S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on today's show , a fellowship connecting artist with ancestry. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. What does it mean to connect to one's ancestral identity , homeland and cultural memory ? For artists are exploring that very question. As part of an inaugural arts fellowship supported by nonprofit Viet Voices. The fellowship is designed for Asian American and Pacific Islander artists who are early in their career. They'll be presenting their work at a performance art festival this Friday called The Land We Carry. KPBS Arts reporter and the finest podcast host Julia Dixon. Evans sat down with Humsafar , the curator , as well as two of the artist fellows , Si Ryu and Haven Lua. Here's that conversation.
S2: I'll start with you , Hamza.
S3: At first , I thought I was going to recite poetry from a book I wrote called Blood Frequency , but instead I decided to conceptualize the poem and perform a work called homework , which illuminates the the terror and the grief behind domestic violence , especially in Vietnamese immigrant culture and diasporic culture in general. Fast forward to now. We , Tran and I of the voices sat down and we said , we really want to create a container where diasporic Asian Americans can really narrate their cultural history , their myth , as a way of world building. We're sharing a truth , and in that truth , and perhaps it archives on the land that we live on , which leads to the show that we have the land we carry.
S2: Can you tell us what that means ? The land we carry.
S3: Ha ! Before I tell you , the land we carry , I feel like I have to talk about ancestry. There is land. Ancestry meaning ? The geographical place we were born on. There's blood ancestry. The DNA that runs through us are perhaps blood heritage , our homeland , or our grandparents heritage. I think a great question to figure that out is where did your grandmothers come from ? And then one of our favorites , me and see , I actually just talked about this , our cosmic ancestry. What goes beyond the physical ? Our past lives , the liminal subconscious. And so in this Trinity , I think the land we carry , we carry all of these aspects. But do we know what we carry ? Everywhere we go.
S2: See , I want to talk to you next about performance work in general , because it can seem intimidating to audiences.
S4: So in the traditional arts we think of performance as theatre , classical music , you know , dance , um , and those are all wonderful modes of expression. But I think performance is something that is undefinable. And it's rather than translating , maybe for a broad audience , that's for everyone that these traditional mediums really do , um , teach you. Uh , performance art can be anything. It can be something that you are thinking about in your ancestry. It can be the dance that you dance alone in your room while you're raging. Um , it can be the soft whispers to a lover that you thought would be hidden. But you're deciding to speak to an audience. And I think that's sort of the beauty about performance , is that it is undefinable. It is about me being in Tandem with my body and listening to my body and then trying to portray it to an audience. So it's magical.
S2: There's something really physical and immediate about it also.
S4: It can be so intensely personal , so intensely physical , sometimes really uncomfortable. But I think that , again , is the power of performance art is to sit sometimes in uncomfortable in how we come into the world that is so structured and performative , even if we don't see it right. The way that you interact with your boss , maybe when you're upset , or maybe it's the way you talk to your parents or your children , right ? We are performing every moment in our lives , and maybe performance art is an avenue to be able to see yourself without those performances. Haven.
S2: Haven.
S5: And for I've really been sitting with the phrase like mutual worshiping to to be there , worshiping of what is present and what has been , what is being pulled from , what stories maybe are intentionally being pulled from. And then to like , what is the play between the performer , myself Self and the audience who is witnessing and not being like a really rich opportunity and playground that you can't prepare for necessarily as well. So it's a little bit of the unpredictability , mixing with the intentionality , um , that that really excites me and that I really want to intentionally build containers for.
S2: And those containers , like around your art.
S5: So in my kind of day to day practice , I'm a tattoo artist. I don't necessarily maybe at this moment I'm not necessarily tattooing in my performance space , but , um , using wood burning instead and inscribing them with stories and symbols from my mixed lineages , my Filipino lineages , my Celtic lineages , Tagalog ancestry and and allowing those symbols to intentionally create kind of that container as well as as poetry as well as dancing. All of the things that I'm doing leading up to even the conversations that I'm having with friends or with loved ones or with plant sisters in my tea every morning. All of those are aspects that are building towards the container on that performance day.
S2: And see what about you , your performances from what I've seen , combine music , mechanized instruments , projections , objects , creative movement.
S4: And I think as I have grown up to be an adult in society and specifically the United States society , I've sort of seen that there is a very mainstream type of world building , especially for certain types of bodies. For mine , it's , uh , Korean-American , Asian American , and I think I was seeing those worlds and realizing that something was missing for me. My experiences are not tidy , they're not clean. And , uh , I think part of the reason why so many I use so many different types of mediums in my performances , whether it's video narration , mythology , speculative of fiction. These are all ways for me to create new worlds that feel a little bit more alive and electric to me and my ancestry , and people who look like me. I don't want to be contained in sort of Asian American media or Asian media. I don't want to be contained as a model minority. I want to live fantastic lives and have futures that are outside of maybe mainstream society. And for that reason , I think that's why I use a lot of different tools so that people who are witnessing me realize that this is , yes , this is my body , but also like , how can I show them my interior world ? And sometimes that is through a lot of fantasy.
S2: I love that. Hamza , can you talk about the way that you're bringing these works together in addition to the other works in in this project , the other fellows.
S3: I feel the word that comes up is ceremony. I find it that within contemporary art there is the social notion that we walk in. We observe. We consume. We walk back away. But this specific festival. My intention is to invite audiences to renovate that experience , to instead be stewards , to hold space for the ceremonies that are happening in one space. What does it mean to be in prayer ? Because performance art , we need the audience. We need them to be participating in some way to help us transmute or move through a process. And all the fellows are exhibiting works that are live and non live performances. Yes , that includes some sort of body based medium , but every work is a spell or casting something out into the world. And perhaps it's resistance. Perhaps it's some sort of protest. But in my research , especially around performance and AAPI culture , there is this need to reclaim these ethno traditional practices like dance and tattooing and carving and singing and implementing it in a way that really talks to our personal history. So to answer your question. Ceremony. We are in ceremony , baby.
S2:
S3: And so we are working at El Salon , which is a repurposed church redesigned by Teddy Cruz from UCSD. I think about transformation when I hear about this and with works that express Catholicism , indoctrination of religion in the body , or how past lives can live in the body , or how our ancestral folk traditions can be expressed in performance as an act of devotion. This really reframes how the audience can participate. Yes , you can watch and witness , but what does it mean to care ? To care for someone's experience on the performance stage ? And I think for me , as someone who is an audience member , I'm yearning for that visceral tug on my heart to pull me back to empathy , that when I go home , I'm drooling with so much hope because someone just shared so much vulnerability. So the question I ask audience members in their participation is what is your intention of being here ? Is it the food ? Because the food's amazing and the performance is so electric.
S2: Um , maybe I'll start Haven with you. Sure.
S5: Sure. Yeah , I so I grew up. I grew up in Kumeyaay land in San Diego. Um , in between , um , Scripps Ranch , Mira mesa , and National City , Chula Vista , where my Lola was and truly growing up , it being a such a heavy , biotech influenced space. I never personally was drawn to arts because I didn't think that that was of value here. And and that was the messaging that I got from external factors , from also factors within my lineages. Having my Lola was actually in , in , in biomedicine as well. And , you know , carrying forward these legacies , I , I walked forward with those things and never really got to be in touch with that aspect of myself or San Diego community. And upon my return , I went to school at UC Davis. And in return , I have my bachelor's in biomedical engineering. And I returned. And in that process , I found my transness. I came back actually , during the beginning of the pandemic and found my transness. And in in that transition , that trans that movement from one state of myself into another , I found that art is what I needed in order to connect to community and to trans community , and also my Filipino ness as I , as a white bodied person who , um , for a lot of my life was not in touch with and could bypass , in a way , in safety and in assimilation , um , my Filipino ness. Um , as I came into my transness , I also started remembering these forgotten stories of my Filipino ness , too. And I started to be able to connect at this intersection of a lot of trans and Filipino or trans and Asian artists , and a lot of them are underground. You could say a lot of pop up spaces just come to our come to our living room and see what we're creating. And food is always there. Laughter is there. Maybe karaoke. Um , and , and that is kind of the reality of , you know , that intersection of , uh , DIY spaces , maybe also mutual aid spaces. Um , is what I'm most familiar with. And I haven't too much really seen a lot of these bigger , intentional spaces for folks until I actually saw the Via voices for a show. Um , when I saw Humza perform and I was like this , I was like , this is something right here. Um , and I felt that visceral reaction in my body , in my heart space. Um , and so I think the shift is happening , and I think we're witnessing the folks in the room that are participating in that.
S2: See ? What about you ? Do you have anything to add ? Yeah.
S4: Um , I am definitely a visitor on this land. Um , I don't live in San Diego. I live in LA. Uh , and but I've been a visitor on almost every land , uh , that I've existed. I was born and raised in the United States , and I've lived in probably more states than less states , um , anywhere from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Arizona to Delaware , California. This was all before I was 18. Really. Um , and I think having to always realize that I was a visitor on any land. In the same way , when I go back to Korea , where my ancestry is from , I'm not technically. Yeah , both my parents are Korean , but this is not a land that I grew up in. I never was situated there. I can speak the language. I know enough about the culture to get by , but there are certain things that you will never understand , like the land frequency or how the sea speaks to you , because I've never lived there for a long time. And so I think with the title The Land We Carry of the show , I'm thinking about how most of us are visitors on land , and how it's also our duty as visitors to care for the land and listen to it. And there's not a lot of listening going on right now , unfortunately. And I think these spaces that AAPI artists , Bipoc artists , indigenous artists are all creating with ceremony , with performance art and creating spaces for our voices. It's so important right now because especially in , I think , the AAPI diaspora where it taught , like Haven said , to kind of go on a certain path that will be the quote unquote American dream or quote unquote , good for you at the end of the day. And I think a lot of us are realizing that that narrative has been fabricated. And right now , we're in a place where I think it's really important for us to be strange and weird and push back , and to listen to ourselves and the land even more , rather than maybe Doom Scroll or maybe , uh , be performative in our identity , because that is what society wants from us. And so I am really grateful to be a part of this cohort and under the direction of Hamza , who has really sort of guided us into allowing us to be ourselves so clearly without censorship. And that has just been something so wonderful for my body , and I think for a lot of our communities to witness.
S2: What is the message that you want to share with San Diego through this art ? I'll start with you , Hamza.
S3: The message that I wish to offer to San Diego. The land we carry is more so. A question. I don't have any answers. The question is really in the title. What do you carry ? What lands do you come from and how have you integrated your geographical heart onto this one ? Are you connected to it ? Are you dissociated on this land ? Something that I find really helpful. This is kind of cute. It's an acronym. We love these. It's called halt. When I'm hungry , when I'm angry. When I'm lonely , and when I'm tired. All pathways to dissociate. But for me , I'm like , I want to rage. I'm gonna go howl. I'm tired. I'ma sleep under a tree. I have created habits to return to the land for guidance. And I'm wondering , I wonder if these performances well inspire those to return.
S1: That was Curator Humsafar and artist fellows Si Ryu and Haven Lu , speaking with KPBS arts reporter and the finest host , Julia Dixon Evans. Their showcase , The Land We Carry , will take place at the El Salon Theatre in San Isidro this Friday , July 26th. Performances start at 5 p.m. and you can find more details on KPBS. That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
