Vintage M.O.B.!
(That is, if 2004 qualifies as “vintage”)

Not an entirely coherent edit, but that’s probably apropos for an interview wherein Reanne is present via banana speaker phone as Eliza and I drink mimosas from amber goblets in all of our bewigged glory in a green-screen set we dressed up with fake fruit, granny panties and more wigs with our karaoke videos as backdrop.

The Collaborative Aesthetic – Mail Order Brides from Stretcher on Vimeo.

Interview conducted by the lovely Amy Berk for Stretcher.org‘s “Green Room” project at Southern Exposure: green screen magic courtesy David H. Lawrence.

A tremendous part of the job description for any instructor entails effective verbal communication. I like to think I’ve got that covered: I’m a fairly animated speaker with facial expressions and body language, so I tend to supplement verbal communication with visual emphatics and humor to amplify whatever’s under discussion or presentation.

Even as an experienced speaker, it’s still uncomfortable to hear/see a recording of myself speaking. (Apparently most people can’t stand to hear themselves speak, so I take some consolation in that.) After a couple of recent audio interviews given, as well as listening to a ton of verbally-driven audio, I’ve been thinking more about this format. As a visual learner with some mild auditory processing issues, I’m also interested in what drives the reception of verbal rather than visual information.

I’ve been holed up in my studio for extended periods lately, in work mode for a solo show I have coming up this summer in Manila. Some artists love these broad stretches of solitude and lose themselves in it, entering an enviable state of flow. Me? I brood, fidget and fret.

Studio time is often long-form, semi-tedious, technical work that requires little mental focus. Because of this, I tend to get bored and agitated, lacking either the discipline or disposition to drift to that happy artist place that is rumored to exist. The art itself is rarely the source of the agitation– mostly, it’s the perpetual hamster wheel of low-level day-to-day preoccupations: conflict with a friend, students not doing well, family drama, and nonspecific equal-opportunity brooding.

A solution that I’ve learned works well for me is to anchor myself to audio with content, rather than mood: movies or TV shows with great dialogue, audio books, lectures, radio programs, podcasts, language lessons. Great music still works too, but tends to be a bad choice if I’m already moody, or in worry-mode.

The more I listen, though, the more aware it makes me of what makes for truly satisfying audio content. When I was invited to be interviewed for 2 different podcasts in April, I got an awkward refresher on the nature of both speaking and listening. While I certainly can’t say that I’ve contributed anything of usefulness to the world of good audio content in these podcasts, I can say that it’s fun to horse around with friends in an invisible world that no one else can see.

The first interview was conducted by the great Tessa Hulls, artist, writer, cartoonist and adventuress, for The Project Room Seattle. It was conducted in my kitchen over beer and coconut water, and is notable for the fact that Tessa and I were both medicated at the time, thus enhancing our erratic verbal meanderings.

Tessa and I had only met once about 2 years ago, at T-Dock in Seattle’s Lake Washington. Our mutual friend Catherine Uehara had taken me out there for a little sun and swim, and we ran into some friends of hers there. Tessa and I formed one of those immediate “ah–you’re a weirdo asian-american restless-artist comics-nerd lady-traveler-type too” bonds that doesn’t require a huge amount of maintenance or explanation. She and I formed a particularly unique bond over portable toilets, as restless lady artists are wont to do.

The second interview was a conversation with Maysoun Wazwaz and Kate Rhoades of Congratulations Pine Tree, the Bay Area’s Number One Art and Culture Podcast, which I totally agree is true, although I’ve not really listened to any others in this category. I’ve known and adored Maysoun for probably 10 years, through Southern Exposure, the broader Bay Area art community, and various fun get-togethers. Kate’s a relative newcomer to the Bay Area, but we also clicked immediately in the “weirdo lady artist comics nerd” mutual fangirl way, as well.

This interview was conducted in my grubby studio, which, through the magic of audio, is transformed into a palatial Rococo suite (see: Piazza). Neither beer nor coconut water nor medication were involved. I am slightly more coherent, but also more obnoxious, as Maysoun and Kate can dish out some A-level sass, and I hate to be left out of the fun.

For those of you who’ve never heard my voice, prepare yourself for the horror/pleasure. For those of you who haven’t heard my voice in a while, welcome back to its oddball timbre! And regardless of whether you listen to the episodes I’m on, please enjoy both of these podcast series, as I’ve found that they’re both keeping me great company and great spirits in the studio.

In Fall 2002, Reanne, Eliza and I were artists in residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a memorable, epic, hilarious 3 months, and yielded a lot of ambitious new work, including Mail Order Bride of Frankenstein.

It was probably around the first week or two of the residency when the Center arranged for us to attend a lecture given by the great Faith Ringgold. Later that fall, we also got to see a lecture given by the great Dr. Jane Goodall, as well. Legends!! If there’s one thing I love, it’s watching a highly-accomplished older woman school her audience. The confidence and comfort with self that she often shares is an absolute delight and an inspiration.

Ringgold’s lecture was wonderful. She was an engaging, charismatic speaker with a clear sense of her own worth, many great tales to tell, and a solid understanding of her legacy in American history and contemporary art. She LOVED herself. This was fantastic to witness, and I don’t say this lightly. Women, artists, and minorities tend not to easily communicate this kind of warm self-assuredness so publicly, so experiencing this with such clarity was fabulous.

However. There came a point in Ringgold’s lecture where her sense of self drifted into the slightly-delusional diva place that I might love even more. Many great creative and comedic moments come out of this state.

Ringgold had gotten through talking about her various art projects, and had decided to start sharing images with the audience of some home renovation projects she was working on, for reasons unclear at the time. She showed us slides of her backyard landscaping project, describing to us in great detail where she intended her piazza to be installed. Her. Piazza.

At this point, involuntarily and completely independent of one another, Reanne, Eliza and I started silently convulsing with laughter. Perhaps it was simply that Ringgold had meant “gazebo” and not “piazza,” but to us, it was something greater. In that moment, we had simultaneously identified and celebrated Ringgold’s use of “piazza” as shorthand for our own expansive, imaginative, ambitious delusions of grandeur.

“Piazza” is still a term that we use to this day when we embark on another one of our own over-the-top projects.  It comes up when one of us is getting a little carried away with herself in the scope of things. It governs that weird, bouffant-ed slice of the Filipina psyche that Imelda Marcos inhabits for us. And it has much to do with our love of the Madonna Inn, which, situated front and center in our collective mental piazza, is our true spiritual home.

 

Last Thursday March 20th, YBCA held one of its regular ConVerge public events, this time with a “foodie” theme to connect it to the Rirkrit Tiravanija-curated exhibition currently in the galleries. Since Rirkrit’s own practice famously involves Thai cuisine, YBCA’s lovely, tireless curator of public programs Katya Min organized an event, hosted by Mike Arcega, where about 16 artists and arts thinkers/writers shared dishes inspired by our post-colonial, immigrant family backgrounds.

It was originally conceived of as a small-scale potluck, but somewhere along the way, it became clear that we were going to need to prepare food for as many as 50 or more people each. None of us are food industry professionals, so after about 16 respective heart attacks, we all figured out how to step up our catering game and anticipate the crowds that did indeed descend upon us. Since the food was all free, it ended up feeling like an art nerd’s bourgie soup kitchen with Depression-era bread lines.

The dishes were often fascinatingly hybrid, like Thea’s Filipino Cajun Jambalaya (in honor of Filipinos’ little-known influence on Louisiana culinary history), Dorothy’s ube waffles, or Mark’s “camp stew,” inspired by his family’s Japanese internment camp recipes.

I chose to play it more or less straight, and made a classic Filipino Chicken Adobo (but the slightly-less-common version with coconut milk.)

While food has often come up in various incidental ways in my art practice, I’ve rarely made actual dishes AS part of a performance or social practice-type event. It was definitely a little disconcerting, but a good experience. I think I just have too many friends and family who’ve cooked, hosted, or done art/food things professionally to feel particularly cavalier about my own casual stab at it last week.

Still, it went well. The cooking-in-large-batches thing wasn’t so bad, especially with the use of a large suburban kitchen and a little oversight from Mom Woff. The thing that really just about made me lose my mind was delivery: transporting 4 large containers of soupy, liquid-y adobo in the back of a car on a freeway and through San Francisco’s inclines is not for the faint of heart. Each speed bump, brake, turn and hill in the 2 trips it took to get the food to YBCA (at rush hour) gave me one more white hair. I’m surprised I have any brown hair left.

Insider pro-tip: museum bathrooms are perfectly viable places to prep one’s rice cooker.

Contributors and dishes:

flight 001:
Ken Lo/Love Potion
Alex Wang/Panini Bouchon Americain
Thea Quiray Tagle/Filipino Cajun Jambalaya
Dorothy Santos/Ube Waffles

flight 002:
Jova Vargas/Jamaican Bun and Cheese
Dave Kim/Korean Kimchi Jjigae
Mike Arcega/Filipino Spaghetti
Taraneh Hemami/Toot Candy

flight 003:
La Chica Boom/Tostadas de Frijoles con “Tapaskeets”
Rafael Vieira/Feijoada
Jenifer Wofford/Adobong Manok sa Gata
Sita Bhaumik/Masala Chai

flight 004:
Kimberley Arteche/Suman sa Lihiya at Budbud
Andrew Wilson/Pot of Beans and Rice
Mark Baugh-Sasaki/Camp Stew with Rice
Eliza Barrios/Cassava Cake (and a little Dinuguan, as well)

All photos courtesy Tommy Lau Photography and YBCA, except the last 2, which come from Rio Valledor and myself.