Meiyin Wang is the Producing Director of The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Centre, a new space set to open in 2023 on the World Trade Centre campus. She spoke to LIFT artistic director and CEO Kris Nelson live from New York about the state of the arts there and what her most hopeful vision for the future of arts and culture is.
Meiyin Wang is the Producing Director of The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Centre, a new space set to open in 2023 on the World Trade Centre campus. She spoke to LIFT artistic director and CEO Kris Nelson live from New York about the state of the arts there and what her most hopeful vision for the future of arts and culture is.
Plans For The Future with Meiyin Wang
Kris Nelson: [00:00:00] In 2020, the future was so bright. It was the decade we had all dreamed of. Then the unthinkable. Uh, pandemic that turned culture and society upside down now a year and a half later, what do five leading artists and cultural producers have to say about their plans for the future? I'm Chris Nelson, artistic director and CEO of lift London's biennial festival of international theater.
And this is plans for the future.
Joining me today from New York city, is producer and performance curator, Meiyin Wang.
Hey Meiyin, how are you?
Meiyin Wang: Hi
Kris Nelson: Hello, hello, hello. So, our guest today, [00:01:00] joining us from the morning of New York City is Meiyin Wang, a performance curator who is the producing director at a brand-new art space, can you believe it, The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Centre complex in New York City.
If you don't know Meiyin’s work, she is an esteemed theatre director, playwright, and producer. She was the festival director of Without Walls Festival at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. She was co-director of Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival and symposium in New York. Meiyin is responsible for bringing unbelievable projects to New York, a city where international presentation can be just as tough and as complicated as London.
Your work was really marked by creating an incredible space for the independent scene, including a really diverse set of artists and being the link that connected them to touring opportunities and presentations around the world. It really held a generation of makers. So, all roads point back to Meiyin, [00:02:00] she might not say it, but I can. She's been recognized internationally for her producing work, she was a recipient of the Josephine award from the League of Professional Theatre Women. She's a deep thinker, a savvy producer, and a leader in North American and worldwide curatorial practice.
So welcome Meiyin, how are you doing?
Meiyin Wang: Good, good morning. Good morning everybody. Yes, the very early morning. I was joking that I must love Kris so much that I got up at six in the morning for him.
Kris Nelson: I mean, it's different, right? It's a different kind of commute you're doing today.
Meiyin Wang: Yes. I would much rather be doing this in London live, but yes, this is where we are.
Kris Nelson: Well, soon I hope, but what's going on in New York at the moment?
Meiyin Wang: Well, in New York it is summer, it feels like we are fully reopened if you're just peeking in from the outside. The streets are full, the parks are full, there are performances, the restaurants [00:03:00] are inhabited. The COVID vaccination rate is pretty high in New York city itself, I think.
In New York state is about 55% fully vaccinated and about, I think, 70 with one shot. So, New York has been lucky. And so far as access to vaccinations, we're very lucky and should be very thankful for that for the access. But you know, we are all very aware of the Delta variant, it is sort of ticking up. So, for me it feels like we are getting a little bloom and blossom of activity, and I wonder what will happen as we get further into the fall.
In terms of the performing arts there are actual performances happening indoors. There's lots of performances happening outdoors in the [00:04:00] parks. So, Lincoln Centre has the Restart stages, an initiative that they're doing lots of programming around. It’s live distanced, outdoor performance.
Little Island is a new venue that has just opened. It is, uh, a sort of idyllic like little man-made park, with live performances and it's kind of like part tourist attraction, part park. You know New Yorkers love their parks in the summer.
Kris Nelson: Same design team as the highline, is that correct?
Meiyin Wang: I believe so, I just know who paid for it. But it's great, it's getting artists back into work and in front of audiences. New York city has a new program in which they are encouraging outdoor performances by independent artists so anybody can apply to do it. There's [00:05:00] lots of opinions about that.
Then the Armory just did the second or third performance which is indoors, and the Armory is such a massive space, so they have been able to do things like that. And Bill T Jones is performing in the newest one.
The Public Theatre is doing something by 600 high women, and so it feels like everybody is barrelling back. Broadway's opening in September, all the shows have announced they're opening. It's interesting, you know, right now I'm producing and I'm trying to get actors for workshops or readings and stuff, and people are getting booked up. People are like not having availability. So it's, it feels. It feels fast. [00:06:00] In terms of the reopening, people are going back to the offices. Schools are going back, I believe in the fall. So that's kind of like, generally what's happening, performance wise and sort of activity wise in New York.
Kris Nelson: And how has the sector been? Do they love it or do they all sort of feel like they've been pulled out of bed too quickly?
Meiyin Wang: You know, I've been in a couple of networks and groups, both in New York, regionally and a little bit internationally. And obviously people have different opinions, and various institutions just have different approaches, either because of what they do, or their budget size, or their venue’s set up.
You know, it's just all very different. What I do know is that from the administrator side, people are exhausted because they've been in a year and a half of triage. And now [00:07:00] people are supposed to open up, right? And even the questions of like returning to the office, which is what everybody or every sector is thinking about and debating over Facebook or whatnot.
Um, that is also very real for arts administrators because the rules are there, but their changing. So, Equity, for example, just sort of released a new set of guidelines, which is great, but it's a lot of playing catch up and we're doing a lot of work trying to reconcile the different rules between the different unions and the different states and the city.
So, we just have to sort of use our best judgment, but really, we have lots of people in our care, right? It's artists, it's audiences, it's crew, it's funders for arts administrators, and staff. So, there's lots of people in our care and everybody [00:08:00] has different priorities and different concerns. I think that's how I feel about it.
Kris Nelson: Yeah, it's similar here in that the reboot or the restart is happening really quickly. A lot of the things that people were calling for in the shutdown, when the whole sector was communicating with each other on social media. As in a place for freelancers and then responding to the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of those messages, or the thinking we were meant to be doing, or hopefully we are doing, feel like they've been done or are in process, and some of them feel very back and behind, like they've just kind of gone, ‘Okay, well let's just get the show up and then figure it out’. What's it been like for you at the Perelman Centre, where you're not due to open until 2023, correct?
Meiyin Wang: Correct. Early 2023.
Kris Nelson: Yeah. So has there been, [00:09:00] I mean you're forming this kind of new cosmos around you, of people to care for, artists and technicians, new donors and new audiences. What decisions have you made about responding in this moment or, or working in this moment?
Meiyin Wang: Well, I'll start with the political context specifically regarding the cultural sector.
With the onset of COVID and pandemic and Black Lives Matter, and specifically, the turning point of George Floyd and the reckoning of last summer, which has rippled through the world in such a profound way. There has been within the cultural sector also this reckoning, right?
So, within the US there has been these movements that have been created, really empowered by artists. For example, We See White American Theatre, [00:10:00] which I don't know how sort of prominent it has been overseas, but it's a document that was signed by 300 BIPOC artists, and it's an intense document with demands, right. Demands for white American theatre.
And what I see of it is, it's really a gift of the labours, thoughts and deep thinking of BIPOC artists and our administrators about the call for change within white American theatre, right? So like how to care for artists, how to have more humane working conditions, like have more BIPOC and Black, Indigenous and POC representation, all of that sort of thing.
So, We See White American Theatre came out in last June and has really sort of rippled through calls for accountability, in the arts and theatres. An onset of [00:11:00] accountability and opening up for accountability. Within dance, Creating New Futures was started by a bunch of dance artists, but for a certain time was led by Emily Johnson and Yanira Castro and some other dance artists who are really grappling with the fact that in the presenting world, in touring especially, with dance, it was so precarious and there were unjust practices in terms of cancellation of contracts and they weren't being paid. The absolute precarity of touring artists and so they've put together a document and a movement called Creating New Futures.
Another thing that has come up in the last year for me is the creation of the creative independent producers group. I came from the last four years as a creative producer, and the [00:12:00] idea is that we are the infrastructure for these independent artists, so if we go then it is even more difficult for independent artists to tour, you know.
And I'm also part of International Presenting Commons, which was a group of presenters in the US that are really concerned or really committed to the fact that we still need to bring in international artists. There still needs to be international exchange, that is essential for the cultural sector in the US, right? Yeah, for all the reasons.
So, there's all these networks, all these movements that are happening, and I think a lot of them have affected my thinking, my personal thinking in terms of building a new centre, which was planned 20 years ago. [00:13:00] We can talk about the history of it, which I'm still sort of digging through, I started a year ago. Um, is that we have to take into account all of these demands, all of these concerns and really it's how do you create a more equitable, more just, and more joyful sector, within the institution. So it comes from things as basic as contracts, right?
Force majeure clauses, everybody is talking about that. Insurance, who is holding the risk, right? And for the longest time artists, independent artists have been holding the most risk in terms of anything being shut down, anything being cancelled and yes, to a certain extent venues and theatres, they hold risk, but they're protected within the institution, obviously.
So those are [00:14:00] the things that I'm thinking about daily, as I'm working with folks who build new stuff, and in making a contract. I’m thinking what is this workshop? How do we welcome people? How do we do intake forms, making sure that we're talking about pronouns, all of those things, from the very basic. But really, for me, it's about the responsibility of care. Yeah, responsibility of care.
And really the reason why I wanted to go for this job and like return to New York, I was in the west coast for a while, is this new, exciting opportunity to build something new, right? And God knows, I started my job March 15th, 2020 just before the shutdown. I didn't know how ‘new’ I really had to take it.
Kris Nelson: Yes, so, you're working on the [00:15:00] framework of everything. Have you been doing activities or have you been working in the studio?
Meiyin Wang: We have, we're starting our commissioning process. And we have one piece, which I'll keep under wraps for a little bit though.
We just finished off our first workshop and hopefully it's going to be in our first season. The thing that is exciting and different, I think from the perspective of New York is that... You know how we met Kris, at Under The Radar, which was founded by Mark Russell, he's responsible for a lot of things that you talked about in the beginning. Under The Radar is a festival and is presenting and bringing things from outside into a producing theatre, right? And so within the US, there are various things that we won't get too much into, but mostly producing theatres are producers, and [00:16:00] presenting becomes very, very complicated because you have to get exemptions from unions, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that we're hoping to do is to combine a lot of those different venues in a way which we can invite artists into the building.
Right, so, it's going to be a hybrid.
Kris Nelson: A hybrid of a producing theatre meets an art centre, like a classic kind of centre, like the Walker or UCare, or the Barbican.
Meiyin Wang: Exactly, exactly. And I think that, that's the thing that's very exciting because those different parts of my career are all being pulled together.
The idea, and one of the things that we were working so hard at Under the Radar for was how to bring independent artists from the New York experimental slash avant-garde scene into the quote unquote ‘mainstream’. [00:17:00] Not that mainstream is the thing, but through the idea that the mainstream has more resources for them to do their work.
And so that, that's something I'm looking forward to as we sort of build this new centre.
Kris Nelson: In the city, like New York, which is crowded, you have a new model for making and presenting artists, but lots of people could say, oh my God, does New York need another theatre? What's on your heat map of what makes a great Perelman show or a great Perelman artist? What are you building towards?
Meiyin Wang: I mean, I think, it's interesting because I think it’s really about the thing that we are very concerned about. So, Bill Rauch is the artistic director, and Leslie Koch the president, who is responsible for Governor's Island in New York ,[00:18:00] and Bill Rausch just came from Oregon Shakespeare festival and before that from cornerstone in LA.
Really for us, it’s not just about the show or the artists, but also meeting of New York City and audiences, right? And people who come from different communities and boroughs and whatnot, right? And so, I think there are different definitions of success. But really it is about how are we connecting the work with the audiences that they want and need or didn't even know that they needed, to help the artists respond and work. But really becoming a very welcoming place for New York City, like the real New York city, right? Also, interestingly enough because it's in the financial district and its downtown, it was sort of envisioned almost 20 years ago now, [00:19:00] we wanted also a new sort of cultural nexus, to be part of a cultural nexus in downtown. So, we are inhabiting yes, a sacred space, but also a space that should have more cultural activity. And the transit hub is no joke. It is so good. My commute is so great.
All the trains go there. Even you know, pat trains from New Jersey, like we have like every single train that comes down to that nexus. So, the hope is that we are really a hub for the people in New York. Representing them, and in terms of talking about international work, how are we representing the home countries of different immigrants, right?
I'm an immigrant. How are you representing their stories, their backgrounds and reflecting the most exciting parts of what's happening internationally and that way [00:20:00] being part of the previous world trade centre.
Kris Nelson: Fantastic. So what's it like there? You mentioned it's a kind of sacred space.
How much do you have to think of the past and honouring 9/11 and the world trade centre? As much as you are focusing on the future?
Meiyin Wang: A little bit, I would say focusing on the future is also a way of honouring the past, right? I just belatedly finished this book, Up From Zero, which is sort of talking about the politics and the first four to five years of rebuilding after 9/11. And this idea of like the machinations of all the architecture firms and the real estate developers and all of those things into like creating the quote unquote ‘master plan’ of the site, redeveloping the site and the cultural centre was [00:21:00] always part an essential part of it, right? And I think its extremely moving to think about how people were actually acknowledging that need, to be a place for culture, for joy and connection. There is already a 9/11 memorial museum there, so there is already a place for remembrance and grief, grieving and healing.
Um, and we will always be sort of in relationship to that. But I do think that, that is not going to be our sole and main purpose. I'm clear that that's not going to be our sole and main purpose. Um, and what we're trying to do is really honour the spirit and dynamic energy of New York city, right? And in terms of like why another cultural centre and why another venue, first of all, it was planned 20 years ago and it's taken that long to build.
But [00:22:00] really, I don't understand this idea of scarcity. The converstaion should be why isn't there adequate funding for all? Why isn't there audiences for all? Is it about the programming that's happening? Is it about what are our cultural priorities are? You know, as a city, as a state, as a country.
I think for me, that's an interesting question right now. Like why are you building it and taking resources away from other people, right? I just think if you take it down to the microcosm. That's how artists talk about other artists, you know, it could be a way of people talking about the artists or other work like this idea. We should think about it America. Sorry, I'm getting very excited at 8:30 in the morning, but we are resourced country, [00:23:00] right? This is a resource country. So that idea I don't understand, I think that from my perspective. I am so excited about creating a space for artists to do exciting, interesting, introspective, challenging, political, you know, joyful, silly work. All of those things. And I think there should be other spaces for that within New York. You know I started here, I started here 20 years ago. Oh my God, I moved here 20 years ago.
Kris Nelson: Happy anniversary!
Meiyin Wang: Happy anniversary, specifically, 18 years ago. And you know, from 2010 onwards. There's a great article by Helen Shaw, when we turn into 2020, talking about the last decade of experimental work and [00:24:00] it's a moving to see her move through the history of the decade. I believe one of the things that she mentioned and something that's very sort of specific to me is that a lot of the smaller venues have closed, right?
The Ontological, for example and a lot of the smaller venues have also levelled up, like Bushwick star, and so it's the it's a city of change. And I think that as much as this big building can be responsive to that change, and be as flexible as possible to be able to receive the inspiration from the city, and from the artists and from the thinkers, the better off the promo will be.
So that's sort of like a roundabout [00:25:00] way of saying why a new venue.
Kris Nelson: Yeah, brilliant. Earlier in our call you were speaking about the similar things that have happened in New York around the messaging about the cultural reset, the conversation New York artists and their presenters were having. And you also just described New York as a city of change.
Why do you think New York has such an incredible influence on how the rest of the world's culture works, in terms of cultural production? Are there lessons to learn from how New York has responded in this past year to the pandemic that we should think of, or examples that you've seen even that might not be about New York, but from New Yorkers that you think that's great, let's keep that.
Meiyin Wang: It's interesting, right? I think that, I don't know if this is just [00:26:00] New York. I think everybody kind of just did it.
It's not impossible to pivot at any point, right? It's like we could never get anything done by working from home, it has been done. We can never do anything by rehearsing online, it's been done, right? So, I think that this idea, for a certain sector or a segment of the sector is that this could never be done. And it's just been very clear that it can, right. If there is will and effort put to it. I mean, I think there has been a real change, or a significant change in leadership in [00:27:00] the founders or the leaders of cultural institutions who have been there for like 15, 20, 30 years.
And there is currently a churn, right? So, New York Theatre Workshop, Jim Nicola bless him, so influential, is stepping down, right? Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, has stepped down and so it feels like there is a change coming. Younger leaders, BIPOC people and global majority leaders are sort of taking over.
And the thing that I will say is we need to, as a field, support them; the funders need to support them. As these folks are coming into sort of [00:28:00] the historically white institutions, right. And it's not just about audiences, it's also about the staff, it's about the artists. How are we as a field supporting these leaders and these changes that we've been calling for?
Come on. It's not like, okay, great you're in charge now. How are you actually shoring up the defences so that we can weather this pandemic so that we can weather, I guess the backlash. The political backlash of the context of the US in more conservative cities, all of those things.
So I feel like that is a cultural reset there really, but how are we shoring up the defences so that the cultural reset can keep on happening, can be protected? I think that's the task ahead.
Kris Nelson: Yeah, I agree. There's so much in those in those appointments, that's not about [00:29:00] representation, but that is also about agendas for transformation and institutions are out of practice, on the whole, to respond to that kind of thing
Meiyin Wang: Out of practice or don't have the skills.
Kris Nelson: Un-practiced.
Meiyin Wang: Yes. Yeah, and a term has sort come up, which is Racial hygiene, somebody had mentioned it as sort of like climate hygiene.
So, this idea of a constant practice is something you have to do every day, right? It's not the one training, once a year, you have to practice it every day. And the idea of hygiene, I thought ah, this is a fascinating, new thought.
Kris Nelson: It’s a great moto. Where do you think [00:30:00] New York's influential, independent, experimental, avant-garde, glorious scene is heading?
Meiyin Wang: I was thinking about this question. It's all how you define it, right? If you take a historical view of New York avant-garde, that's its early generation. The idea of the avant-garde it is about what the name is. I mean, I was just at the glorious creative capital retreat, they had a whole group of artists that were presenting new projects.
And I think the avant-garde, the experimental, the independent scene is alive and well in terms of the forging of new forms. The deepening of thinking or approach to [00:31:00] difficult material and some very fun material. I do think that because of the last year, and even from before the last year, the avant-garde is even further breaking this idea of what performance can be.
And it has split across the mediums. I think one of the approaches that I see a lot of artists doing is wanting to create really different utopias and now physical utopias. This is not what I've heard, but from my experience.
They want to create residencies. They want to create spaces that are their own utopia, right? So, a lot of people have wanted to create a place where artists can be in residence with artists, wanted to create a place where people can come in and heal, wanted to create a place where people can come and practice sorcery.
I [00:32:00] love it. And it's not about performativity, it’s not about selling tickets, it's about the experience. And it's a little bit more of taking back space from the capitalism of performance, right? The transactional nature that performance sometimes can have and resetting or rethinking what that is.
It's interesting in terms of how I, as a producer and curator, can support that in the current space and resources that I have. A lot of the things that I'm thinking about is how to support the sector. And this is what we did at Under the Radar a lot is that even if we couldn't support it, it was about being the matchmaker, finding a connection, sending somebody to you, for example, you know.
Or aligning different possible funding and just being a resource for [00:33:00] that scene even. Yeah, so that's one thought that I had about where the scene is going. I do think as a younger generation, the next artists come up into, not the mainstream, but sort of into a more substantial view then it becomes more visible. That's the word visible. They've always been there obviously.
Yeah, the younger artists are actually splitting across the mediums and my job as sort of a medium generation person is to [00:34:00] not be afraid of that. And not to go ‘no, it should be this, it has always been like this. It should be about bodies and space and darkness and presence and all those things.’
I love that, but how can I support what the new vision is also.
Kris Nelson: Yeah, You know, we did this call out for this concept touring project, all about ideas traveling without people traveling, and sharing concepts from person to person. And we did the call-out in March or February.
We had 300 applicants. We could have populated the residency three or four times over. And what really struck me was how, even in a year, how fluid everyone's thinking had become that they were imagining systems of working, like you [00:35:00] say, utopias, projects, formats that don't fit necessarily the venues we have. None of them said put that into 600-seater.
But there was an incredible sense of fluency with new ways of thinking. Even for artists who I would think of as a great artist that I would see on stage because they're an absolute beast on the stage when they perform, and they're a virtuosic performer, so you go to see them because of their presence, their charisma.
And then to have a very presence-based or persona-based artists come forward with a project that was ‘I'm erasing myself, and this is going to be shared by audiences and participants.’ It's like, wow. I was really bowled over because I remember that period of time when I thought where will the ideas come from?
How are we ever going to meet this global [00:36:00] crisis? And the ideas are coming fast and furious.
Meiyin Wang: I'm never worried about the ideas, right? Totally. I'm never worried about the ideas and the creativity and the impulses. I think one of the things in terms of where artists are going for the future is that there is definitely a pull of the commercial properties, right?
Even more so writers for plays are being brought up by HBO and TV and everything can be made to a Hulu show nowadays, which is great because that is going to support the artists because the performing art field has done a very bad job of supposing that, right?
[00:37:00] And even zoom theatre, podcasts, audio theatre now is being supported by audible, right? So, it's all of these things that can be an inspiration and attention for us as performing art curators to really work with, and saddles the potential for artists. Or can we just say that is not theatre and that is not performance. You know those are the choices really, how do we really embrace that so that we are still reflecting what is happening, right? Because that's really our job, reflecting what is happening, reflecting the ideas, showcasing and [00:38:00] platforming what the questions are and the forms that they can take, and not be wedded to a certain idea of what performance is. That's my ongoing challenge.
Kris Nelson: Yeah creating the frames and the structures especially for these emerging forms. Then the offer to the audience is so important.
You talked about inviting New Yorkers into this almost downtown living room. How are you finding them, have you found them already or do you have to wait for the lights to be on and the tentacles to be out, and the thing to be on before that happens?
Meiyin Wang: Where we are is that there will definitely be alliances made before we [00:39:00] open. I think we are in the final strategy stage in terms of like what we want to do. It's a vast city, right? We are only one building and we actually have a pretty small staff. We're building up, but we're going to be a tight ship.
And so really it's about where we are directing resources and attention, because that is finite as everything is. But we are in the strategy stage. I think that it's also about identifying our stakeholders within our proximity, but also the communities and groups of people that feel invested in the building and the area, in terms of the work that we're hoping to share, [00:40:00] who will be excited about it and who will it have somatic resonance with or geographic resonance with? So that is where we are currently, and lots of talking to people, just learning and listening, learning and listening.
Kris Nelson: I'm wondering, what's inspiring you now and what's keeping your fire going, art or otherwise?
Meiyin Wang: Art or otherwise? Somebody that I knew from the before the pandemic, that I've been sort of watching unfold is Kristina Wong. Do you know, Kristina?
She's a LA based performing artist. She does primarily solo work. She's very funny, at the beginning of the [00:41:00] pandemic she started sewing masks on her Hello Kitty sewing machine. And she grew the network to this giant network called the auntie sewing squad, ASS for short, and Rebecca Solnit is an honorary auntie, as she says. They have been sewing masks and doing mutual aid.
Everybody should follow her on Facebook. It is rich, it's a complete outrage that her and her network still need to be sewing masks or trying to source N95 masks for farm workers in the west coast, with the fires, right?
So, it's really an example of how literally one person can start a movement. [00:42:00] To make the world a little bit better through intense rage, which is very inspiring for me. And she's still making her own performance work. She's actually somebody that you should follow Kris.
Kristina Wong is somebody that I've been following and is very moving. She's very funny. So, yeah, artists who are just sort of making their own way. That is always inspiring to me.
Kris Nelson: Yeah, some of those sides sidesteps have been like someone kind of stepping off the road in a way, doing something on the side. It has been inspiring for me to watch people doing things like that. I guess one of the first things for me was probably that Circle Jerk live [00:43:00] performance that was done all online from Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley just because it felt like the first thing I'd seen in the internet theatre world that was in the form, in the medium that is beautifully hybrid and totally goofball in the sense of totally matching the crazy places that the internet can take you.
So Kristina Wong for sure. Is that Kristina with a K or a Ch?
Meiyin Wang: With a K. There are also some other pieces that were maybe last year, Theatre in Quarantine in New York, I think he's been doing very interesting work. But there was this one piece with Heather Christian, which I watched and I had my six year old daughter with [00:44:00] me. The music was beautiful, super abstract. The piece was about Mother Teresa, so it was an abstract piece thinking about Mother Teresa. But my six year old was entranced, as was I, I'm like, ‘Oh, that is amazing!’ It was performed live and was very well edited live. So it was like an art film, basically.
So that was in the many online pieces that we partook in. That was one I particularly enjoyed, a special one.
Kris Nelson: Fabulous. This is the big one Meiyin what's your hopeful vision of what arts and culture might look like or be like in the future?
Meiyin Wang: I was hoping you were going to ask me what Netflix show I was currently watching but ok.
Kris Nelson: You can pick one if you like!
Meiyin Wang: [00:45:00] What was the question? Most hopeful thing for the future?
Kris Nelson: Yeah.
Meiyin Wang: I spent the last two weeks helping my husband, Eric, take care of things, his mom passed in February, and I’ve been helping him clear out her house. And she was a potter. She was an amazing Potter. She has an amazing life story, they ended up in Morgantown, West Virginia and so we’ve spent a lot of time there, like two weeks sort of figuring out this house, which was like 50 years of memories.
And sort of like different lifetimes and different families because their house was the constant. And having not spent much time in Morgantown it was [00:46:00] also so beautiful to see how she had this community around her in this small town in West Virginia. And I think, I guess my hope in general is that people will be able to really find and keep community.
At a time when we are going so fast and everything could be online. And we are connected, but we're not really, like how to have a physical community? And how to hang on to that. That is something that I've been thinking about for the last month really.
Yeah, does that make sense? How do you actually hang on to physical community as well as imagined communities and [00:47:00] your artistic community work community, but literally like how? I just moved to a new place and I would really like to know my neighbours now, right?
It's so simple, it's so basic, maybe everybody else is doing it already. But that for me is what I'm hopeful for in the future, that folks are very intentional and really care for their immediate community. So, that’s what I would say.
Kris Nelson: Thank you. It's really wonderful to talk to you today. Those are great words to leave us on. So if you're listening, take that to heat, take care of your local community, please, as you're imagining all those big and wonderful things. Meiyin Wang thank you very much. I wish all the love to you out in New York and see you really soon.[00:48:00]
Meiyin Wang: Take care, bye.
Thank you for joining us today. This is one of five conversations in our series plans for the future. So do check out the other episodes where I speak with intrepid arts makers around the world to find out more about lift and our work challenging, artistic, political, and social conventions, supporting an equitable rebuild post-Brexit end the pandemic, and connecting the worlds of London.
Follow us @LIFTfestival or visit us at liftfestival.com. Even better, sign up to our newsletter for a monthly dose of lift. We promise not to bore you. LIFT is a national portfolio organization supported by Arts Council England. Plans for the Future is part of our summer season and our 40th anniversary Lift Loves London made possible by cultural recovery funding.