BlogInterviewsKultur

Bild: From the serial „Who is Mai Ling?” (Performance, public inter­vention | 2019 ) © Mai Ling

In dieser Interviewreihe stellen wir euch kurz (post)migrantische Selbstorganisationen vor, mit denen uns poli­tische Arbeitsansätze, Inhalte und Ziele ver­binden. Wir haben fest­ge­stellt, dass die ver­schie­denen lokalen Netzwerke und Initiativen oftmals nichts von­ein­ander wissen. Diese Reihe ist ein kleiner Beitrag zur Sichtbarmachung der (post)migrantischen Vielfalt. Je nach Sprachpräferenzen der Interviewpartner*innen werden die Interviews auf Deutsch oder Englisch durch­ge­führt. Wir freuen uns, euch dieses Mal das Kollektiv Mai Ling aus Wien vorzustellen.

1. How and why did you start the Mai Ling Collective? Which inspi­ration keeps you going?

Mai Ling 1: The founding of the asso­ciation MAI LING began with the idea and eagerness to exchange with Asian migrants living in Vienna. Many female Asians were expressing their dif­fi­culties living in Austria — that was often a matter of sur­vival. Although all migrants face racism in their day-to-day lives, Asian women also expe­rience sexism. The com­bi­nation of racism and sexism made it harder for us to live here. 

Last year, I wanted to interview Asian migrants about their lives so I asked Mika, a friend and member of Mai Ling, if she was inte­rested in orga­nising a meeting with all Asian artists that she knew of and were living here. Before the meeting, we didn’t have in mind that we would find an asso­ciation and artist coll­ective, however, after our first meeting, we rea­lised the necessity of for­ma­lising our com­mitment to regu­larly gather and exchange. From then onwards, we founded Mai Ling, an artist coll­ective and asso­ciation with the focus on Asian women living in Austria. 

The artist coll­ective aimed to make our exis­tence visible by fos­tering the reco­gnition of our voices. As I men­tioned before, Asian, female and LGBTQ com­mu­nities face an inter­sec­tional layer of racism, sexism, homo­phobia and other forms of pre­ju­dices in their daily lives. Unfortunately the know­ledge about us is insuf­fi­cient and is often repre­sented through white lenses. For this reason, the con­di­tions, nar­ra­tives, chal­lenges and embodied expe­ri­ences are not taken into con­side­ration. This is because struc­tu­rally, we are excluded from the main­stream dis­course and we lack plat­forms for repre­sen­tation. My biggest moti­vation for working as a member of Mai Ling is to find an outlet for my anger and frus­tra­tions when it comes to day-to-day racism and sexism.

Mai Ling 2: When we first founded Mai Ling, we had our first public event <Who is Mai Ling?>, during which we dealt with the cha­racter Mai Ling as no one knew who she was — she is me, she is us, but also not. My name isn’t Mai Ling. The crossing of iden­tities and the self-denial of Mai Ling inspired us and the way we worked as diverse artists and rese­ar­chers in the cul­tural scene. 

Many of us were seriously aware of the chal­lenges living as an Asian woman in Europe. We knew from our expe­ri­ences that the voice of one person is often for­gotten and that is why we chose to use the complex figure Mai Ling. She is a figure whose identity is con­stantly in flux and being redefined.

2. How would you translate/transfer the „speaking“ or „talking back“ of Mai Ling into your everyday life?

Mai Ling 1: After I started to work as Mai Ling, I stopped per­so­na­lising the racist/sexist expe­ri­ences I had as I knew it hap­pened to Asian females in one form or another. We had created a space where we felt safe and understood. At the same time, I felt a sense of kinship with Asians and we wanted to show our soli­darity with each other.

Mai Ling 2: Mai Ling is the name of our artist collective/association and natu­rally, all our art­works are signed under this name. We decided to do this because Mai Ling in Gerhard Polt’s sketch sym­bo­lised a figure that crossed over various Asian countries and thus cul­tural ste­reo­types. As a group with members from dif­ferent East Asian countries, we wanted to reclaim the figure of Mai Ling and give her our own voice. 

The anonymity of Mai Ling also lends us certain power to be radical and, at the same time, we can hide behind a figure whose identity is con­stantly being rede­fined. With many members of Mai Ling being first gene­ration migrants, anonymity also acts as a form of pro­tection so that our acti­vistic work does not clash with existing bureau­cratic challenges.

3. How did your life change since the corona-virus media debates started?

Mai Ling 1: My first lan­guage is neither German nor English and, for this reason, I received rela­tively scarce infor­mation about the Covid-19 deve­lo­p­ments. But I am already expe­ri­encing the effects of the Covid-19 media debates. Although there is racism and sexism in my daily life in Vienna, I never had to be afraid to go outside. Since Covid-19, I pre­ferred to not go outside, not because of the fear of infection, but rather, the reac­tions from strangers whenever they saw me. 

Mai Ling 2: My daily life didn’t dra­ma­ti­cally change since Covid-19. There was already racism and pre­judice towards Asian people before this crisis. However, Covid-19 media debates made racism more visible and we wit­nessed more hate speeches towards Asian people. It felt like a social threat.

Mai Ling 3: I became hyper-sensitised to my sur­roun­dings and espe­cially towards the “white gaze”. Although the gaze is some­thing I expe­ri­enced already before Covid-19, this time it was more severe and it also escalated into looks of disgust. Different forms of micro­ag­gres­sions escalated and it is exhausting to have to go about our daily lives with the alertness in mind that we might be racially attacked for looking “Asian”.

It is also exhausting to see our­selves through the eyes of others. My identity is con­stantly being ques­tioned and defined by the people around me. Living in Europe stripped me from my ability to just be me, because I was con­stantly being defined by those around me and the way those chose to see me.

4. Do you have any new upcoming pro­jects you would like to tell kori­en­tation & friends about?

Mai Ling 1: A cooking project with Migrant Kitchen in Vienna and we will show our audio and video works in the Fluctoplasma fes­tival in October. Next year, we plan to have an exhi­bition in VBKÖ.

Mai Ling 2: I am looking forward to the exhi­bition that we are going to organize next year. The exhi­bition was planned for February 2021, but that will pro­bably be post­poned. We will work both as an artist and as a curator. I am very excited and curious about how this exhi­bition will turn out and show our per­spec­tives as Mai Ling.

More about MAI LING: https://www.mai-ling.org/


Kultur

v o i c e m a i l #4: weiter…aber wie?

PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER THE TONE..beeeepppp..

VOICEMAIL ist eine Spoken Word, Comedy und Musik Veranstaltungsreihe, die Menschen mit asia­ti­schem Background eine Bühne bietet. Asiatische Menschen in Deutschland werden nicht nur oft über­sehen oder „unsichtbar gemacht“, sondern auch überhört. Bei VOICEMAIL haben asia­tische Menschen des­wegen die Möglichkeit ‚auf’s Band zu sprechen‘, um ihre Erfahrungen, Gefühle und Geschichten zu teilen. Drei Formate (Text, Performance, Standup-Comedy) sollen ver­schiedene Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten bieten – und für Abwechslung sorgen!

Bei VOICEMAIL stehen diese Themen im Vordergrund: „asia­tische Identität“ (was ist ‚asia­tisch‘? Wer „darf“ sich als asia­tisch iden­ti­fi­zieren? Wer wird reprä­sen­tiert?), Aufenthaltsrecht (Staatsbürgerschaft, Künstler*innen-Visum, Studierendenvisum etc.), Aktivismus, Rassismuserfahrungen, mental health, Sexualität, Dating, Generationskonflikte. Heavy heavy but it will be fun! Versprochen!

Das anschlie­ßende Open Mic ist offen für alle BPOC (Black and People of Color).

VOICEMAIL is a spoken word, comedy and music event that pro­vides a stage for people of Asian descent (which is NOT rest­ricted to East/ South East Asia) in Germany.
Open Stage is open to all BPOC.

LINE UP
Arpana Aisha Berndt
Kevin Groen
Marie Yan
Moni Zhang
Turke Chini
Jade Green River

Sprache: Englisch und Deutsch
Flüsterübersetzung.
Veranstaltungsraum ist barrierefrei.
Food will be pro­vided by Rice is Life !

Banner Design: thao h.

Workshop

ASIAN FOOD – more than just a mouth orgasm
Let’s get tog­ether to share our favourite snacks/dishes with one another!

👁to Eye workshop 👁
🧧Donation based
Asian dia­spora only ✌️

When migration occurs, one may have to adopt a new lan­guage, way of dressing, way of being, and many other aspects in order to assi­milate. But food, well, the Asian dia­spora ain’t letting that goodness go nowhere! Food is one of the only ways migrants connect to their cul­tures, ancestry and homelands.

During the workshop, we will explore, share, discuss, connect and heal with food. We will look at our food from dif­ferent per­spec­tives: food both as a poli­tical issue and as self pre­ser­vation. Taking into con­side­ration that ‚we are what we eat‘ how powerful could it be to change the rela­ti­onship to our food?

Food and eating habits/rituals will help us to navigate our con­fron­tation with identity. Given that food is an essential player, that touches many places in our lives, it becomes a powerful tool to connect us to our driving forces such as our emo­tions and memories.

We ask par­ti­ci­pants to bring a favourite dish/snack/ingredient they would like to share with the com­munity and its bellies. It doesn’t have to be home made. It just has to mean some­thing to you.

Korea Verband have been kind enough to offer their space for this workshop! It’s a beau­tiful location and will be show­casing their new exhi­bition! We want to create a more intimate setting and spots are limited. Please RSVP!

Sarah Naqvi and Vicky Truong have been dis­cussing the next few work­shops and are very excited to share their work with the Asian dia­spora. As they are still to attain funding, they are doing this work vol­un­t­arily. If you want to make a donation to cover costs, please get in touch with them!

In coope­ration with DAMN (Asian Germans, Make Noise) Group.

Venue: Korea Verband (Quitzowstr. 103, 10551 Berlin)

Workshop

A safer space for people of Asian descent.
Everyone iden­ti­fying them­selves as ASIAN is welcome!

Let’s talk Internalised Racism and Whitewashing!
No, we’re not going to be dis­cussing how to get whiter brighter laundry.

FREE regis­tration at: https://bit.ly/2WAaGqt
Donations appreciated!

We are people of the global majority! So, why are we the minority?
Whiteness and Eurocentric ideo­logies are often held on a pedestal, and we find our­selves con­stantly oppressed through fake supe­riority com­plexes in order to create fake infe­riority com­plexes around the globe. This is done in order to maintain white supremacy and attempt to undermine the dignity, inte­grity and lon­gevity of the majority of the world’s people.

Having been born, raised or residing in a pre­do­mi­nantly Euro-centric society, one may inherit biases that affect how we per­ceive one’s self-worth and those of other eth­ni­cities. Being able to unlearn and achieve equality will take gene­ra­tions, but learning to embrace uni­queness and indi­vi­duality can begin now – within ourselves.
For there is no admi­rable self to aspire towards, rather a self to love with all the complexities.

Throughout the worskhop we aim to discuss topics such as the expe­rience of ali­en­ation and inter­na­lized racism ope­rated by the White gaze. By sharing stories we’re striving to find a safe space to heal tog­ether and empower each other!

Venue: Aquarium am Südblock (Skalitzer Str. 6, 10999 Berlin)

Hosted by Vicky Truong and Sarah Naqvi

Poster by Vicky Truong

Workshop

ENTRY: Donation based – between 2 to 5 euros (wha­tever you can afford)
For people of Asian descent.

“CHING CHONG. KONICHIWA. NIHAAAOOOOO.” (Ridiculing with eyes pulled back)
“Asian eyes are so beautiful.”
“all y’all look alike.”
“Same same.”
“oh, so you’re not a real Asian”

Let’s talk race and intersectionality

WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ASIAN?
The shape of their eyes, nose, mouth, ears, body?
The texture and shade of one’s skin?
The way one speaks?

Well, appar­ently it’s not for “Asian” people to define

This workshop will be led by Vicky Truong who hosted the first session during the WE ARE NOT SAME SAME fes­tival. The space aims to be “safer” and we ask that people who are not of Asian descent please not attend. Because, I mean, it’s like someone who’s not pregnant wanting to attend a birth giving workshop because they’re intrigued or want to just listen and learn; or even maybe insert their own inex­pe­ri­enced opi­nions. LOL, could you imagine.

The workshop’s aims are to provide a space for know­ledge, healing, con­nection and empowerment.

This workshop cannot deny limi­ta­tions to inclu­sivity. It will be in English (hop­efully with trans­lation pro­vided), but will use gender inclusive lan­guage. It is wheel­chair accessible.

Doors open at 18:30
Workshop will be for about 2 hours with a break.
We will have the space for 3–4 hours.
Hope to see y’all there

Venue: Aquarium am Südblock (Skalitzer Str. 6, 10999 Berlin)

Kultur

Let’s get a little bit closer

PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER THE TONE..beeeepppp..

VOICEMAIL ist eine Spoken Word, Comedy und Musik Veranstaltungsreihe, die Menschen mit asia­ti­schem Background eine Bühne bieten möchte. Asiatische Menschen in Deutschland werden nicht nur oft über­sehen oder „unsichtbar gemacht“, sondern auch überhört. Bei VOICEMAIL haben asia­tische Menschen des­wegen die Möglichkeit ‚aufs Band zu sprechen‘, um ihre Erfahrungen, Gefühle und Geschichten zu teilen. Drei
Formate (Text, Performance, Standup-Comedy) sollen ver­schiedene Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten bieten – und für Abwechslung sorgen!

Bei VOICEMAIL stehen diese Themen im Vordergrund: „asia­tische
Identität“ (was ist ‚asia­tisch‘? Wer „darf“ sich als asia­tisch iden­ti­fi­zieren? Wer wird reprä­sen­tiert?), Aufenthaltsrecht (Staatsbürgerschaft, Künstler*innen-Visum, Studierendenvisum etc.), Aktivismus, Rassismuserfahrungen, Depressionen, Sexualität, Dating, Generationskonflikte. Heavy heavy but it will be fun! Versprochen!

Das anschlie­ßende Open Mic ist offen für alle BPOC (Black and People of Color).

Moderation: Liên und Thao
Eintritt: FREE – but donation very welcome!
Sprache: Englisch und Deutsch
Flüsterübersetzung.
Veranstaltungsraum ist barrierefrei.
Food will be pro­vided by Rice is Life !

VOICEMAIL is a spoken word, comedy and music event that pro­vides a stage for people of Asian descent in Germany.
Open Stage is open for all BPOC.

WARNINGGG: This event does not deliver cus­to­mised cherry blossom haiku, fortune cookie wisdom, chinanood­le­boxed fairy­tales nor does it aim to enforce sin­gular per­spec­tives on Asian cul­tures (Asia =/= East-Asia) or (German) Asian identities.

Event will be in English and German.

LINEUP:
Duc Pham
Kübra Varol (Cupid)
Litchi Ly Friedrich
Mai My
Sanna (Heartbeatartbeat)
Shanti Suki

Financially sup­ported by interflugs.
Banner Design: vicky t & thao h

Kultur

VOICEMAIL is a spoken word, comedy and per­for­mance event that pro­vides a stage for people of Asian descent in Germany.

WARNING: This event does not deliver cus­to­mised cherry blossom haiku, fortune cookie wisdom, chinanood­le­boxed fairy­tales nor does it aim to enforce sin­gular per­spec­tives on Asian cul­tures or (German) Asian identities.

The event and its Open Mic are open to everyone but we will espe­cially give space to Black and People of Color (esp. people of Asian descent). We DO NOT tolerate racist, homo­phobic or sexist content and behaviour.

Lineup:
Sina (Spoken Word)
Seoyoung (Performance)
Sailesh (Spoken Word)
Mazyar (Spoken Word)
Marisa (Comedy)
Kartini (Spoken Word)

Location:
Aquarium (Skalitzer Str. 6, 10999 Berlin)
//
Catering by Rice Is Life
Banner design by Vicky Truong
Verein

Treffen für korientation-Mitglieder und alle, die es werden wollen

Im Januar laden wir unsere alten und neuen Mitglieder und alle, die an einer Mitgliedschaft inter­es­siert sind oder eigene Projektideen haben zu unserem ersten Jour fixe im neuen Jahr ein.
Dabei wird es die Möglichkeit geben sich gegen­seitig ken­nen­zu­lernen und auch Ideen für zukünftige korientation-Veranstaltungen im Jahr 2019 zu sammeln und/oder weiterzuentwickeln.
Welche Veranstaltungen wünscht ihr euch? Was wolltet ihr schon immer mal rea­li­sieren? Was braucht die asiatisch-deutsche Community in Berlin und Deutschland?

Das Treffen wird im kori­en­tation Büro stattfinden:
Fehrbelliner Str. 7
10119 Berlin
Sonntag, 20.01.2019
16 Uhr

Kultur

TALKS // PERFORMANCES // ART // PHOTOGRAPHY // WORKSHOPS // MUSIC // FOOD // DRINKS // INSTALLATIONS

An inter­sec­tional feminist event for people of South, East, South-East Asian descent, the LGBTQIA+ com­munity and allies. Come tog­ether, share expe­ri­ences, begin dis­course and find empowerment.

Women* have his­to­ri­cally been the object of sexual explo­itation and fetishism, however that type of objec­ti­fi­cation increases when it comes to women* of colour and LGBTQIA+. Of course, these are not the only topics of importance but a com­munity that requires more visi­bility and solidarity.

The WE ARE NOT SAME SAME event high­lights the mis­con­ception that all Asian countries can be placed under the one umbrella, without regard or respect towards their dif­fe­rences in culture, indi­vi­duality and history. This event follows up the I AM NOT A FORTUNE COOKIE event and will be spot­lighting the impli­ca­tions encir­cling exo­ti­fi­cation, sexism, objec­ti­fi­cation, racism, ste­reo­typing and diaspora.

It is apparent that many shy away from dis­cussing the social, cognitive and emo­tional roots of pre­judice. This is a way we can come tog­ether to begin dis­courses sur­rounding issues within our society and better under­stand how to move towards a more equal future. I invite you all to come and enjoy this two-day event!

Location:
Studio Chérie (Hobrechtstr. 66, 12047 Berlin)

website: goo.gl/4PHFa4
program: goo.gl/Mbh8ax

Produced by Vicky Truong