CULTURAL RELATIONS
By Sophia Brous, Mish Grigor and Mindy Meng Wang
Cultural Relations is a new cross–artform performance examining cross–cultural artmaking in the age of geopolitical soft power. It is being created by celebrated Australian artists performer/director Sophia Brous, theatre maker Mish Grigor and musician/composer Mindy Meng Wang, and explores dynamics of artistic collaboration, and how geopolitical forces can shape artmaking, inspired by a real–life 2016 tour that Brous, Meng Wang and a group of Australian and Chinese artists took to the Northern Silk Road of Western China, where they were invited to create a cross–cultural collaboration.
Part travel-diary, pieced together reenactment, musical farce, and public confessional, Cultural Relations examines the political, cultural and socio-dynamics that shape how and what we make, and the stories we tell ourselves when things don’t quite work out.