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STICK TOGETHER FESTIVAL


Mai Ling has explored an artistic strategy and discourse with the theme of “stickiness” as collective resistance and pleasure to foster community, kinship, and healing among Asian FLINT* and beyond. Stickiness, often associated with disgust, has a subversive potential to reclaim the collective agency. By “sticking together,” we challenge the perception of “Asia” as the exotic decorative Other, and the dirty and sticky entanglements of food, migration, coloniality, and imagination.


On the 25 and 26th of June, a series of somatic and sensory workshops bring together various practitioners outside of and based in Vienna, from architecture, gastronomy, somatics, and biohacking. With Niki Flierman, Serena Lee, Mary Maggic, Maya Minder, He Shen, and Fransisca Tan, we explore “stickiness” with different sticky and fermented foods. On the 27th at Flucc, the last day of the festival, they will share knowledge of “stickiness” as a necessary practice for survival and care, followed by a presentation by Venuri Perera. Then, we will share, eat, and digest our favorite sticky foods while enjoying karaoke together with MC Gerard Rabara! The festival concludes with a party with a DJ collective Hotpotposse!


SCHEUDULE

DAY 1 | 25.06.2024


Location: Bloch-Bauer-Promenade 13, 1100 Wien 


Workshop #1 (10 am - 1pm)
Why Pungency is an Internal Pleasure: Kimchi-Shiatsu Workshop with Maya Minder and Niki Flierman

Kimchi is an internal family business. It is translated intergenerational and therefore stays within the practice of oral inheritance of cooking practices. Whether actually taste and smell is a culturally inherited education, our abilities of tasting food by taste buds stay the same in the canon of human sensorium. Within our 5 taste buds, spiciness is the only one that actually is not a sensory of taste, but tiny bruises caused by the molecule caspacine. We inherit the appreciation of smells as we witnessed them in our environment and childhood. Pain as a sensation of food is part of a gastro-somatic history of food cultures. Why is spiciness and pungency so deeply inscribed in Korean food culture? What is adaptation and integration of tastes in a globalised world? This workshop tries to manifest a short gastro-somatic overview of the pungency of Kimchi by hands-on learning of Kimchi fermentation. Together with the shiatsu practitioner Niki and the food artist Maya Minder the topic of somatic food experience will be explored inside a multi sensory approach. Shiatsu uses pain in the body and pressure-points for emotional release. We will dive into the various excercices and pressure points to activate our inner emotion barriers.


Workshop #2 (2 pm - 5 pm)
Grounding & Sensory Exploration by Fransisca Tan and Serena Lee

An initial grounding workshop will help participants settle in and become more mindful, encouraging a heightened awareness of their physical and mental states. Through sensory exploration, attendees will learn to observe and sense their own experiences, setting a foundation for the days to come. What to Bring: Participants are asked to bring two food items of their choice.


DAY 2 | 26.06.2024


Location: Bloch-Bauer-Promenade 13, 1100 Wien


Workshop #3 (11am - 1 pm)
Crafting Scents and Preserving Moments with Fransisca Tan
After training to explore all our heightened senses on day 1 we will continue our journey by setting a focus on our sense of touch and smell. By providing material and tools participants are invited to playfully engage with extracting scents and sticky preservation through body sculpting rice paper. Participants are guided to share and preserve their community-based rituals and somatic memories for the final showcase on Thursday. Alternatively, this workshop can also accompany your activities throughout the day in order to preserve individual experiences and revisit crafting a scent at the end of the day. Participants can additionally bring ingredients from home that they wish to transform into an aroma.


Workshop #4 (2pm - 5pm)
Tofubodyology: Tofu-making and Calisthenics Workshop with He Shen and Mary Maggic
Once a traditional component in East and Southeast Asian cuisine, tofu is now consumed worldwide. The global travel of making tofu was marked by the first tofu factory in Europe, after the two Opium Wars (1839 – 1860) in China, indicating a new level of the Western colonising East Asia. Also, tofu’s popularity has always been haunted by the fear of effeminacy or infertility due to the planted-based oestrogen that the soybeans contain. Hence, the craft of making tofu and its circulation in the Western world is deeply entangled with coloniality and gender conformity.

This workshop reclaims the craft as a decolonial queer feminist ritual, a collective body-building through making. Together with He Shen and Mary Maggic, we will embody our Asianness and entangled femininity and masculinity.


*Lunch break always at 1-2pm.


DAY 3 | 27.06.2024


Location: Flucc Deck Terasse 


2 pm - 4pm    Workshop/Intervention by Venuri Perera
Venuri Perera has been investigating anonymous situations in public spaces as a negotiation towards the social construction of gaze. In this workshop, the artist invites us to unpack these forms of “othered” in our bodies with tools for discarding and morphing. We will interact with public space around Flucc in Praterstern to question how anonymity can never be separated from the construction of views on gender, race, language, cultural politics, and colonialism.

Please bring a scarf or textile with which you can cover your face to be anonymous!


4 pm    Sticky Picnic at Prater / Self-organized BYOS (Bring Your Own Stickiness)


7 pm    Roundtable “Sticky Sharing” with Maya Minder, He Shen, Fransisca Tan, and Mary Maggic

Four practitioners from different fields, such as art and science, bio-hacking, architecture, and gastronomy, will share their experiments with fermented foods to exchange the subversive potential of stickiness.


8:30 pm    K&K (Kitchen & Karaoke) with MC Gerard Rabara

Enjoy a karaoke party with various Asian sticky fermented foods that are collectively made during the workshops on previous days, such as kimchi, tofu, kudzu dessert, rice cakes, and more!


10pm - 1am    DJ set by HotpotposseLet’s sticke together!


Registration
If you plan to join us for the sticky workshops, please let us know by sending an email to Mai Ling (Mai.Ling@gmx.at) with the name of the workshop by Sunday, June 23. You can join us spontaneously without registration, but this helps us to get a headcount!


The workshops in the festival are realized with the support by Cultural Department of the City of Vienna (MA7).




🌷Mai Ling Speaks #10🌷 Date: 22 June 2024, 7-9 pm Venue: VBKÖ (Maysedergasse 2/28, 1010 Vienna) Guests: Grace En-Yi Ting and Priyanka Hutschenreiter * Mai Ling Speaks is a series of talks, interviews, and presentations that connect the active voices addressing structural discrimination, intersectional struggles, and representation against Asian FLINT* bodies. It is a subversive format that aims to diverge the discourse towards the individuals and communities affected while, at the same time, bridging artistic practices and theory by inviting artists, activists, scholars, and cultural workers. For the new episode, Mai Ling hosts two presentations on queer feminist approaches in Hong Kong, Dhaka, and beyond, toward transcultural solidarity to foster communal ways of being, becoming, living, resisting, and surviving in this terribly polarized time. Mai Ling will take part in the three-day symposium ”PASS(ED) ON: Narrativization of vernacular archives within intergenerational and transnational memory transfer” at the University of Arts Linz on 6.5.2024–8.5.2024. In this online session, Mai Ling, the anonymous Vienna-based artist association/collective, will introduce their practices and recent video work, Becoming Stickiness (2023). The work draws inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s ‘Queer Phenomenology,’ Anne Anlin Cheng’s ‘Ornamentalism,’ and Banu Subramaniam’s critical perspective on colonial modernity in botany. Through out loud reading and viewing, the meeting delves into the dichotomies projected onto the exotic yet invasive ‘Others,’ and Mai-Ling’s process of claiming their own hybridity through collective somatic practice. Sharing food has always been a place of kinship, solace, care, and tenderness. Mai Ling Soup Bath invites you to a sensorial and contemplative sound bath, deep meditation, and massage. We will collectively stir up a warm concoction of familiar senses and a brew of edible memories while embodying our past, present, and future. At the end of the session, everyone is invited to share a warm meal together. 🍜 In our last event at @civabrussels organized by the generous team @care.xyz of ETH Zürich, each guest speaker was invited to bring an ingredient that would be merged together in a rich and complex broth. As Mai Ling, we made kudzu balls as a gentle texture and neutral flavor, inviting people to play with its stickiness before adding to the soup. It was a wonderful sharing of ideas, cultures, and practices with all the artists and cultural workers involved. In the framework of the exhibition Unworlding CUBEX, by researcher in residence Anna Puigjaner MAIO, CIVA hosts a performative cooking session and lunch with Merve Bedir, Care., Amy Franceschini (Future Farmers), Zahra Khatri (Cassonade), Mai Ling, Caroline Profanter, and Anna Myjak-Pycia. In a room full of ornamental plants in soil, visitors can listen to Mai Ling's many voices, which contain both historical accounts and their own memories present to the houseplants. The plants were brought to the Western world and sold as decorative goods. These stories illustrate the complex interconnections between ongoing colonialism, exoticism in horticulture and the experiences of migrants. At the same time, the wallpaper appropriates traditional Art Nouveau botanical patterns for private interiors and is reimagined as the kudzu plant, an ornamental plant native to East Asia that is considered “invasive” in the Western world. The roots of the kudzu plant are turned into sticky bioplastic that drips from the glass window of the display case. With the site-specific adaptation of the installation shown for the first time at the Secession, “Dirt Nouveau” will be temporarily relocated to the Vitrina, the exhibition space in the Brunnenpassage, and exhibited as part of the Climate Biennale. At the end of an artistic research laboratory with Mai Ling, an open level, migrant-positioned workshop with Karin Cheng, Bianca Figl, Debbie Galias, Virginia "Aura" Lewerissa, Mary Maggic and Suchart Wannaset invites us to explore "stickiness" as an instrument of pleasure and resistance. Through figure-eight motions, repetition, journaling, instant composition, and collective choreography, the workshop shares different perspectives of stickiness as a somatic practice necessary for care and survival, reclaiming the sticky and dirty experiences that made us who we are today. Mai Ling and Queers 4 Palestine Vienna will co-host a reading session to listen to texts and poems that discuss queerness and decoloniality in the context of Palestine. 🌱❤️‍🔥🇵🇸 This reading session is open to everyone who can respect each other and mutually learn and unlearn complexities. Texts we will read: 📕 Alqaisiya, W. (2018). Decolonial Queering: The Politics of Being Queer in Palestine. 📗 Poems by Mejdulene B. Shomali, Noor Hindi & Mohammed El-Kurd Sharing our incredible week of somatic stickiness research through the @tanzquartierwien performance laboratory 🌟 During these five days, we explored different ways of embodying stickiness, whether through releasing stuck emotions or sticking with our childhood upbringing and Asian heritage. Throughout this process, we reclaim the sticky and dirty experiences that made us who we are today, leaning on each other’s strength, creativity, and brightness. A huge thanks to the participants for sharing their hearts and energies through this transformative experience: @ooookarin @vgginia @debbsi @biancamayasari @suchart_wannaset @marymaggic Mai Ling, which started in Vienna in 2019, is an anonymous artist collective. They talk about and deal with racism, sexism, homophobia, and other unfair treatment, especially against Asian FLINT* (women*, lesbian, inter*, non-binary, and trans*). This session is perfect for those interested in art, community, and making a difference. Come and be part of this important conversation! Our HUNGER program starts next week ☄️ We've put together a guided tour, screening, and writing workshop just for you. We are thrilled to kick off the program in collaboration with @mai.ling.vienna artist collective. Join us for the greenhouse tour through the exhibition “Not Your Ornament” and a discussion on Mai Ling's new film “Becoming Stickiness.” Let us watch “Pavement Butterfly” starring Anna May Wong together 🎞️ 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐧𝐠 was the Hollywood's first Chinese-American star and also widely acclaimed in Austria and Germany - despite being reduced to racist stereotypes of either evil dragon ladies or rejected love interests who always those in the end. Her contributions to film history have been overlooked and erased for a long time and until today there is little awareness for racist, sexist depictions of Asian womxn. Exoticization, dehumanization and even yellow-facing still prevail in big productions. "𝐏𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞. 🎙️After the movie, we have a Film Talk with 𝐘𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐢, a cultural studies researcher and Anna May Wong expert, and@mai.ling.vienna Mai Ling Soup Bath is an immersive journey of the senses and contemplation, wherein we shall commune through a harmony of flavors, a meditative sound bath, and caress. Food has always been a sacred place of kinship, solace, care, and tenderness. Let us gather as one, sharing in the embrace of a communal repast, igniting our spirits and nourishing our collective existence. Collectively, we will brew a pot of familiar sensations and edible memoirs — an embodiment of our intertwined pasts, present pulsations, and hopes. At the end of the session, everyone is invited to share a warm meal together. Mai Ling's first monograph is published on the occasion of their exhibition NOT YOUR ORNAMENT at the Secession, September 15–November 12, 2023. It includes a conversation between the Asian diaspora association Perilla and the Vienna-based artists' collective Mai Ling as well as an excerpt from Anne Anlin Cheng's book Ornamentalism (2019), translated into German by Nicole Suzuki. Artistic intervention: Stick Together, kudzu bioplastic stickers produced in Vienna by Mai Ling and placed on the dust jacket. Each sticker has a different shape and size. The digital publications of the Secession are available for free download on the website. For the new episode of “Mai Ling Speaks”, we invite three artists, Serena Lee, Aya Momose, and Hyeji Nam, who are exploring the somatic practice and its relationality to movement, sound, and technology, touching on power dynamics, recuperation, and trance-like state. How can we explore pleasure and resistance under precarious situations within artistic practices? Mai Ling Speaks #9 connects and activates voices to foster communal ways of being, becoming, living, resisting, and surviving. Mai Ling was informed by Vienna's Asian diaspora community of the opera “Der goldene Drache”, that premiered yesterday 14 February 2023 at MusikTheater an der Wien, whose plot contains racist stereotypical expressions against Asians. The plot of the “Der goldene Drache” centers in a Chinese restaurant where one of the characters suffers from toothache. Due to his status as an illegal immigrant, he avoids seeing a dentist and throughout the opera the audience witnesses the decay of the tooth that is subsequently extracted unprofessionally in the kitchen. The tooth reappears in the bowl of soup of a stewardess on his trip to China. Last night we protested the last showing of “Der Goldene Drache” by spreading our public statement on the problematic theater piece while wearing identical masks that say “NOT YOUR OBJECT.” We were able to distribute over 200 copies to the audience as they walked out the door. We hope @theateranderwien can still reflect on their racist depiction of Asian immigrant experiences. We are not your objects. We are not your ornaments. We are Mai Ling. Mai Ling invites you to a sensorial cooking ritual where we collectively pound sticky rice to explore its stickiness as an agency of pleasure and trust. Stickiness, often associated with disgust, is a chain of effects which at once affect how certain bodies are shaped. On this festive evening, the rhythmic gesture of mashing and kneading rice into glutinous mass acts as a transformative and emancipatory potential for empowerment, resistance, and care. Let's stick together! 💫🔮🪄 Mai Ling Speaks#7 with WILTS Press @wiltspress and YELLOW PERIL @marymaggic in “Queering the Belvedere: Festival of Vocabularies Life Smashing Wor(l)ds: Cultural Practices for re/Imagining & un/Learning Vocabularies” @smashingworlds at Belvedere 21, organized by collaborations of kulturen in bewegung, ARA, PCAP at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Silent University in Austria and Queer Base. Recently, Mai Ling has been researching the racialized and feminized logic of Ornamentalism, a bedrock of Western aesthetics and colonialism. In next Friday's action, we will make kinship with decorative plants, transforming the “exotic and extracted” into a multilayered agency of becoming and survival. The event will be followed by the panel talk "Anti-Asian Racism in the Arts" (in German), moderated by Vina Yun. This Thursday, Mai Ling will give a presentation at the Department of Ortsbezogene Kunst / Site-Specific Art, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien 🐽 It's open to public 🐰 Performative Gathering at 7pm on Friday, the 18th at Brotfabrik Wien @kulturhausbrotfabrik within the festival “Vivências” curated by @depalmieri and @marissa.lobo ❤️‍🔥 From your first taste of amniotic fluids to the everyday rituals of meal prep, food is deeply intertwined with memory, kinship, comfort and care. It has been brought to our attention that the Donaufestival released a publication reader that contains a very problematic and racist text. The text is not worthy of time or energy as it is written with the very intention of provoking. What, however is problematic is that this text was given space, and released by the same festival that invited Mai Ling and other artists of color under the theme of “Counter Appropriation”. We feel instrumentalized to promote a fake gesture of diversity, as this text proves. Mai Ling would like to bring to task the festival and question its perpetuation of such racism. We invite you to join us live- streaming as we and other artists of the festival issue our statement. Join us tonight at 6pm on Instagram as Mai Ling cooks at @volkskundemuseumwien. The artist collective Mai Ling will cook and share facts and (mis) understandings related to Asian cuisine. The vital activities of cooking and eating can be experienced in this performance both as cultural and material actions. Afterwards, the museum invites the audience to exchange information on what was seen, heard and tasted over food and drinks. “Ling's Golden Imperial Shop” is a pop-up store — a food and supplies stopover and a space for conviviality and gathering. It traces a genealogy of elements constituting Mai Ling — as collective bodies and identities — questioning the display and its politics. The shop offers a concoction of objects, music and storytelling touching on intersectional issues of race, gender, sexuality and diaspora as well as politics of body (re)presentation, self-identification, self-stigmatization and the performativity of the “Asian” figure. Mai Ling re-narrates and re-portrays the once silenced “Mai Ling” (originated from the TV sketch by Gerhard Polt) with collective voices and multi-layered identities, in an effort to finally reclaim her speech, thorough re-appropriation and re-construction of the perception and treatment of gendered and racialized bodies in Western society. The exhibition Who is Mai Ling? showcases the sheer diversity of Mai Ling's artistic and activist projects produced though various means of presentation.