Jessi Ali Lin x Hsin-Yu Chen and Michelle Lopez

Michelle Lopez: Let’s just start with this: how did you start collaborating? 

Jessica Ali Lin: When I was making my Still Life video installation work, Hsin helped me with the filming, so we started working together. And then I made Choreography B (2019), a performance piece featuring multiple horizontal planes with objects embedded in them. I had Fred Schmidt-Arenales document the performance, which led me to want to make something that was a combination of performance, movement, and film. I just thought Hsin would be a good collaborator.

ML: Hsin, what’s your background? 

Hsin-Yu Chen: Mostly in film. I went to the program at Temple University for Film and Media Arts. 

JL: Experimental short films. 

HC: I was helping Jessica with shooting. It was not a collaboration, but I was helping with the production of the work. We found out some of our interests overlapped.

JL: Yeah, for example, I was interested in perspective and positionality, thinking of one’s identity, and Hsin was interested in vision and borders. 

HC: I was really interested in how linear perspective and other vision techniques, devices, et cetera, shape the viewer. And I think there was definitely an overlap. I also had other collaborative projects where I worked with visual artists. I actually quite enjoy collaborating with people who have overlapping interests but can bring in different points of view.

JL: And also your recent project with the border. Hsin went to this island north of Taiwan, that’s the de facto border of Taiwan. Can you talk about it?

HC: Yeah. It’s an ongoing series about national borders in general, but specifically the Taiwanese border. Because Taiwan is an island, the border is actually underwater half of the time. 

The idea of borders is already elusive and arbitrary, plus the political situation in Taiwan makes it very complex and interesting to me. And that is more like a nonfiction project. The easiest way to put it would be experimental documentary. That’s a recent project I’ve worked on by myself.

ML: Great. So tell me a little bit about your submitted proposal, even though the project becomes a different thing when you arrive on site. I saw how you really incorporated all the machinery there. Were there plans to do that in your proposal?

JL: I think we wanted to go more wild, but we realized it was not possible for safety reasons and because of the time we had, so the project became more tame and more structured. I think we wanted something that really played with machine perspective. I felt like this should be a yearlong project. 

In the proposal, we were interested in the idea of category and category-making. And I think both of us, being from Taiwan, and as Asian people that grew up elsewhere and then moved to the United States, we felt a kind of gap between our understanding of ourselves and American notions of identity, or Asian identity, or Asian American identity.

I am technically Asian American, but I don’t really resonate with that definition or how that’s understood, because we understand Asian representation from another perspective. Having this experience, we were interested in categories, and not being aligned with categories. So, we used the recycling site as a metaphor to think about category-making, how it is so random yet rooted in specific narratives and histories — similar to how materials go through the waste stream at Revolution Recovery. 

Once they arrive at the dump, materials such as glass windows and steel bars from high-rise buildings and luxury apartments, wooden doors and bricks from pre war houses, entire flooring from classrooms, tile walls from public bathrooms, tin roof panels from factories, and concrete sidewalk blocks from the street, are stripped of their original function and recategorized by material substance. Structures that once stratified and divided spaces, people, social groups, and activities, are collapsed onto each other by ways of dumping, sorting, and recycling. We were interested in exploring category-making through the materiality of physical structures.

HC: Back to what you were saying earlier: we wanted it to be more wild. Before we arrived on site and actually understood how the machine functioned, we could only imagine the choreography and gestures based on imagination and online research. I think that’s one thing we learned a lot about when we were at RAIR: how to actually work with what’s being offered to us, in terms of the materials there, or the kind of working schedule they were on. I think it’s a place where we really learned to adjust to the environment. 

ML: Yeah. I’ve been on the site a couple of times, and you could totally get run over by one of those machines if you weren’t careful. So, how collaborative were the operators?

JL: We were mostly only working with Billy Dufala of RAIR. 

HC: Actually, for the GoPro video, we did have to work with the workers. It really depended on the workers. I mean, some were willing to help and some were not. It also depended on Billy’s relationship with the workers, because we had to communicate with the workers through Billy.

JL: It was during their working hours and we didn’t want to create more work for them. 

ML: I remember you mentioning that at the screening of the video.

JL: So we tried to mount the camera on one of the machines during the workers’ lunch break.

ML: Yes, what is so evident in the collaboration is the way that the camera really feels like it has subjectivity, in the way it’s moving to direct the gaze toward a specific thing. In that sense, I could see Hsin doing the camera and then Jessica arranging objects. I saw that in the work. Would you agree that this was a process of category-making of the archive, as you just mentioned? 

JL: Well, first going back to being at RAIR, I think it was probably one of the most physically demanding of my works. And then of course all the machines and then —

ML: The dust.

JL: The reason why we ended up doing Semiotics of the Home (2022) was because it was impossible to come up with choreography for people and machines in four weeks, so we were like, OK, let’s just do A-to-Z domestic gestures. And then it brought us to Martha Rosler as a reference. So we had to find the props, and brainstorm what were good actions for certain machines — and if the gestures were dynamic enough. That was also a collaborative process: thinking about the verbs, the gestures, the items.

We were also thinking about the gender of the machine. For example, for the action “getting dressed,” what clothing or time should we pull out of the closet? The machine could take a piece of construction vest or it could be a dress or it could be, you know … I mean, we ended up just using a white shirt.

I guess a machine represents a laboring body. But then we were also talking about the domestic. What role does the machine play? I don’t want to think about the domestic as a feminine space because I feel like the domestic has taken on another meaning in our current society. I feel like the domestic, now, is very much tied with gentrification and quickly developing modular domestic spaces in relation to urban expansion. It’s about how to make life more efficient, serving as the resting place for laboring bodies. I understand there are still gender issues, and I think the work also speaks to that.

HC: If the machine is inhabiting a home, then whose home is it? This became an important question to us. I was also thinking about class: what social class does this home belong to? So those were the questions we asked ourselves. 

But as Jessica was saying, at one point, other factors came in, like the actions for each alphabet, how feasible the action was, and so on — then we kind of shifted to these practical questions. For instance, for some of the alphabet, we actually did “shot twos” because we were trying to see which one worked better or better fit the concept. This took us a while. For example, J is now “juicing,” but at first it was “joking with friends.” We were debating whether that is a domestic action, and also thinking, “OK, what can actually go with J?”

JL: There are not that many J-verbs. Or for X, the only verb is “Xerox,” which is an office verb and not a home verb.

ML: Right, right. I think it’s interesting that we were talking about identity earlier because it does come up with these artifacts, these belongings, right? Within this recycled ecosystem, there exists multiple identities within. And then, how do you assemble something through the evidence of them?

Tell me a little bit about the dance performance, because I feel like that was the most interactive, in terms of bodies and machines. And it also reminded me of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. One of the videos of dancers grooming reminds me a little bit of an Apichatpong piece (Phantoms of Nabua, 2009) where he basically lights this soccer ball with fire and then has these kids just kick the ball in flames around. And he films them. Have you seen it, Hsin?

HC: I’ve seen it.

ML: It’s so good, right?

HC: It looks really good. It was so amazing.

ML: It is so beautiful. And there’s just something about it that also seems really specific. I identify it as being from Southeast Asia. To see a spectacle like that and think, “Of course that would happen, somehow.” And so, that thing of the woman eating the Mandarin oranges as it’s lifting, feels idiosyncratic and right. I just thought there was something really interesting in how you can play with identity through exploiting what’s there. The broom thing also reminded me of Apichatpong. 

JL: I feel like we’re not finished or happy with the dance piece. The part with the objects or the items found there, I don’t know … I feel like we haven’t really resolved those things either.

But when you were talking about Apichatpong, I remembered that Hsin and I talked about Thailand as a place where — I don’t know about today, but in the past — clothes from places like Japan and Taiwan are donated. So, for example, we were watching one of Apichatpong’s films and there was a shirt that said “Keelung High School,” which is a high school in a county north of Taipei. Feels very random and out of place, but also makes a lot of sense, like the recycling site. 

ML: Well, yes it’s like that. It’s that thing also with the soccer balls on fire. There’s this economy to how these things are moving, migrating, where one thing emerges, where it lands, how it’s used, what’s its history. I think all those things that emerge, through you just being there and trying to recontextualize them, are really interesting.

JL: I think that’s a really good point. I feel like Hsin was better at it. I think I was being a control freak, and it was really hard for me to just embrace everything. I mean, it was already so chaotic, and — you’ve seen my performance or choreography before — I wanted to do something that was extremely precise. So for me, it was on the opposite end of kicking the soccer ball. It sounds like this soccer ball film relies on a preexisting community, like these boys. I guess we could have worked with the workers at the recycling center, but I don’t think they really wanted to. So we just had these performers come and perform at the site. 

ML: There’s actually another Apichatpong video I want to mention. I saw it at the New Museum in 2011. He had a New Museum show (Primitive), and in the same room as the soccer video, he has another film of men. I think they’re sorting out what to build by scribbling on a drawing and  passing that sheet of paper back and forth. They are talking and gesticulating. There’s something about it, where it seems Apichatpong just started inserting himself as an interventionist onto a scene. Similarly, it did strike me when the mattress was going up in your film. I thought, “That’s a really clean mattress.” Why is the sheet so white? Did you go buy a fitted sheet and put it on a dirty mattress?

JL: We did. We wanted it to feel like it was an actual place that was inhabited. Not like a trash dump or not something that was just collected from a trash dump. But then it was moved by the machine. 

HC: One thing came to me when Jessica was describing being like a control freak. I mean, some of my work is also very precise. But I think in the other videos with more documentary elements in them, part of the shooting process was really out of my control. So, for the GoPro, we just set parameters, but the rest of it was absolutely out of our control.

I actually enjoy those moments of working with the environment and spontaneity. Of course it depends on the project, and it also gives you very different results, but I actually quite enjoy that way of working. And I think there’s something interesting about this collaboration, that we had very different tendencies for how much control we wanted to put on this work.

Plus, RAIR is a place that is chaotic in itself already, which is interesting, because I think what Jessica was doing there — trying to be very precise, even having a super clean sheet in this dump site — is very contrasting to the environment. Now, thinking back, there is something interesting about that tension that’s present at RAIR, but also in the ways we work.

ML: Would you consider just getting a machine and trying to do that choreography? All of the films are really beautiful, so I hope they can get out there more, and I could totally see them continuing to develop. 

Let’s talk about gender, since it’s so present in the work, and of course, an interest of mine.

JL: Yes, I think there is a similar undertone to your Boy (1999–2000) and C3PO (2008), a Honda 600 wrapped in fleshy leather and a C3PO mask deflated like a condom. We were using these large industrial machines to perform delicate and domestic tasks. I don’t know how it is related, but I just remember talking to you last year about being catcalled. OK, this might not be related at all.

ML: No no, go for it. I love this. Keep going.

JL: Oh, just being catcalled. Like this desire of having these really strong and masculine machines, like … I don’t think emasculating is the right word, but I think it’s fun. I wonder if subconsciously, there is also a vengeful kind of intention.

ML: Haha, it is for me, that’s for sure.

JL: Like saying, “Big man, now do this.”

ML: Maybe that’s why the workers weren’t so cooperative?

JL: Who? The workers? No, we didn’t even ask them because we didn’t want to inconvenience them. But yeah, I wonder if there is that.

I just hate it when we discursively reference the same things as a default and then validate them again. For example, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975). Like, OK, we understand. I understand that already. We don’t have to talk about it again in the same way. That’s why I was hesitant, earlier, to talk about the domestic and gender in relation to each other.

ML: Your departure from Martha Rosler as in relationship to the machine.

JL: Yeah. But the emasculating part, I think, is definitely there. Sorry, Hsin.

ML: No, Hsin’s a feminist, it’s very clear. What do you think, Hsin?

HC: Umm…

ML: “I’m not a feminist.”

HC: I guess I don’t know what to add. 

ML: In terms of emasculation and feeling limited by, or contending with, gender, I’m wondering, is the hesitation because it’s such a loaded subject? Or could it appear to be associated with identity, with being Asian?

JL: For me, of course I’m interested in gender and race, but I also don’t want to talk about it just for the sake of it. It’s kind of annoying. I think it’s important, but I would like to talk about it in a way that comes naturally to me, and not just to fulfill the expectations the art world or society has for me as a “person of color.”

For example, when we submitted this film for some funding, they were like, “Oh, but we feel that the gender and feminine part was not emphasized enough,” just because they saw Semiotics of the Kitchen as a reference. And we felt frustrated by how people and institutions often repeat discourse without critical engagement.  

ML: Right, it’s a limiting view of Martha Rosler.

JL: Yeah, it’s boring. I don’t want to talk about gender or race just because someone wants me to. I think it’s a question about agency.

ML: Right, it’s like they’re pigeonholing you. But my question is, how do you circumnavigate that, if it is present based on seeing and using Asian female bodies? There is a need for the artists to be present and state a positionality. So what would it be, if we were to go deeper?

JL: I think we are always responding to our environment, our audience, and to be present in my own work means that I will be seen as part of the work. So whatever that looks like, and what my presentation or representation signifies, is dependent on the audience’s personal experience and the larger sociopolitical context. I think what is difficult and interesting to me is playing with the kind of expectations that are associated with my appearance or performance. That, to me, is rich in material. However, I also don’t want to be restricted by it. 

I think that there are many forms of constraint. A simple and straightforward kind of constraint is to follow others’ expectations of you. However, there is another form of constraint that we don’t usually see as a constraint, which is an outward rebellion. The rebellion is still a response to and contingent on the constraint. So I usually don’t like to perform in a way that is obviously contrary to how I “should” behave. 

I think the question might be: how do I want to be seen? Do I really want to be seen as a body that is considered “other” in the current American discourse, or is there a way to expand that gaze? My performance, and how I behave, should be expanding that gaze, rather than perpetuating narratives that I feel do not fit my body. It is saying no to self-exoticization or victimization. How do I be myself without that gaze, and how do I play with that gaze at the same time? I think that is something I would like to figure out in myself and my work.