mei liu 梅子

Visit the Jan van Eyck Academie during @museumnachtmaastricht and experience the work of JvE participant Mei Liu (@plum404 ), 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝. Traversing different societies, time periods, and political struggles, “Homesick for Another World” unfolds as a hybrid between a lecture–performance, experimental film, and live storytelling environment. The work explores dreaming under oppressive conditions and asks how collective consciousness and memory might over alternative imaginaries for solidarity and resistance. Humor and critical reflection coexist, while connections are drawn between embodied memory, technological mediation, and contemporary political realities. Museumnacht Maastricht 2026 Friday April 10, 20:00-1:00 Photos by Ohno Ryusuke | courtesy of Tokyo Arts and Space. Concept, writing, directing, performing - Mei Liu Co-writer, co-performer - Malaz Usta @malazusta

A new section of Homesickness Volume 02, “Beyond Cinema: Transcending & Returning” centers around film artists who are finding new homes for cinema across different formats, platforms, and screening spaces. Mei Liu’s work exists within that question. Blending performance art, world-building, research, and installation in her practice, she carries the spirit of resistance at the core of her filmmaking. In examining her approach to research in this piece, Mei causes us to ask if perhaps the traditional screenplay, and even the traditional film itself, is insufficient for containing the realities we are trying to express? She does not treat cinema as a fixed object. For her, cinema can be a research publication, a dream record, a performance, a gesture, an installation, a speculative image, a conversation between bodies, memories, and absences. In that way, her work resists not only oppressive political conditions, but also the received forms through which we’ve been taught to make and understand art. At the center of Mei’s practice is an ethic of holding: holding grief, holding memory, holding the people and images that are at risk of being erased by censorship, and established systems of power. Her work reminds us that a film can be a process of inquiry and a refusal to finalize, in an effort to protect what is too alive or too sacred to be pinned down. In an age that demands legibility, quick stimulation, permanence, and easy circulation, Mei’s work offers something braver: an ephemeral cinema that asks us to be present enough to encounter it before it disappears.

Studio Update goes as the following 🧿: 🫆@malazusta is doing an artist residency in Marseille and preparing for an open studio 🫆@plum404 Mei ventured to Venice and participated in the Biennale College Blend with her new project in development ‘My Body is a Resonance Chamber’, she LARPed hard and and met many wonderful people🦕. She had also started a new chapter as artist in residence at @janvaneyckacademie 💚 and had a girl’s night in with @sun.ra.zan to taste the weird taste of Mate🧉for the first time in her life! 🫆@mahsa.koochak Mahsa Koochak presented Touchscape: Camping Beyond Reasoning at Beyond the Black Box Festival. An immersive one-on-one tactile journey—blindfolded and guided by a rope—inviting participants to navigate through touch and rethink connection beyond the visual. 🫆Razan Hassan @lifeiscinemawith_razan is about to facilitate a workshop with @devoorkamerproject in Utrecht as she develops her film plan and sketches some for the comic sequences in her upcoming film. ♥️🧿♥️

Mei Liu's – @plum404 – practice explores embodied memory, spirituality, and collective resistance. Liu is interested in alternative structures, dreams, and the mystical realms of existence. She strives to create new commons such as filmmaking spaces that disrupt existing hierarchies and interactions in society. She is also the co-founder of Cenote Workshop, a Shanghai-based collaborative community project anchored in spiritual activism that hosts improvisational performance workshops in an attempt to reawaken our relationship with the immaterial world around us. 👏 Welcome Mei, @plum404 📷 Homesick for Another World: expanded screenplay, 7-channel video installation, 2024. Still by Mei Liu #janvaneyckacademie #maastricht #artistresidency #artistinresidence #meiliu

The loveliest apartment of 3.5 years… 🥹🙏🏻 thank you for housing me & my memories

Our studio’s monthly update ⭐️ 1) Mei (@plum404 )will present ‘Homesick for Another World: a film unfolding in space’ - the (hopefully) final iteration of the 3-year research project from Nov. 7-9th at TOKAS Open Site 10, Tokyo. Malaz is the co-writer and co-performer of this project ✨ (ticket info: https://shorturl.at/nOKcZ) 2) On Sep 20th, Mei & Malaz (@malazusta )showed a WIP version of the work to fellow shadows in the studio 3) Experimenting with scenography using salt and water... (important materials from lucid dream technique taught in the show! Come see and find out!) 4) a mysterious hand carving our name into the furniture of the studio... 👽 5) Malaz was a guest lecturer at Leiden University for diary film 6) Eva (@lycheeva )did a workshop about guilty memory 7) We had double rainbow above our studio 9) Malaz’s film space_invaders.exe will be screened at the Festival of Experimental and Different Cinema of Paris 11) We did a visit to Razan’s (@sun.ra.zan )home and tried her amazing Moloukhiyeh 13) We have the third edition of our zine by Aline (@aline.olmos )

Este domingo 27 de Julho, a mono tem o prazer de acolher a SELF-MISTAKE para uma tarde de performances. 15h às 20h - Entrada às 15h Entrada livre, sem marcação Performances e conversa em inglês, sem legendas ou tradução. PROGRAMA Performances: Mei Liu – Homesick for Another World - Performance-conferência (China/Holanda) Gustavo Gomes – Tintinnabulum - Dança/performance (Brasil/Alemanha) Sepideh Khodarahmi - The Erotic Clown – Dança/performance (Irão/Suécia) Conversa: Alice Azevedo: Moderação com Mei Liu, Gustavo Gomes, Sepideh Khodarahmi Para este primeiro momento de partilha pública, 𝙎𝙚𝙡𝙛-𝙐𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙙 propõe uma reflexão a partir do trabalho de artistas que, de alguma forma, se relacionam com formas diretas de censura e mecanismos de resistência. O programa pretende desvendar possíveis contextos de resistência em cenários seguros, comparando situações de censura direta com a realidade de contextos democráticos em que também existem constrangimentos ao exercício da liberdade. Reunindo artistas cuja relação com a censura direta se dá a uma distância segura, os seus trabalhos apresentam estratégias poéticas e performativas de resistência que, longe do confronto explícito, operam no campo do sensível e da subversão. Self-Uncensored [By distance] Direção: Tânia M. Guerreiro Criações: Mei Liu, Gustavo Gomes, Sepideh Khodarahmi Moderação de conversa: Alice Azevedo Apoio à produção: Daniela Leitão Direção técnica: Cristovão Cunha Apoio à técnica: Fernando Queiroz Foto e filmagens: Ema Ramos Produção: ORG.I.A (SELF-MISTAKE) Apoios: CPBC Apoios institucionais: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa – Cultura e República Portuguesa – Cultura, Juventude e Desporto / Direção-Geral das Artes

Drop by our studio, flip our monthly zine, check out what we’re working on ;) First edition editor & designer: @malazusta Contributions & research by @plum404 @malazusta @emiliosantoyo @mahsa.koochak

At the end of each Forecast Mentorships edition, we release a publication—and we're thrilled to share the latest from Edition 9! Alongside the final projects, we invited six experts to reflect on each of the proposals. "Echoes of Darkness" is an essay by curator and writer Qu Chang on Mei Liu's multimedia performance Homesick for Another World. "Mei’s artistic effort in her research-based series Homesick for Another World lies in her conscious exploration of depth in the often flattened narratives of dualism such as black and white, day and night, justice and evil. Oral accounts of different experiences of confinement, dreams, and sleep are her primary pathways to delve into the strata of darkness, sense the moving magma of hopes and despairs, and explore ways to situate oneself in a world of growing darkness." Read the full text at the link in bio. Photo @camille_blake

Thank you for co-creating a heartwarming evening with the 🎥screening of Myanmar Diaries @myanmar_diaries , poetry reading from @mayco_naing book Burma Spring 📖 and photography slideshow from @aungnaingtunhein ❤️ ( photo credits to @sun___.ra @emiliosantoyo @plum404 @malazusta )

Songs of Spring: Poetry, Film and Resistance from Myanmar May 4th Sunday 19:00 Lauriergracht 116 D2, Amsterdam Join us for an evening of solidarity, film screening and poetry reading. We will gather to raise funds for earthquake relief efforts and to support displaced communities from Myanmar — a country whose ongoing struggle for freedom and dignity remains largely invisible in global media. The evening will feature a screening of Myanmar Diaries, a powerful documentary created anonymously by a collective of filmmakers resisting the military dictatorship, followed by a live poetry reading by Mayco Naing @mayco_naing from the book Burma Spring: Poetry and Photography in Resistance. Through film, poetry, and community, we open free discussions on the role of art in times of turmoil. Donations will go directly to grassroots aid organizations working with affected and displaced communities. Hope to see you there! (poster photograph by Naw Naw)

At Forecast Festival 9, Mei Liu presented the multimedia performance Homesick for Another World. The project moves between various societies, times, and political struggles to map the underground rhizomes of connected structures. Watch Mei Liu talk about her project and her mentorship with photographer Lieko Shiga. Video by @stephan_talneau Cover image by @camille_blake #forecastmentorships #forecastfestival