Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 & Tim Shiel

A cutting-edge collaboration between Chinese/Australian avant-garde composer Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, and Melbourne-based contemporary Tim Shiel.

Join us in Hackett Hall, underneath Otto the whale, for this music performance — the sounds of which sit somewhere between ancient worlds and the distant future.

Over the course of the pandemic, as COVID restrictions ebbed and flowed, Tim & Mindy worked ceaselessly on developing new material, first recorded by Mindy on her 21-string traditional guzheng, and then shared with Tim via the internet to be reworked into something neither had imagined possible.

The result is a series of unique compositions that oscillate from breakbeat to minimal house influences, laid-back dub and pop sounds, underpinned throughout by an acoustic instrument almost two metres long and thousands of years old. It is a hymn to the world Mindy inhabits, a place where tradition is forced to adapt with changing values and different cultures.