Slow Stew

For the Autumn Festival of Mai Ling’s year-long Protocols for Survival, we harvest the energy of our Summer Festival’s planting, rooting, and fertilizing, to offer a program of collective replenishing and fermenting.

Autumn is a time to get slow and cozy, to ground our energy and intentions, bolster our immune systems, and recharge for the coming Winter. In partnership with AMBi space for intersectional wellbeing and aligning with International Stress Awareness Week, Mai Ling invites you to join us for a relaxed 2-day gathering, with somatic activities, sonic and herbal healing practices, readings, discussions, and warm offerings that reflect this season of harvest and fermentation.

Foregrounding traditional practices – including Āyurveda, nuad, and TCM – through queer feminist, diasporic perspectives, Mai Ling and AMBiopen a space for experimentation and sharing daily practices of nourishment. How can we honour our roots, lineages, materials, and multi-species that nourish us? Through a decolonial lens, we challenge the ‘wellness industry’ and structures of individualistic consumption and self-optimization. Engaging with healing practices that question the assumptions of ‘self-care’, we gather to critically reflect on notions of integration, appropriation, and invasive-ness.

We especially invite BIPOC friends to gather with us to share strategies of endurance and flourishing. There will be sessions held for BIPOCs exclusively, tending to spaces of rest and reflection. Other gatherings will welcome all, inviting everyone to join with a spirit of respect and curiosity.

By slowly stewing together, we explore ways to ‘recharge’ with intention, respect, and mutual responsibility.

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Für das Herbstfestival von Mai Lings Projekt „Protocols for Survival“ knüpfen wir an die Energie an, die wir im Sommer durch Pflanzen, Verwurzeln und Düngen gesät haben. Nun ernten wir die Früchte dieser Arbeit – in einem Programm, das kollektive Regeneration und Fermentation in den Mittelpunkt stellt.

Der Herbst lädt uns ein, zur Ruhe zu kommen, langsamer zu werden und unsere Kräfte zu sammeln. Es ist die Zeit, uns zu erden, unser Immunsystem zu stärken und Energie für den Winter zu tanken. Gemeinsam mit AMBi – Praxis für intersektionales Wohlbefinden und im Rahmen der Internationalen Stress Awareness Week lädt Mai Ling Euch zu einem entspannten, zweitägigen Zusammenkommen ein – mit somatischen Übungen, Lesungen, Gesprächen und wärmenden Angeboten, die die Qualitäten dieser Jahreszeit der Ernte und des Wandels widerspiegeln.

Aus queer-feministischen und diasporischen Perspektiven gestalten Mai Ling und AMBi einen Raum, in dem wir alltägliche Formen des Nährens und Für-sich-Sorgens teilen können. Wir fragen uns: Wie können wir unsere Wurzeln, unsere Ahn*innen, die Materialien um uns und die vielen Spezies, die uns erhalten, würdigen? Mit einem dekolonialen Blick auf Wohlbefinden hinterfragen wir die sogenannte „Wellness-Industrie“ und die Strukturen von individualisiertem Konsum und Selbstoptimierung. Als Teil der asiatischen Diaspora setzen wir uns kritisch mit Wellness-Praktiken auseinander, die Konzepte wie „Self-Care“ neu denken – und reflektieren, was Begriffe wie Integration, Aneignung und Invasivität in diesem Zusammenhang bedeuten.

Wir laden insbesondere BIPOC-Freund*innen ein, mit uns gemeinsam Strategien der Widerstandskraft und Entfaltung zu teilen. Es wird einige Veranstaltungen geben, die ausschließlich für BIPoCs gestaltet sind – als Räume der Ruhe, Erholung und Reflexion. Andere Zusammenkünfte stehen allen offen und heißen alle willkommen, die mit Respekt, Offenheit und Neugier dazukommen möchten.

Während wir im übertragenen Sinne miteinander „schmoren“, fragen wir uns: Wie können wir Wohlbefinden mit Achtsamkeit, Respekt und gegenseitiger Verantwortung gestalten?

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Program
Saturday 8 November
14:00 – 15:30 – Gather Warmth, Cycle Qi with Oi Pui Hoang, Serena Lee, and Aki Lee

Integrating movement and traditional Chinese medicine, we will explore how we ‘read the body’ through daily practices of maintaining and circulating qi energy by listening to the cycles of yinyang energy. By ‘reading the body’ via acupoints, ancient qi gong prescription and medicinal soup, we learn to nurture and maintain moisture and warmth for Autumn and Winter. These practices offer an embodied philosophy of interconnectedness — ways of caring for and ‘regulating’ our diverse bodies in relation to our environment, beyond the dictates of optimizing the individual self.

15:45 – 17:00 – Daydreaming with Hyo Lee

Let us daydream together, like going on a collective day trip. What could then linger out of our daydream into the realm of reality, like a souvenir of some sort? This 90-minute daydreaming session explores the potentiality of daydreaming as a political and collective practice, as well as a practice of care — for oneself, others, and the world. There will be talking, conversing, and asking questions, but for the most part, we will simply be daydreaming. Easy. Cozy. We try.

Bio: Hyo Lee always daydreams, usually reads, often writes, sometimes makes art, andoccasionally performs on theatre stages, mostly telling collective stories of diaspora andqueerness.Lee is a South Korean artist based in Vienna and holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and aDiploma in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

17:15 – 19:00 – Nuad Sound Bath with Suchart Wannaset, Sound by Chattip (Pumpui) Metchanun

Join Suchart and Pumpui for a meditative journey that weaves together sound, herbs, fermented extracts and touch. The workshop begins with a soothing sound meditation, inviting deep presence and connection. Together, we will mix Thai and local Austrian herbs and ferments as a collective activity to create Luk Pra Kob — warm herbal compresses wrapped in white cloth. Using elements of Nuad, traditional Thai massage, participants will gently apply the compresses to one another, sharing warmth, stories, and mindful soothing touch while immersed in resonant sounds. This 75-minute workshop offers a holistic experience of relaxation, cultural exchange, and sensory healing.

Sunday 9 November
14:00 – 15:30 – Decolonizing Self-Care Workshop with Nandi and Niki (BIPOC only)

Sunanda Mesquita and Niki Flierman of Ambi Space offer a workshop that incorporates sharing knowledge on Āyurvedic and TCM massage and tapping techniques which will be practiced on oneself as well as each other all in the spirit of re-membering and sharing individual and collective self-healing/care techniques for BIPoCs. @ambi_space, @decolonial_joy, @shiatsu_niki

Bio: Sunanda (Nandi) Mesquita (they/them) is a Goan-Swiss transdisciplinary visual artist, curator and Āyurvedic Wellness practitioner based in Vienna. Mesquita studied Education of the Arts and in the class of Dorit Margreiter Choy at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and co-lead and curated 2017-2020 the art and community space WE DEY x space. In 2024 Mesquita founded AMBi- the intersectional practice for well-being and art in the 7th district that offers safer spaces for BIPoCs and queer, trans, inter folx with a focus on massages, bodywork and workshops. At the center of their transdisciplinary artistic practice stands the envisioning of a radical, utopian, queer, feminist collectivity of BIPoCs and topics of community, solidarity and belonging. They support individual and collective journeys to wellbeing by offering Ayurvedic bodywork and holistic knowledge centering decolonial joy within the diaspora.

Niki (she/her) is a nurse and Shiatsu practitioner from Vienna. Her experience in healthcare and nursing combines Western and Eastern medicine, reaching people where they need it most. It is important for her to create a space where people who have previously felt left out by conventional wellness offerings, feel welcomed. She focuses on stress management and burnout prevention.

15:45 – 17:00 – Sticky Reads & Discussion with Mai Ling and Slow Stew Friends (BIPOC only)

Mai Ling Sticky Reads is a relaxed reading session that explores intersectional feminist thoughts in a cozy, informal atmosphere. We’ll gather to read aloud from the Festival Reader, a collection of writing and texts that have inspired and nourished the practices of both the guests, collaborators, and the Mai Ling collective. As we move through the texts, we will reflect on the invisible energy of ‘fermentation’ as a process of transformation with multispecies relationships in natureculture. Weaving together voices and ideas, we welcome pauses for reflection, questions, curiosity, emotion, and care, allowing space for shared understanding to take root. An open discussion will follow the reading with homemade fermented drinks.

17:15 – 18:30 – Interactive Poetry Reading with Kiều Trinh

Kiều Trinh (“Ching”) is non-binary poet and artist and their work centers around creative engagement that weaves together the personal and spiritual, drawing from Zen Buddhism, Daoism and decolonial thought. As they embark on this journey, Trinh invites us to accompany them in navigating these complex intersections. Through prose and simple yet profound journal entries, Trinh shares their emotional world, offering intimate and personal insights into their evolving thought processes and spiritual experiences, as well as broader social and humanitarian questions.

Trinh invites the listeners to interact with their reading by drawing. There will be moments of quiet listening, and others guided by music, offering space to process and integrate what has been heard. Paper and colours will be available, inviting listeners to express whatever feelings or images arise in response, engaging not only through thought, but through the body and the senses. @k.ieu.trinh

18:45 – 20:00 – Mobilizing a Stew: Sticky Kitchen Workshop with Mary Maggic and Mai Ling

Mai Ling invites the public to cook a stew together while re-imagining what a mobile kitchen is or could become. How does a multi-ingredient stew reflect a multi-storied kitchen? We will collect stories and ideas on how a migratory kitchen could be imagined, while sharing a preview of Mai Ling’s own Sticky Kitchen 2026.