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

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/ [https://www.google.com/search?q=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 [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 [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

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 [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 [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 [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 [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/ [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 [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 [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

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 [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

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 [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]

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 [http://csun.academia.edu/MeiqinWang]