A few years ago, a friend and I were discussing the fundamental struggle of language to communicate fully. It felt like a tragedy, being rendered in rough strokes, and I kept thinking about the asymptotic nature of so many of our pursuits. This raised the question: what would it even be like to communicate perfectly, and would that even be desirable?
Much of my work as a storyteller is an attempt to circumvent the walls that audiences erect, to navigate language, image, sound, and emotion toward more effective exchange. It can feel circuitous and nebulous, but that’s where the art lies — in the striving for subjective authenticity and vulnerability in hopes of deeper connection and shared meaning. I think many of us began this way, wanting to affect others the way we were once affected. It's a flawed, human grasp at the asymptote.
As a self-taught filmmaker, editor, and photographer, I began in pursuit of aesthetics that resonated with me — those of films from East Asia and the diverse cultures here in NYC. Cutting my teeth professionally meant trying to center the human element in the scope of the work. As I continue, I'd like to move beyond aesthetics into stories centered on displacement, identity, and class, and take bigger risks to that end.
Sounds, scenes, and approximations of belonging and history. Liminality has been a throughline — double consciousness, displacement, the sense of living through frosted glass. As Ocean Vuong writes, “the cruelest walls are made of glass.” Blending aesthetics that have informed me: diffusion, Taiwanese films, and the reverberations of KTV.
During the pandemic, a few friends and I set out to create one piece of work during the week to push back against our paralysis. I compiled found media and captured moments that resonated with me as a visual meditation on the invisible weight and emotions I was carrying. This was set to a modified instrumental of Thank You by Florist which reminded me of the beep of the ECG monitor at Mt. Sinai and the pull of the tremolo. Loss continues to serve as a reminder of how to live. In the end, what melts away is often what we hold so dearly. I’d like to center what actually matters in our brief time here. As my mom asked, “can I breathe the ocean air?”
We all die twice, some call it a rebirth, some are born-again, as long as we keep living-living.
I’ve had this image in my mind for a while. We went to Orchard Beach on a brisk, drizzly day and ran into the water.
Wrong conversion LUTs con obliterate footage, sometimes in intriguing ways.
We set out to map a history of Asian and Black solidarity and cultural hybridity through media, beginning with Bruce Lee and the civil rights movement. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Japanese internment camps to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, our history of how we even got here through shared struggle is not only forgotten but weaponized, reflected by SFFA v. Harvard and UNC (2023) which ended affirmative action. Asian American plaintiffs were used by stockbroker Edward Blum, who, after losing to Black congressman Craig Anthony Washington in Texas's 18th congressional district, set his life mission to undermine Black Americans. This video was inspired by Nerdwriter's piece on Lauryn Hill, which let the montage speak for itself without voiceover, though it has since been pulled by Sony Music.
From Muhammad Ali's protest against the Vietnam War, Yuri Kochiyama and Richard Aoki's solidarity during the civil rights movement, Jim Kelly paving the way for Black martial artists, to hip-hop with Wu-Tang Clan and Kendrick’s Kungfu Kenny, The Boondocks, Ip Man, Afro Samurai, and Nujabes — the history of our cultural and political hybridity is what the American experiment should look like. The Guardian later made a video on this intersection through the lens of martial arts, which further validated our research.
My friend and I would probe our shared histories of China, Taiwan, and Korea, attempting to understand them in conversation with the West and the power dynamics at play. The origins of K-pop can be traced to the Kim Sisters, who entertained American GIs during the Korean War, a reminder that cultural export often begins under the shadow of military presence. Even Japan was forced to let the yen appreciate under the Plaza Accords, devastating its export economy. Now we divert THAAD batteries from South Korea to deter Iran, and the management of empire continues as it shakes under its own weight.
Iterations of my site logo I took from the back of my driver’s license. I’d like to credit New York State for the design and Hyejin for helping me vectorize it (not my real number).
I refuse to carry the weight alone. Showing my son Bobby On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter and testing the Panasonic Omnimovie PV-605SD I picked up on eBay. I digitized it with the ImmersionRC PowerPLAY with audio from the Trash Talk Audio payphone mic.
The resurgence of digicams, spearheaded in part by photographers like Bao Ngo and the page digicam.love, wasn't just a return to nostalgia — they are also viable tools for art. I've always appreciated the ethos of approachability, that what is compelling and human is not predicated on technical and financial moats, which can sometimes be
self-defeating, but resourcefulness and sincerity. I'm also someone who has found himself as the consumer rather than the creator, tapping into fear-based consumption that expensive equipment will somehow buoy my work (even this camera being a scarce toy for the digicam "look," the irony isn’t lost on me.)
Playing with kaleidoscope effects with the Sony DSCT5 point and shoot. I’m always interested in what can be made with older hardware and modern software.
“I reach for things that feel good when I’m despressed – fragments of creation, love, escape, deferral, consumption, but it’s the chariot before the horse when I can hardly get up from bed. The scarred tissue that refuses any further loss also refuses further life. How can I create and make love how can I live artfully when I can hardly wipe my own ass? The anticipation of relief becomes the end to the means. How desparately I crave relief from my own captor that I forget I am also my own liberator. Somehow, we must remember the transparent water of what is often unsaid and undone with the world around us and make peace with it.”