation Society (美好生活社), living heritage, heritage regeneration, cultural infrastructure, West Street (西街), Quanzhou（泉州）, cultural entrepreneurship, place-based practice, tourism pressure, SUHU Life （舒服生活）, Nanyin (南音), Lantern Festival（元宵节）, regenerative aesthetics, five-foot way (五脚架), Zanhua (簪花)，image economy, urban governance Key references Fujian Daily [福建日报]. “Quanzhou Zhuangyuan Street ‘Five-Foot-Way’ Art Market Lights Up the Old City’s Everyday Vitality” [泉州庄元街‘五脚基’艺术市集点亮古城烟火气]. October 2, 2023. Harding, Andrew James. “Five-Foot Ways as Public and Private Domain in Singapore and Beyond.” Journal of Property, Planning and Environmental Law 10, no. 1 (2018): 36–55. Luo, Wen, Liu Yecheng, and Jiang Ying. “Living Heritage Protection in China Urban Renewal Planning: A Case Study of Quanzhou West Street.” In REAL CORP 2015 Proceedings, 401–9. Vienna, 2015. The Paper [澎湃新闻]. “World Heritage Story Recommendation List No. 4: The Big-Tailed Lantern Dragon Art Exhibition at Quanzhou West Street Market” [世遗故事推荐榜④丨泉州西街菜市场的《大尾灯龙》艺术展]. December 26, 2023. https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_25725276. Smith, Laurajane. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge, 2006. Su, Xiaobo. “Urban Entrepreneurialism and the Commodification of Heritage in China.” Urban Studies 52, no. 15 (2015): 2874–89. Tencent News [腾讯新闻]. “Quanzhou Cultural Tourism Boom: A Symbiosis Experiment Among Government, Young People, and Local Culture” [泉州文旅热，一场政府、年轻人与本地文化的‘共生实验’]. February 18, 2025. https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20250218A03OB900. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. “Nanyin.” Accessed March 11, 2026. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/nanyin-00199. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China.” Accessed March 11, 2026. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1561. Wang, Meiqin. “Art, Urban Renewal, and Grassroots Community Building: Zheng Dazhen and Lifestyle Activism.” In Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below, 85–115. New York: Routledge, 2019. Zhu, Yujie. “Politics of Scale: Cultural Heritage in China.” In Politics of Scale: New Directions in Critical Heritage Studies, edited by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Yujie Zhu, and Suzie Thomas, 21–35. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S2 · E5
July 14 · 30 min
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
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S2 · E4
June 30 · 30 min
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
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S2 · E3
June 16 · 30 min
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
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S2 · E2
June 2 · 31 min
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
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S2 · E1
May 19 · 30 min
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
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S2 · E1
May 5 · 7 min
Season 2 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 it Social infrastructure: trust, routines, accountability, conflict, burnout, and the labor of care Epistemic infrastructure: archives, publications, protocols, and teaching methods that keep minor histories from being erased Season 2 episode guide Episode 1: Xiao Lihong, Bamboo Curtain Studio (near Taipei) — building a residency as a living ecological institution Episode 2: Chen Yun, Dinghaiqiao Mutual-Aid Society (Shanghai) — staying with neighbors amid demolition and redevelopment Episode 3: Ge Huichao (Beijing) — disability arts and access as creative grammar Episode 4: Liu Yang (Guangzhou) — the museum as neighborhood commons at the scale of a tiny room Episode 5: Debbie Tai, Zero Distance Cooperative (Macau) — playback theater as social repair and ecological care Episode 6: Zheng Dazhen (Quanzhou) — heritage as a living commons, and the risks of branding and displacement Keywords 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
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S2 · E1
April 21 · 1 min
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
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S1 · E7
March 24 · 6 min
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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S1 · E6
March 17 · 30 min
Aluaiy Kaumakan: Weaving after the Storm
Summary Episode 6 follows the practice of Aluaiy Kaumakan, also known in Chinese as Wu Yuling (武玉玲), a Paiwan (排灣) textile and installation artist from southern Taiwan, and asks how weaving can become a method of cultural survival after climate disaster and forced relocation. Moving between community-based making and large-scale installation, this episode stays close to the material intelligence of lemikalik （纏繞）, a concentric-circle weaving technique that turns care, tension, and repair into form. Set in the wake of Typhoon Morakot （台风莫拉克） in 2009 and the resettlement of mountain communities, the story traces how Aluaiy’s practice shifts from individual mastery toward collective process: weaving circles as social infrastructure, and touch-based acts of return through rubbings and traces gathered from ancestral lands. Two major installations anchor the episode, Cevulj – Path of a Family and Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies, each offering a different vocabulary for shelter, continuity, and mourning without closure. Keywords Paiwan （排灣）; Paridrayan （大社部落）; Sandimen（三地門）; Typhoon Morakot （台风莫拉克）; relocation and resettlement; lemikalik （纏繞）; semasipu; rubbings and traces; cultural infrastructure; indigenous art; shelter; kinship ecology Key References Biennale of Sydney. “Aluaiy Kaumakan.” Biennale of Sydney. https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/participants/aluaiy-kaumakan/. Deng, Tzong-Sheng [鄧宗聖]. “After Typhoon Morakot: Creative Narratives of Paiwan Artists Etan Pavavalung and Aluaiy Kaumakan on Social Media” [莫拉克風災後：排灣族藝術家伊誕‧巴瓦瓦隆與武玉玲在社群媒體的創作論述]. 藝術評論 [Art Review], no. 47, (2024): 93-138. Google Arts & Culture. “Semasipu – Remembering Our Intimacies.” Google Arts & Culture. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/semasipu-%E2%80%93-remembering-our-intimacies/_QGofmnhZ8To0A. 2022. Helsinki Biennial. “Aluaiy Kaumakan.” Helsinki Biennial. https://helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/artist/aluaiy-kaumakan/. Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation (原住民族文化事業基金會). “The Meanings Behind a Paiwan Girl’s Garments and Accessories.” Indigenous Sight (原視界). https://insight.ipcf.org.tw/en-US/article/666. 2022. Liang Gallery (尊彩藝術中心). “武玉玲 (Aluaiy Kaumakan).” 尊彩藝術中心官網. https://www.lianggallery.com/portfolio-view/%E6%AD%A6%E7%8E%89%E7%8E%B2/. Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP, 數位典藏與數位學習國家型科技計畫). “Paiwan Divination Pot.” Digital Taiwan: Culture & Nature. https://culture.teldap.tw/culture/index.php?id=672&option=com_content. Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park (TACP, 原住民族委員會原住民族文化發展中心). “Wu, Yu-Ling (Aluaiy Kaumakan).” The 1st Taiwan International Austronesian Art Triennial (第一屆臺灣國際奧地利亞藝術三年展). https://en-tiaat.tacp.gov.tw/%E6%AD%A6%E7%8E%89%E7%8E%B2aruwai-kaumaka/. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “Typhoon Morakot Situation Report No. 3.” OCHA. https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/china/typhoon-morakot-situation-report-no-3. 2009. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S1 · E5
March 3 · 29 min
Song Chen: Soil Artivism, Ritual Repair, and the Mythic Body
Summary This episode follows the Shanghai-based artist Song Chen (宋陈), whose practice treats soil not simply as an environmental theme but as a medium, a witness, and a moral problem. Beginning from the premise that urban life is designed to keep soil out of sight, the episode asks what it means to build modern comfort on damaged ground. Song’s early earth-based works, including Dust to Dust and Breakthrough, stage a stark rhythm of burial and emergence, while her Walking Landscape figures imagine the human body as a porous terrain that carries ecological burden rather than mastering it. The episode then turns to Song’s 2019 World Soil Day exhibition Healing Land in Suzhou, centered on Wounded Soil and the installation Soil Fetus. Here, soil injury is framed as life injury, with reproductive imagery pushing viewers toward responsibility rather than distant concern. Moving between scientific protocols of sampling and classification and mythic imagination through the figure of Nuwa, Song builds an ethics of mending that resists quick fixes. Beyond the gallery, she develops public platforms—forums, education programs, and participatory rituals—that make soil care repeatable, arguing that ecological attention has to be practiced, not just felt. Keywords Song Chen, soil artivism, World Soil Day, Healing Land, Wounded Soil, Soil Fetus, soil toxicity, citizen laboratory, Nuwa, mythic repair, ecofeminist resonance, public pedagogy, participatory ritual, ecological literacy, soil biodiversity Key References Arthing (艺术人人网). “宋陈个展：土地频率”Song Chen Solo Exhibition：Land Frequency. 艺术人人网. https://www.arthing.org/archives/2025/12/4850796.html. 2025. Beijing Art Now Gallery (北京现在画廊). “Breakthrough: Song Chen Solo Exhibition” (破土而出：宋陈个展). http://beijingartnow.com/EnExh_Details.aspx?id=24&model=ew. 2012. Song Chen 宋陈. “Documentary: Wounded Soil” (纪录片《殇土》). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laSCiDWv-kA&list=PLZtBZjNoH8-_X9xdDahlFEn8N7cmtbZDP. 2019 Song Chen 宋陈. “Dust to Dust” (尘归尘) Series and Collection History. Beijing Art Now Gallery. http://www.beijingartnow.com/EnWorks.aspx?id=30&md=1. 2011. Song Chen 宋陈. Artist Biography, CV, and Selected Works. Artsy. https://www.artsy.net/artist/song-chen-song-chen/cv. 2025. SUIS QingPu. “Reviewing Clay Art and Building Awareness of Soil Ecology — Field Trip to Song’s ‘Ecological Chronicle’ at the Xinqiao Art Museum.” https://qingpu-en.suis.com.cn/2022/02/22/reviewing-clay-art-and-building-awareness-of-soil-ecology-a-middle-school-study-field-trip-at-the-xinqiao-art-museum/. 2022. United Nations. “World Soil Day: Background of the Observance.” https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-soil-day. 2025. Xinqiao Art Museum (上海新桥美术馆). “Soil Ecology: Song Chen Ecological Art Exhibition” (土壤生态纪：宋陈生态艺术展). https://chuangxin.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202112/09/WS61b1c76ea3107be4979fc435.html. 2021. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S1 · E4
February 17 · 30 min
Chen Xiaoyang: Water, Villages, and A Living Museum in South China
Summary In this episode, we travel through South China’s river deltas and mountain headwaters around Guangzhou to follow the practice of Chen Xiaoyang (陈晓阳), an artist, visual anthropologist, and museum leader whose work treats art as fieldwork and public method. Moving from an urban village in Guangzhou to a headwater village in a protected water-source area, Chen’s projects show how exhibitions, teaching, and community collaboration can make buried ecologies visible again and rebuild civic capacity where rapid development has thinned everyday forms of belonging. Across three sites—Lijiao, Nanting, and Leming—we see dilapidated structures become living museums: ancestral halls, lineage halls, and an earthen farmhouse reactivated as spaces for memory, debate, skill-sharing, and collective revaluation. The episode closes by reflecting on care labor, women’s organizing, and the durability of social and ecological relations, especially in the face of real conflict and loss, including the dismantling of a key museum structure in 2023. Keywords Chen Xiaoyang, Guangzhou, urban villages, Lijiao, Nanting, Leming, Yuan Art Museum, watershed art, fieldwork, socially engaged art, ecofeminism, care labor, craft revival, participatory museum, art education, environmental humanities Key References Art China (艺术中国). “Jiaogui jihua——yiwei renlei xuezhe yan zhong de xiangcun zhenxing” 角柜计划——一位人类学者眼中的乡村振兴 [Corner Cabinet Project: Rural Revitalization in the Eyes of an Anthropologist]. 广东省妇女儿童基金会 (Rural Women GD). https://www.ruralwomengd.org/7697.html. 2018. Artron News (雅昌新闻). “Tianye zhong de meishuguan yu shanye zhong de yishujia” 田野中的美术馆与山野中的艺术家 [A Museum in the Field and Artists in the Mountains]. Sina News. https://gd.sina.cn/news/2018-12-26/detail-ihqhqcis0470483.d.html?from=qudao. 2018. Artron News (雅昌艺术网讯). “Yishu, xiangcun, gongyi: ‘Longyan’ zhudi jihua yishu zhan yu Conghua Leming cun kaimu” 艺术、乡村、公益：“龙眼”驻地计划艺术展于从化乐明村开幕 [Art, Rural China, and Public Good: The “Dragon-Eye” Residency Exhibition Opens in Leming Village, Conghua]. 广东省妇女儿童基金会 (Rural Women GD). https://www.ruralwomengd.org/4503.html. 2016. Chen, Xiaoyang 陈晓阳. “‘Tamen’ yu ‘women’: Yuan meishuguan de shehui canyu shi shijian” “他们”与“我们”：源美术馆的社会参与式实践 [“Them” and “Us”: The Socially Engaged Practice of Yuan Museum]. 广东省妇女儿童基金会 (Rural Women GD). https://www.ruralwomengd.org/9772.html. 2019. FutureLearn. “Case study: ‘Nanting Research.’” In Discovering Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China (City University of Hong Kong online course). https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/socially-engaged-art/0/steps/23891. 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. 2013. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. 1990. People’s Daily Online. “Guangzhou Lijiao: yi zu 900 nian gucun de wenhua jiyi” 广州沥滘：一座900年古村的文化记忆 [Guangzhou Lijiao: Cultural Memory of a 900-year-old Village]. Phoenix Culture (ifeng.com). Simon, Nina. The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz, CA: Museum 2.0. https://participatorymuseum.org/. 2010. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S1 · E3
February 3 · 30 min
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. Keywords Lo 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 ecologies Key references EcoArtAsia. “Lo Lai-lai Natalie (b.1983).” EcoArtAsia. https://ecoartasia.net/LLL/LLL_eng.html Hong 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
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S1 · E2
January 20 · 29 min
Wang Fangfang: Natural Art Pedagogy on the Loess Plateau
In this episode, we follow Chinese artist and educator Wang Fangfang (王芳芳) from the artist village of Songzhuang on the outskirts of Beijing back to the loess hills of her home region in northern Shaanxi, and onward to the headwaters of the Yangtze River on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. After an early career inside the capital’s contemporary art circuit, Wang made the deliberate decision to leave the gallery track and devote herself to what she calls natural art education with rural and herding children. We spend time in her classrooms: a small elementary school in Yan’an where children draw trees and cows from lived experience rather than copying textbook images; mountain schools in Chongqing, where “emotional ecology” means paying attention to what it feels like to be a left-behind child; and tent classrooms and boarding schools on the plateau, where yaks, snow leopards, and Tibetan antelope are everyday neighbors. Along the way, we trace how her field sketchbooks grow into ecological atlases and the picture book Sa: Sanjiangyuan wild animals, and how her paintings weave together feminist care, Tibetan Buddhist imagery, and multispecies landscapes. Wang’s story offers a grounded example of eco-pedagogy and regenerative aesthetics: art education as a way of cultivating attention, confidence, and responsibility in places often treated as marginal. It also asks what it means, ethically, for an artist to reroute a conventional career toward long-term, relational work with children and communities whose ability to care for their own environments will shape future ecologies downstream. Keywords Wang Fangfang; natural art education; grassroots art education; eco-pedagogy; place-based learning; loess plateau; Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau; Sanjiangyuan; emotional ecology; left-behind children; rural schools in China; environmental justice; Green River NGO; children’s drawings; multispecies relations; ecofeminism; reproductive labor; care work; Tibetan Buddhism; regenerative aesthetics; environmental humanities; socially engaged art; Chinese contemporary art; community art; art education and ecology Key References Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Ecological Protection and Sustainable Development in Sanjiangyuan.” Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences 27, no. 4: 250–252. https://english.cas.cn/bcas/2013_4/201411/P020141121530046272124.pdf. 2013. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. 1970. Hooks, Bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge. 1994. Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. 1993. Qi, Min 齐敏. “Wang Fangfang: yong huabi wei pianyuan diqu haizi dakai yishu zhi men” 王芳芳：用画笔为偏远地区孩子打开艺术之门 [Wang Fangfang: Using Brushes to Open the Door of Art for Children in Remote Areas]. Wenhua yishu bao: Xin jiaoyu 文化艺术报新教育 [Cultural Arts Gazette: New Education]. September 7, B01-04. 2018. Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books. 1988. Wang, Fangfang 王芳芳. Sa: Sanjiangyuan yesheng dongwu huiben 萨：三江源野生动物绘本 [Sa: Sanjiangyuan Wild Animals Picture Book]. Chongqing: Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House. 2021. Xinwen Zhoukan 新闻周刊 [Newsweek]. “Benzhou renwu Wang Fangfang: hua shang Qingzang xian” 本周人物王芳芳: 画上青藏线 [Person of the Week Wang Fangfang: Painting Along the Qinghai-Tibet Line]. CCTV / Tibet.cn. http://media.tibet.cn/video/news/20190610/1560154435850.shtml. 2019. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S1 · E1
January 6 · 33 min
Regenerative Artivism: Listening to the Work of Asian Women Artivists
In this introductory episode, I lay out the core idea of regenerative artivism and the scope of the podcast. Speaking from southern California with my attention grounded in East Asia, I reflect on how art, care, and collective imagination help communities confront social and environmental injustice and craft/cultivate more livable futures in damaged places. Using the image of a threatened valley and the community-organized Meinung Yellow Butterfly Festival (美濃黃蝶祭), I introduce regeneration as an ongoing practice rather than a single victory. I explain why Season 1 focuses on women artivists in the greater China region and why their often-overlooked work in creeks, kitchens, schools, villages, and resettlement sites matters for environmental thinking. I situate the podcast in relation to my own long-term field research and to the limits of academic writing, framing the series as a slow, seminar-like space for listening, critical reflection, and grounded imagination. The episode closes with an invitation to consider a place that matters to you, the damages it has absorbed, and the quiet forms of care already at work there. Keywords regenerative artivism, regenerative aesthetics, socially engaged art, environmental art, ecofeminism, environmental humanities, Asia, East Asia, Greater China, community art, environmental justice, social justice, regeneration, care, multispecies relations, public pedagogy, art and ecology, women artivists Key References Demos, T. J. Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016. ECOARTASIA. Digital Archive of Chinese Socially and Ecologically Engaged Art. https://ecoartasia.net/. Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1991. Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Kester, Grant H. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Lerner, Steve. Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Puig de la Bellacasa, María. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Wang, Meiqin. "Ecology, Environmental Art, and Sustainable Community Building: The Meinung Yellow Butterfly Festival as a Case of Environmental Activism in Taiwan." International Journal of Social Sustainability in Economic, Social, and Cultural Context 19, no. 2 (2023): 75–101. Wang, Meiqin. Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below. London: Routledge, 2019. Wang, Meiqin, ed. Socially Engaged Public Art in East Asia. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2022. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S1 · E1
January 6 · 29 min
Wu Mali: Watersheds, Kitchens, and One Cubic Centimeter of Land
This episode introduces the practice of Taiwanese artist Wu Mali （吳瑪悧）as an early anchor for regenerative artivism in East Asia. Moving from a polluted suburban creek at the edge of Taipei to river basins, a former naval kitchen on Cijin Island, and finally a project focused on one cubic centimeter of soil, the episode traces how Wu treats art as environmental infrastructure rather than isolated objects. Listeners will hear how Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek turned a neglected waterway into a watershed commons through walking, mapping, school programs, and breakfast gatherings with residents and hydrologists; how river projects such as By the River, On the River, Of the River and Taipei Tomorrow as a Lake Again reframe Taipei as a vulnerable floodplain; how Cijin Kitchen and Cijin’s tongue use cooking and storytelling in a former naval dormitory to surface maritime labor, migration, and coastal change; and how To Reconstruct 1 cm³ of Land, It Requires a Centennial foregrounds soil timescales and micro-acts of cultivation. Across these cases, the episode situates Wu’s work within ecofeminist, community-based strategies that link environmental repair to everyday care, pedagogy, and local governance. Keywords Wu Mali, Taiwan, socially engaged art, community art, eco-art, environmental humanities, regenerative artivism, regenerative aesthetics, ecofeminism, watershed commons, Plum Tree Creek, Cijin Kitchen, Cijin’s tongue, To Reconstruct 1 cm³ of Land It Requires a Centennial, river city, climate adaptation, soil and land, art and governance, public pedagogy Key references Bamboo Curtain Studio. “Art as Environment: A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek.” Project documentation. Bamboo Curtain Studio Website. https://bambooculture.com/en/project/2004.html. ecoartspace. “Member Spotlight: Mali Wu.” Online feature. ecoartspace Blog. https://ecoartspace.org/Blog/13030578. Goto, Reiko, Margaret Shiu, and Wu Mali. “Ecofeminism: Art as Environment – A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek.” Women Environmental Artists Directory (WEAD) Magazine. 2014. https://directory.weadartists.org/plum-tree-creek-action/. Harff, Amy Spencer. “Artist Series: Wu Mali, The Godmother of Taiwan’s Socially Engaged Art.” Eurasia Review. Last modified August 3, 2021. https://www.eurasiareview.com/03082021-artist-series-wu-mali-the-godmother-of-taiwans-socially-engaged-art-analysis/. Tung, Wei-Hsiu. “From Social Art Practice to Environmental Aesthetic Awakening and Civil Engagement: The Case Study of Cijin Kitchen.” Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 7, nos. 2–3 (2020): 307–324. Wu, Mali and Bamboo Curtain Studio. “Art as Environment – A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek.” Case summary for the Taishin Arts Award. https://www.taishinart.org.tw/en/art-award-year-detail/2012/463. Zheng, Bo. “An Interview with Wu Mali.” FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, no. 4 (2016). https://field-journal.com/no4/an-interview-with-wu-mali. Special note: Chinese names in this episode follow local convention, with the family name given first and the personal name second. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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S1 · E1
Dec 21, 2025 · 1 min
Trailer – Introducing Regenerative Artivism
This trailer introduces regenerative artivism: Asian women’s creative strategies for social and ecological futures. I am your host, Meiqin Wang, an art historian working in contemporary Asian art and the environmental humanities. In this podcast, I explore how Asian women artists, curators, and community organizers use creative, place-based practice to confront social and environmental injustice and make damaged places more livable. When I say regenerative artivism, I mean projects that do more than protest from a distance. They help repair relationships between people, land, water, and more-than-human neighbors through work in creeks, kitchens, schools, villages, and many other places. In the first season, I will share six episodes focusing on women artivists in the greater China region, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Each episode spends time with one practitioner, moving slowly enough for the story and its questions to unfold. New episodes will be released roughly every two weeks. The introduction episode and the first case study will be available on January 6, 2026. If this resonates with you, I hope you will follow the podcast, perhaps pass it along to someone who might be interested, and join me in listening closely to what these artivists have to say. My academic website: http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang
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