evening to share their love, admiration and works, inspired by the late great poet & pacifist June Jordan
Abdulla, a student and engineer from the U.A.E. talks
about his experience going through U.S. Homeland Security's newly implemented "Special Registration" ordinance for all Muslim males over the age of 16 from 25, mostly Arab countries
Words of love and resistance by poet June Jordan are passed down in a game of telephone
Só Danço Samba / Ue Wo Muite Arukou
I Love You
Cultural exchange through karaoke
6 people tell their friend they love her
Synchronized group walking, intangible inheritances and
art for a fire station
The beginnings of collaborative social practice and thinking
about underrepresented culinary sensibilities
Self-portraiture and June Jordan
Take Back The Love: A June Jordan Celebration
Around Special Registration
California Telephone
A group of artists gather one
Readers Chorus, Krystal Krunch, Cristóbal and Cosme: Two
young lads born in Japan, and a 16mm love letter to L.A.
Experimentations with the group reading voice, art in public spaces and the Invisible Kitchen
All In Me
By and By
Embodying 11 TV heroines
Reflections on the "L.A. River Temple Project"
Fit In Room Piece #1-12
from Los Angeles
By the waterfall at Eaton Cayon - 7 times
Fitting room self-portraits
Video postcards from LA
Students on a hike pose for a group
photo
3CM (1997/1999)
Manga, memory and stereoscopes
Take Back the Love:
A June Jordan Celebration
2003
Take Back the Love was an evening of film screenings with live accompaniment, spoken word, live music, installation and beats- all in celebration of, and in tribute to, the work of the late, great, June Jordan (American, 1936-2002) - poet, essayist, activist, educator and founder of the Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley.
Take Back the Love was envisioned, organized and realized by Seema Kapur, Maryam Kashani, Noña Meko and Haruko Tanaka. The event took place at the vibrant experimental art space "Six Months: Crenshaw" in South Los Angeles, co-founded by curator Eungie Joo and artist Kehinde Wiley.
AROUND Special Registration
2003
An 18 minute journey with Abdulla, a student and engineer from the United Arab Emirates living in the U.S. The video follows Abdulla going through ‘Special Registration’- an ordinance implemented in Nov of 2002 by Attorney General Ashcroft as part of the “Homeland Security Act” where males over the age of 16, from 25 countries (mostly Arab) were required to to be registered, fingerprinted, interrogated, and photographed, risking indefinite detainment and deportation. Abdulla tries to assess the nature of ‘Special Registration’ as it is happening while going barely unnoticed by the public. What he finds is a voice that gets to the heart of what discrimination and racism feel like to him as an Arab man and also as a black man read as an African-American man. Through song, some jokes, and a statement delivered at a anti-war rally, Abdulla talks us through his experience and worries about what could happen in a time where ‘something so outrageous can seem reasonable.'
After originally being shown as a video installation at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), the work was shown at Lombard- Freid Fine Arts as part of the group show Mine curated by Eungie Joo, and then went on to be screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2004 and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.
California Telephone
2003
California Telephone is a 16mm, 3 minute film of a group of seven women and men playing the game commonly known as 'telephone.' In this case, the message whispered from one person to the next are lines of poetry excerpted from the work of the late June Jordan (1936-2002) - poet, novelist, essayist, and political activist. The film attempts to speak between the lines of June Jordan's words of resistance and insistence.
California Telephone premiered at The Bijou Theater at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and then went on to be screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2004 and the Women of Color Film Festival at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, among other festivals and galleries.
A karaoke video that takes two popular music crossover hits from the 60’s, one Brazilian, one Japanese, nine friends to sing them, and offers it up as a karaoke video for viewers to sing to, swing to, or just listen to. The four minute video proposes a cultural exchange through music, rhythm and language.
The video was envisioned and realized by Bia Gayotto and Haruko Tanaka and premiered at LA Freewaves and then went on to screen on the Stockholm-Helsinki Baltic Ferry.
Só Danço Samba/
Ue Wo Muite Arukou
2002
I Love You
2002
A two minute, 16mm film documenting the moment before, during, and after six people tell the subject (the filmmaker), 'I love you.'
By far, my most seen work to date, I Love You premiered at The Bijou Theater at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and then went on to be screened the Asian American International Film Festival at Asia Society, International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among other festivals, film centers and galleries.
All In Me
2001
A series of eleven portraits, each entitled with the name of a popular female T.V. character. The images document the moment of invocation of these characters. Make-up and costume are unnecessary, location is neutralized; this allows for the embodiment and expression of these women, which include Buffy, Xena, Scully, Ally, Cordelia (above left), Willow (above right) and Lois among others. They are all in me and yet I am nothing like them at all.
All In Me: Willow
All In Me: Cordelia
All In Me: Ally
All In Me: Willow
By and By
2001
A series of five portraits of various people involved with the "L.A. River Water Temple Project," a public art project which was to be built at the site where the Los Angeles River begins at the confluence of Calabassas and Bell Creek in Canoga Park. Using the area around the beginning of the L.A. River in Canoga Park as a palette, each participant was handed a large mirror and was asked to reflect a portion of the Los Angeles River Temple site that spoke to them.
Fit In Room Piece #1-12
2000
A series of twelve self-portrait photographs shot inside various store fitting rooms. Perhaps the ‘instruction piece’ would read something like this:
Go to a department store.
Take a camera with you.
Pick out clothes you really like.
Try them on in the fitting room
and strike a pose.
Look into the mirror.
Keep looking and keep posing
until you fit in.
Take a picture.
from Los Angeles
2000
A 15 minute, Hi-8 video, of postcard like snapshots from various locations of choice by 7 participants, who are then replaced by yours truly.
A 10 minute, Hi-8 video where a group of high school student hikers and their teacher get together and pose for a snapshot by the waterfall. Looped 7 times, like an edition of 7, 1 for each person in the shot.
By the waterfall at
Eaton Canyon-7 times
2000
A series stereoviewcards depicting scenes taken from Japanese manga. When viewed through a stereoscope, within each scene, a character emerges in three dimension~ a tennis player in the throes of a match, a young girl running home through a dark forrest, a high school girl sharing a tender moment while walking home with her friends...3cm is an album of memories of Japan which are strongly informed by my childhood love of manga. Just as the doubled memory of a real life Japan along with a manga memory of Japan co-exists only within the my mind, the three dimensional character only comes to life when viewed through the stereoscope. Both are real and dimensional, but only when viewed through a particular lens.
3CM
1997/1999
