in this episode we sit down with mixed-media artist and educator camille hoffman. her work has been featured in museums and galleries across NYC and she's currently teaching at both cooper union and bennington college. our conversation centers on her art, and in the process we discuss topics from the eurocentric legacy of painting, to manifest destiny, to environmental ethics, to the complexity of living in the context of 21st century capitalism.
Read Morein this episode, we sit down with caroline mariko stucky, who is a swiss-japanese cinematographer and director from switzerland. she currently lives in new york. we had a conversation with her about growing up mixed in switzerland, the difficulties with being gay in japan, and how these experiences are expressed in her films– “color/blind” and “us”.
Read Morecaroline mariko stucky is a swiss-japanese cinematographer and director from switzerland. she currently lives in new york. we had a conversation with her about growing up mixed in switzerland, the difficulties with being gay in japan, and how these experiences are expressed in her films– “color/blind” and “us”.
Read Morecaroline’s personal work explores the various shifts and stages that constitute the movement towards empathy. as with any concept imbued with moral cachet, the temptation is to define empathy and then reflexively judge one’s personal experiences relative to this definition… like love, there’s something ineffably unconscious to the experience of empathy, that logic and language fail to capture, and eludes definition. as expressed in her work, caroline doesn’t seek to define concepts such as love or empathy; rather, through her exploration of complex relationships, her films challenge and complicate our understanding of what it means to empathize, and love.
Read Morein this episode we continue our conversation with @darthmitsuru who runs an english-school/coffee-roaster assemblage in west tokyo (@tokyocoffeejp). we talk about how identity in japanese society is centered around the concept of the 'wa', and how it leads to unintended and terrible consequences– like karoshi– which we discussed in the previous episode. following from our discussion on identity, davy shares what it was like growing up mixed in japan.
Read Moreon the face of it, roguture is ‘just’ a humble business venture that happens to teach english and roast coffee. but as i see it, roguture is so much more, and provides an example of what living free, mixed, and non-binary is like– free in spite of the pressures to conform that come from identity politics, mixed in understanding that who they are is a composite of multiple influences, and non-binary in that their actions are ethical and fluid, not moral and determined. roguture is an expression of life that thrives in spite of the negative affects of binary forces.
Read Moreif one disrupts, or is unable to incorporate oneself into the wa, it is tantamount to death. among the many things that are distorted by the wa, people’s concept of death seems the most affected. within a context where karoshi and kodukoshi are part of everyday reality, suicide seems almost trivial. but that’s the dark irony– death has become banal. and as a direct consequence of this, so has life. we’ve now ventured even further into the black hole.
Read More"To describe my background, I choose to use a word that is traditionally associated with mutt breeds, sterile mules, hybrid plants, or the unnatural. Mixed. I choose to use this word because it flies in the face of what I consider to be a celebration of inbreeding, religious homogeneity, and the hive-mind. Honestly though, being ‘mixed’ only has a negative connotation if you think certain things should remain separate."
Read More"i refused to go down the same tragic path. i was proud of who i was and didn’t need a larger group to validate me. i chose to be a “lone-wolf” over trying to pass for anything other than what i knew i was– mixed. i refused to sacrifice my family’s historical narrative, and my own personal experiences, to serve the greater good of a ‘group’ identity that would never fully accept me as i am..."
Read More"...to think of 'mixed' as just another label that can be slapped onto a character description is to misunderstand it entirely, not to mention perpetuating a monoracial worldview. representation is disembodying, it's abstraction, it plays into identity politics. rather, what we're about is expression. and an expression is always embodied..."
Read More"...this scene here is interesting. it highlights the subtle difference between being 'mixed' and being 'half'. the difference is not merely one of semantics..."
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