Now you are formally part of the community of Europe-based Asian artists, and you are invited to shape our forum, which will take place this December. The community members will jointly make a decision on what to discuss in the 90-minute conference. The discussion will be entirely focused on making each artist member’s explorative career and concerns heard in the community. In the first place, what concerns have you brought to the fore from your recent practice in Europe? You may list the top five urgent questions that you have in mind and that you have been wishing to discuss within a supportive community. 

The five questions may be generated from your current stage of creation, concerning initiation, rehearsing, aesthetics, blueprints for the next project, etc. The questions may also be related to finance, administration, fundraising, organizing, archiving, production, marketing, etc. Once we have received questions from all the forum members, they will be presented in relevant categories as a poll on the issue bank page on the symposium website. By then, it will be the second time that you will be invited again to exercise your participant’s right to vote for three “gigantic” questions that you have the strongest will to discuss in the conference, and so these three questions will be the main body of the forum this year!

Linda Jiayun Gao-Lenders

1. How does the diasporic condition affect my work?

2. How can I talk about memories that are not mine?

3. How to not be exoticized/fetishized on stage?

4. What does it mean to be “in-between”?

5. How can I find colleagues dealing with the same questions?

Yaxin Luo

6. What kind of intercultural theatre work do we urgently need in the current era and global context? 

7. Are there any new and useful skills that could be widely referenced to balance the power dynamic and address cultural conflicts in a modern intercultural theatre team? 

8. How to promote cooperation between theater-makers across regions? 

9. What marketing strategies should be updated in the post-epidemic era for intercultural theatre work? 

10. How to secure long-term and stable financial/resource support for Asian theater creators in Europe? 

Xiao Ke

11. When Asian artists present artwork in Europe, how to identify their identity? 

12. What is the political correctness in the European performance field for Asian artists?

13. What is the emergent issue or topic between European art fields and Asian Artists? 

14. How different when Asian artists perform in Asia and Europe? 

15. When we talk about Asia? What does it mean? Which areas or countries do we think of?

Ziyan Liu

16. For artists who are just starting out, how to get more advice and critiques in the creative process? 

17. How to get financial support? 

18. How to find a stage? 

19. How to seek collaboration with cultural institutions in the home country during the creative process? 

19. Is it possible to set up an Asian artists organisation in Europe and negotiate with performing organisations as an organisation? 

20. How can we really promote collaboration between artists based in Europe?

Yinfu Gao

21. (Question to Dramaturg of the Theater house like Thalia Hamburg ) How do I bring my performance to 

your theater/festival? Is there any open call/festival platform that I can apply for?

22. (Question to other artists) How do we cooperate/rehearse with each other when we are based in different 

regions without enough funding for traveling?

23. (Suggestion to theater and festival curators) I would like to raise this point: when an artwork based on 

Asian cultural background is invited to your theater/festival, I wish the moderator for the critic talk could be 

someone who has the same or similar background and has enough knowledge to lead the artistic talk. I 

personally experienced a terrible white/racial gaze in the artist talk, which doesn’t care about my art. That’s not 

equal and respectful.

24. (Question to other artists ) How do you work as a freelance artist? How do you get enough money for 

living and art making? What’s your experience of fundraising for projects?

25. (Question to all ) How do we possibly influence/make an effort in art making in our own country even 

though we are based in Europe and cannot physically travel?

Flora Wang

26. Where to get financial support and guarantee creative independence?

27. What is the acceptance and interest of European audiences in Asian theater culture?

28. How to make our drama more localized?

29. How to get more performance opportunities, and go to more cities and countries?

30. When we rehearse and select actors in Europe, how can we find more professionals related to our traditional culture and get more professional training?

Xiaoer Liu 

31. – to all artists, how do you reach curators that relate to your practice? Do you have any suggestions? 

32. – to all curators and organizers, how do you reach artists? What do you appreciate the most in terms of collaboration with your artists? 

33. – to all artists, how do you financially support yourself with your art?  Or how do you financially support yourself in general? 

34. – to everyone, how do Asian artists make a voice in the Western world? What is your way? 

35. – to all artists and freelancers, how was your artist visa/freelance visa application experience? 

Jingyi Guo

36. Is there a platform where creative teams are able to call out for collaboration?

37. What are the crucial things to look for when you are about to take on a job/project?

38. How should you write your contract as a freelancer? 

39. What’s the standard salary level in the industry for emerging, mid-career, and established creatives?

40. How do you arrange payment for your creative collaborators when you are still applying for funding? 

Li Xu

41. How to apply for funding in different countries? 

42. I have heard from other producers in London that if you want to apply for funding, your show needs to be related to the present hot topics, like the environment or abortion or what… I feel like the topics I might be interested in are issues in Asia…I don’t know how to find a balance between them… are there any suggestions? 

43. Any suggestions on promoting shows? 

44. How do artists negotiate the right to use video recording among actors, directors, and the photographer? 

45. How do you deal with a situation where you have to rehearse more than 8 hours a day?

Ying Xiangfan

46. 如何在基金偏少或者0基金的情况下进行有效的创作？(How do I produce my artwork based on 0 or less funding?)

47. 如何寻找到一位制作人，并且进行合作？ (How do I find a producer to cooperate with me?)

48. 当在语言沟通产生差异化后，如何把制作进行下去？ (How do I go on with my art production with the language barrier in communication?)

49. 如何去营销自己的作品（或者说如何去平衡商业和艺术的关系）？ (How do I promote my work or how do I balance art and commerce) ?

50. 如何去保护自己的概念？以及作品的版权。然后如何处理其他版权（比如说音乐版权、视频版权如何去交涉？ (How do I protect my art concept concerning the intellectual property? How do I deal with Gemma when using other artists’ music and video?)

Feifei Yu
51. 如何确保自己在疫情下仍不与世界脱轨？ (How do I stay connected with the world in corona time?)

52. 如何在只有一个人的处境下持续工作？ (How do I produce my artwork alone?)

53. 如何在疫情的影响下坚持持续创作并平衡好时间？ (How do I keep creating artwork but also balance my time in the corona era?)

54. 如何确保自己的实践是有效的？ (How do I make sure about the efficiency of my art practice?)

55. More

Clara Yang

56. Imagine that a work explores the nature of human relationships from a culture that values collectivism. What risks and opportunities are present when this work is being shown or shared in contexts and cultures that value individualism? 

57. I have noticed that there are large institutions (ex: Fundação Oriente in Lisbon) that support Euro-Asian relationships and have considered performing there, but I worry that my values conflict with some of these institutional values (White Eurocentric gaze). Short of performing these works in the street or in very local spaces where I can have sufficient autonomy, how do I decide the right “stages” to perform in Europe? 

58. What has been the experience (if any) showing work made in Europe, back in your “home” countries? What has the criticism or reception been? 

59. How do we frame our work to show “relevance” without tokenization – at all stages of creation? 

60. As a maker with a United States background but who lives in Europe, I have observed how “American” rhetoric around race, feminism, etc, has been imported here. What have you noticed, or has it been a problem?

for you? 

Raha Dehghani Vinicheh

61. How to make art in the middle of crises?

62. How to get the freelance visa and what is the application process?

63. Where to get financial support for our performances?

64. Is there any Iranian artists Group that they can communicate with, for collaborating in Germany?

65. Is there any special funding for Asian artists in Germany?

Yash (Yifei) Zhang

66. How can emerging young artists better sustain themselves?

67. How do we face our diasporic condition individually and collectively? And how can it be part of our expression and creation?

68. How can we better protect ourselves when dealing with “politically sensitive” topics in our artwork?

69. What does it mean to be an “independent artist”?

70. What makes interdisciplinary/multi-media creation so special, and how do we effectively utilize various media in a project?

Mengting Zhuo

71. What is the shared code for communication between Asian artists from different parts of “Asia”?

72. How can we build a (possibly non-centralised) effective system for archiving? 

73. What are the existing archives/databases/resources that we can make use of?

74. Who is our audience and how do we find them?

75. Will we stay in touch and how?

Wei Arianne WANG

76. For an artist from a foreign cultural background, what roles can one’s cultural identities
play in one’s artwork which is created and presented in Europe?

77. A mixture of cultural symbols or real transculturation: to what extent have our own
creations surpassed the orientalist cliché?

78. The general protocol of applying for artist residencies (materials, time, information pool,
etc.)

79. Where was the first location at which you presented your first performance in Europe?

80. With whom do you work on creative projects, and how did you know each other?

Susanne Song-Yi Griem

81. How can we be in touch sustainably across borders in Europe to exchange common barriers for Asian diasporic communities in theater work to avoid inventing the wheel anew from within each community?

82. From the perspective of someone who has spent years picking up on traces, fragments, books, stage works, and narratives to reconstruct the history of Asian diasporic stage work in Europe: Where is the archive – what fragments did you pick up?

83. On the connection of first, second (and third?) generations: How does the artificial enumeration affect what is common between generations in the experience of institutionalized racism in the theater? (And: what is the common experience?) 

84. When I think of the future: Is there a possibility for a Europe-wide association that could build its own funding system to support?

85. Who are the queer Asian diasporic performance and theatre artists in Europe these days?

Jiang Xiao

86. Ask all the artists: How do you work with artists from different cultural backgrounds in theatre?

87. Ask all the artists: What do you do for a living? How much of your life is taken up by earning money doing other jobs?

88. Ask the artistic directors and dramaturges of the theatres and festivals: What is your preference when selecting the work of Asian artists?
89. Ask everyone: Should a creator keep on doing creative work all the time?
90. Ask everyone: Should a creator establish a clear creative direction for themselves early on?