We Want the Airwaves: Interview with Tina Takemoto

Tina: It's important to document Asian-American queer history partly because there is so
little of it that has been documented. So again, if we think about prominent LGBT archives,
queer archives, the fact that probably less than 5% of these archives represent AsianAmericans is devastating. Especially now, when there's a lot of interest in queer history and
thinking about queer historical sites and historical preservation. We need to make sure that
Asian-American histories and the histories for queers of color are included in that
conversation.
musical interlude
Intro
musical interlude
Nia: We were talking just now about, maybe your most well-known film, which is Looking for
Jiro? And you were saying thatso the film takes place in
Tina: Japanese-American incarceration camps.
Nia: Right. During World War II. And you were saying that for you it's a political choice to
call them incarceration camps or concentration camps, as opposed to internment camps,
which is what they're often called. Could you talk a little bit about that decision and the
politics of it for you?
Tina: Sure, yeah. So I think within Asian-American Studies, in terms of the JapaneseAmerican activist history, we realized that the use of the word internment implies that
people were brought together for their own protection, that's sort of the government rhetoric.
But really, technically an incarceration camp is a camp where people are held, are grouped
together and held under armed guard. And all of the camps were surveilled by military police.
So, they were, technically, concentration camps or incarceration camps. I think, again, when
US history books try to use the language of internment, it takes away from the historical fact
that 110,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly incarcerated with no legal reason.
Nia: So you feel like the term internment makes it sound like it wasn't as bad as it actually
was.
Tina: Yeah, and it's actually inaccurate historically. It's euphemistic language.
Nia: And when did you make the film? It would be a couple years old now?
Tina: The film was produced in 2011, but the project started in 2009. I was invited by artist
E.G. Chrichton, who was an artist in residence at the GLBT Historical Society in San
Francisco, and she developed a project where she went through many of the personal or
private collections that were in the archive. She selected collections that represented people
who had really interesting stories, but were not really famous. So, she was not looking at

Harvey Milk, for instance. And then she thought of herself as a matchmaker. So the project
was called Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive. And she selected specific people who had
died, and matched them with living artists, writers, musicians, and asked them to really
develop an intimate connection with the archival collections, and create a response.
So, I was introduced to the collection of Jiro Onuma, who was 19 years old when he came to
the US from Japan in 1923. He spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, except for
the years that he incarcerated at Topaz incarceration camp in central Utah. And his collection
is really small. It is a 6-inch wide box. Many people have lots of, many file boxes, so his is very
modest. And it consists mostly of photo albums, some personal documents, and he was also
an avid collector of male physical culturelike, homoerotic male physical culture.
Nia: Like, magazines?
Tina: Yeah. So, magazines. He was obsessed with this person, Earle Liederman, who was a
professional muscleman who ran a school where you could pay $5 a week, and Earle
Liederman would send you these hand-typed letters in the mail, and you would buy his
exercise device, which was one of those things with handles and springs. And you would do his
exercises according to his instructions, and you would develop this kind of relationship with
him. So, it was clear that Jiro Onuma had enrolled in his school, had gotten many of these
photographic plates that showed Earle Liederman posing with his exercise device, and then at
the end of the 12-week course, you get this medal of achievement. And in his collection is the
medal of achievement, so we know that he went through the entire course. Although the
people who donated his collection doubt that he actually did the exercises
Nia: [laughter]
Tina: because he actually remained a very slender, slim person his entire life. So, it's quite
probable that he enrolled in order to have this kind of relationship, or this close connection
with his muscleman icon. And then the other thing that's distinctive about his collection is
that it was only one of, say, less than 10 collections that represent Asian Americans in the
GLBT Historical Society, so its a very small percentage. And actually, that is being addressed
right now. So, there's projects in place to create more histories.
The other thing that was really distinctive about his collection is that it contains a couple
photographs that were taken in the Japanese-American camps. And later, I learned that these
might be the only known photographs of adult queer Japanese-Americans in the camps. So,
for instance, we know of, now very famous people, such as George Takei, who is out and proud
and an activist, and he was incarcerated.
Nia: Really young.
Tina: But he wasyeah, he was under 10 years old, so five or six. And there are many
prominent Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated, who are also queer, but most of them
were under 10 years old. So, it was rare to see someone, and to have visual evidence of
someone whose photographs from the 1920s and 30s around San Francisco were very much a
part of the Asian-American gay scene. So, all of his photographs from the 20s and 30s are of

men, are of Asian-American, and probably predominantly Japanese-American men, dressed

up, posing around, in Golden Gate Park, in front of fancy cars, in front of fountains. And yet,
Jiro Onuma was a laundry presser. So, he worked in what is now the Tenderloin district, and
he lived in a kind of boarding room situation above the laundry. So, there is a disconnect
between these photographs that are imagining this kind of gay cosmopolitan San Francisco
life, and then the reality of what his workplace environment was.
So, anyways, this collection was really striking to me. It was incredibly moving when I came
across these images from the camps, because I'm fourth-generation Japanese-American. My
parents and grandparents on both sides of my family were incarcerated. So, I grew up hearing
many stories about the camps, but I had never heard of or even thought that there could have
been same-gender-loving individuals in camp. And the fact that I teach both queer art history
and then Asian-American history, and have thought about incarceration history, and yet even
to me, it had never occurred to me that these two histories could be connected, was actually
really shocking.
It had made me realize the ways that the Japanese-American community has told the story of
camp to ourselves has really mostly been focused on family narrative. So, the classic themes
that are focused on are either notions of, you know, rightly soof injustice, of endurance, of
hardship, of family trauma, and of heroism. So, there's a lot of focus on the young JapaneseAmericans who joined the 442nd all-Japanese-American combat team, and they were highly
decorated. I think partly because the camps were not gender-segregated, unlike other prison
scenarios, people were incarcerated by family unit. Oftentimes, six people would be in one
horse stall in the original detention centers, or in very small sections of barracks. So, again, I
think this idea that it was family trauma sort of excluded other stories. Even stories that might
pertain to the bachelors' quarters, which they also had. Or stories of people who had different
forms of relationships and other kinds of kinship structures outside the heteronormative
family structure.
So, all of this was super exciting to me when I first looked at this material, and I thought for
sure that all I had to do was ask for more queer histories, and they would come flooding in and
I would do a documentary.
Nia: From the camps specifically?
Tina: Or from the Japanese-American community. So, I wrote an op-ed piece calling for
stories or gossip
Nia: In what publication?
Tina: In the Nichi Bei Weekly. And I gotno stories. I got a little bit of hate mail. And I did
get supportive responses from people who were interested in the idea of thinking about this
history. They were mostly from my generation. The hate mail that I gotit was clear that this
person felt that I was trying to tarnish the history of the idea of loyal, innocent JapaneseAmericans being incarcerated.
Nia: Sort of like, don't expose our dirty laundry type thing?

Tina: Well, the sentiment was something likethe person used the phrase, gays in Topaz,
farms in Berkeley, are you serious?and farms in Berkeley was an old Berkeley Farms
commercial.
Nia: Oh! [laughter]
Tina: Where the commercial would say, Farms in Berkeley?like a question markand
then the answer would be Mooooo like, the cows would be mooing in the response.
Nia: Wait, that doesn't make any sense! [laughter]
Tina: No, I know. So, it's a little bit opposite language, but I think the sentiment of this
person was, like, asking the question, were there gay people in the camps? is as ridiculous as
a commercial that is getting cows to moo on the commercial.
Nia: Okay.
Tina: And it was followed with the sentiment that the first-generation Isseithey're called
Isseiwould not have tolerated such abnormal behavior. And then, it ended with I feel sorry
for your kind. What a bunch of losers you are.
Nia: Woah.
Tina: And it was signed, Straight Shooter.
Nia: [laughter]
Tina: In case I didn't know what their orientation wasthey are the Straight Shooter.
Nia: You received this in 2009?
Tina: It was probably around 2009-2010. And at first I was really, of course, shocked and
hurt, and took it personally. But then I realized that this person really was also invested in
Japanese-American history, and wanting to maintain a certain kind of integrity around that.
So I had to respect their passion. I think what was contradictory for them was the idea that,
because this person clearly thinks that queer people are deviant and therefore deserve to be
imprisoned, for instancethat that idea contradicted the idea of innocent, non-criminal
Japanese-Americans being incarcerated. So this person couldn't put those two things
together. Do you see what I mean?
Nia: Yeah. It's sort of a respectability politics kind of thing.
Tina: Yeah. So, that was a really interesting experience, and then I decided that I would
actually focus my attention more closely on Onuma's archive. So, I started to look at the
individual photographs and tried to do as much research as I could to reconstruct his own
story. Out of that I produced a larger archival research paper, a more scholarly paper, that is

also partly about the process of queer historical research. So, what does it mean to engage in
the archive and wanting certain things? And then the historical facts sometimes contradict the
things that you want, or leave you with more questions than answers. That was the kinds of
things that resulted from this research.
Nia: Can you give an example of that?
Tina: Sure. So, there is one very well-known photograph that shows three men in the camps,
and it's very distinctive because it has an image of a guard tower and barbed wire in the
background. Both of those things, barbed wire and the guard towers, wereyou were not
allowed to photograph them, even if you were someone like Ansel Adamsthat is, you were
given permission to take photographs. So, this photograph is distinctive because it has those
elements.
There were a lot of people who were incarcerated who have family photographs. So, there are
family photographs in my family albums, and they were taken in the camps, but they were
usually very, like, family album-type photos. They were taken in front of people's barracks, in
family units, people were smiling, dressed up for the camera. But you rarely see them against
the backdrop of prison.
It's distinctive in that way. It's three men, they're sort of playfully arranged. One
interpretation by the scholar John Howard is that it is an image showing Jiro Onuma, his
lover, and then their friend. And through my research I was able to confirm the first name of
Jiro's lover as Ronald, although I wasn't able to identify his last name. And I was also able to
identify the friend's name. But, the person who was identified as Jiro Onuma never quite
looked like Jiro to me, in relation to the other photographs, but I so much wanted it to be a
photograph of the three of them.
Nia: Yeah.
Tina: Because it was documentation that they were in the camps together. So anyways,
through a lot of different research, I was able to confirm that the photograph itself wasn't
actually taken at Topaz, which was the camp that Jiro was at the entire time, because the
architecture of the guard tower did not match the architecture of the guard towers that were at
Topaz. So, in fact, this photograph was taken in Tule Lake, which was the camp where
Japanese-Americans who were deemed to be disloyal after they had taken what was known as
the Loyalty Questionnaire. These disloyal, allegedly disloyal Japanese-Americans were sent to
Tule Lake. They were, what they called forcibly segregated to this higher-security camp. The
photograph, the famous photograph that was in Onuma's collection, was actually taken at
Tule Lake after Jiro's lover and his friend were segregated there. In other words, they had
taken the Loyalty Questionnaire, they had been deemed disloyal, and they were segregated.
Which means that Jiro was left behind
Nia: At Topaz.
Tina: at Topaz. So, Jiro was nowhere near this photograph. So, there is a way in which,
when I uncovered this part of the history, I was both delighted to be right, but then

devastated that now, what I thought is the only evidence of he and his lover togetherI no
longer had that evidence. I think those are the kinds of things that happen in archival
research. I mean, in the end, it enabled me to see this other photograph, which is a double
portrait that is definitely of Jiro and Ronald together, that now I believe that this photograph
was taken at Topaz before Ronald left, and it was taken in a photo studio. So, it was probably
taken right before they were separated. So now to me, that becomes the most memorable
photograph.
Nia: A photo studio inside the camp?
Tina: Yeah, so, this is also a lesser-known history, but, in the late spring of 1943, at least at
Topaz, they opened a cooperative inmate-run photo studio, where you could pay 25 cents and
have your portrait taken, kind of like Sears portrait studio.
Nia: Yeah, yeah.
Tina: And so, he had a 2-by-3 inch photograph that was probably printed on a sheet of
multiples. So anyway, I'll just stop there.
Nia: It's so weird to think about something as sort of normal-seeming as having your portrait
taken, happening within this highly militarized and carceral experience.
Tina: Yeah, and I think there were all kinds of ways in which both the people who were
incarcerated, and in some ways the government, tried to keep up the pretence or the idea that
people could go to high school, or have a yearbook club, while surrounded by military police
with guns pointed at them. And the public face of that, in terms of the US propaganda footage,
would try to demonstrate that life was, normal within these camps. But in fact, we know that
they were much more like a military prison situation.
Nia: Yeah. Do you have any idea about how Jiro's artifacts got to the archive?
Tina: Yeah. So, Jiro Onuma eventually moves back to the San Francisco Bay Area. He
continues to work as a laundry presser, as a janitor, as a
Nia: Was he actually a baker in camp?
Tina: I don't know if he was a baker. That was my interpretation. The mess hall duties could
include serving food, working in the kitchen, cleaning dishes, and baking.
Nia: But he definitely worked in the mess hall.
Tina: But he definitely worked in the mess hall. There's two photographs. One is the group
portrait of him with the other mess hall workers, and then the photograph of the three men.
And then now, you know, again, we believe that this photo studio image is also from the
camps.
Nia: Do you know what age he was when he went in?

Tina: Yes. Jiro Onuma was 38 when he was incarcerated. He was in the camps for
approximately three years.
Nia: And thenhow did the artifacts get into the archive?
Tina: [laughter] Yes. During the last ten years of his life, he was living in a residence hotel in
what is now the Fillmore district, near Japantown, and he befriended a man who was
considerably younger than him. A white, ex-military person who had served in Japan for a
short period of time. And they became close friends, and the story goes that Jiro had a huge
crush on Peter, but Peter was straight, so they would just be friends. But Peter's brother,
Edward is gay. His brother, and his brother's partner Richard became the executors of Jiro's
estate. And so, they were the ones who gifted the collection to the GLBT Historical Society.
Nia: Queer life in the camps seems like it would be such an incredibly difficult thing to
research. And I'm so kind of surprised that you were able to find any evidence of it. And I
think a lot of your work seems to be about documenting queer Asian and queer Japanese
[American] history, but also aspects of the history thatI think what I'm trying to figure out
is, how much is out there about these things that I just don't know about, and how much of it
you are sort of likethe person who is bringing this stuff to light, or who islike, how many
other people are investigating this type of thing and finding anything?
Tina: There are a handful of people who are doing research. Greg Robinson writes an ongoing
column that features the lives of LGBT Japanese-Americans.
Nia: A column for a newspaper?
Tina: For Nichi Bei Weekly.
Nia: Okay.
Tina: And then in John Howard's book, he also has a chapter thinking about queer lives in
the camps. I think he and I come to different conclusions around the story of Jiro Onuma. I
think, for John Howard, Onuma's story, based on this photograph of the three menhe, in the
end, interprets this photograph as fulfilling queer possibilities. In other words, the camp
became a space in which queer Japanese-Americans could meet each other and have intimate
relationships.
But because of the turn that my research took, in other words that this photograph no longer
showed the two of them side by side. To me it attests to the way in which incarceration
actually negatively impacted the lives of same-gender-loving individuals. When I look at the
photographs in Jiro's collection from the 1920s and 30s, it was clear that he was aspiring to a
cosmopolitan, gentlemanly lifestyle. A dandyish lifestyle. And I wonder if he wasn't
incarcerated, if he could have had a trajectory that fulfilled that more fully. But I believe that
that pathway was radically altered and really arrested because of the incarceration camps.
Nia: Yeah. I guess another thing I keep coming back to is like, there's probably so much queer
history that was lost in the camps. And why does Jiro get to be the one who's remembered?

You know? Like, what are the odds?

Tina: It's true. It's almostit's amazing that his story was preserved. And the GLBT
Historical Society, I think, really values his collection, so at the GLBT History Museum in the
Castro, they have shown aspects of his collection from the opening of the museum. So they
really feel that it's an important history to tell, even though his collection represents such a
tiny percentage of their overall archive. I think that the Historical Society has done a lot to
shed light on this history. And then the other thing is that there is now there is something
called the Dragonfruit Project, which was founded by Amy Sueyoshi, who is a historian and
associate dean of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. And she started an oral
history project that is specifically featuring the lives of Asian-American queer individuals. And
those oral histories will eventually end up in the GLBT Historical Society. Already, over 60
oral histories have been taken, and will radically increase the number of the ways that AsianAmericans are represented.
Nia: Can anyone just walk in and access these archives?
Tina: Anyone can make an appointment to work with the archivists, and they are very
generous about helping you do research. A lot of students use the archive, many scholars,
activists. It's very accessible.
Nia: That's cool. I don't think I even knew that it was there. [laughter]
Tina: Yeah, so it exists, it's in San Francisco. It's an amazing resource.
Nia: When I read that this film was about life in the incarceration camps, I think I expected
the tone to be very different than what it actually is. [laughter] So I guess I wanted to talk to
you about that. I mean, I know your production company is called Queer Camp, and as we've
been talking, it sort of occurred to me that it's a reference to both like, gay camp, and also,
incarceration camp. I'm assuming that was an intentional choice.
Tina: Yes.
Nia: Yeah, so how did you decide on the tone for this film?
Tina: Maybe I'll begin by describing thethe film actually was developed out of a
performance piece that I did which was a live performance piece that was structured around a
musical mashup of Madonna's song Hung Up and ABBA's song Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie A
Man After Midnight, and I have a background in performance, and my strategies typically
deploy humor and pop elements, and everyday activities, and interactions with food or
chopsticks or things like that. Initially, I was trying to come up with a way to take on the role
that would be inspired by Jiro Onuma, and thinking about an activity that he might have done
in his job in the mess hall.
And what kind of activity could I do that I could also do on stage? And so there were many
photographs of Japanese-Americans baking bread in the mess halls. So I thought that if I
went through the entire process of making the bread, kneading the bread, and then forming it

into a kind of a sculptural element, and then putting it in a fake oven on the stage, and then
sort of like Julia Child's television show, you would see the baked bread appear, and that
would form the activity. The other aspect is I wanted to get both the element of what it would
have meant for someone like Jiro Onuma to be waiting, or to be longing for a life of gay men,
or this life with musclemen, and to acknowledge that a lot of the camp experience could have
been about boredom and isolation, how to capture that experience.
I used the lyrics of the song, which is about waiting for a lover who will either never arrive or
never call you, and then the kind of frustration around that. I used the lyrics of the song to
sort of carry that message. And then on the image track, I used projections of US war
propaganda footage from the camps. Images that many of us have seen of the military police
with guns, or people standing in line to wait for food, or people eating in the mess halls, as
well as images of musclemen. So, early Thomas Edison films of this muscleman who was
named The Great Sandow, who was one of the most famous musclemen, who was about a
similar era to Earle Liederman. I used those images as the backdrop for this activity, and then
I was trying to figure out ways to queer the entire experience. Using drag king as a strategy
myself performing as Jiro. But also, in his activity of baking, in the end he ends up making
these giant bread loaves that resemble muscles. And then applies Crisco to his hands, and
then fists the muscles so that he can actually wear them as muscles. So, in other words he
becomes the muscleman that he desires in this way, and then it ends in the Onuma character
trying to follow the dance routine that is part of Madonna's Hung Up music video.
Nia: Is this the one where they're dancing around the kitchen?
Tina: Yeah, and I chose a selection of Madonna's video where she has these Asian-American
restaurant workers, so the idea is thatit's after work, and then they jump over the counter,
and then they are dancing, they are doing her dance routine. But she's relying on a lot of
Asian-American stereotypes, so, the men are dressed as restaurant workers, and then there's
one woman who's dressed as an Asian schoolgirl.
Nia: Yeah, I noticed she had ponytails, it seemed very out of place.
Tina: Yeah, so it's this odd combination of Asian-American stereotypes, and then they are
performing Madonna's dance routine. So, I thought that I would try, or that the character
would try to perform that routine alongside of Madonna's dancers.
Nia: Yeah. [laughter] It's, I thinkI started watching it, and my first thought is likethis is
funny, but am I allowed to laugh? [laughter] Because it's such a serious topic, but you deal
with it in such a campy, is it OK to say lighthearted, way? [laughter]
Tina: Yeah, absolutely. It's meant to be funny, and sort of sadsort of sad funny. It's
interesting because I've shown it both at Asian-American film festivals, and at queer film
festivals. So, at the Asian-American film festivals, most people are familiar with the
incarceration camp history, so they understand a lot of the references in terms of imagery, but
they may or may not understand the fisting part of it.
Nia: [laughter]

Tina: So they'll come up to me and say Oh, it's interesting why you decided to put that bread
on your arms. sort of thing. Whereas in the queer context, it's seen as, you know, I pull out
the Crisco jar, all of the, at least the gay men of my generation start laughing, and
understanding the fisting reference, but they may or may not understand the complexity of
the incarceration camp narrative.
Nia: Does it bother you that either audience might not understand the full political context of
the work?
Tina: Well, I felt that it's been really important to travel with the film as much as possible,
because most short programs are followed by a question and answer period. So that enables
me to give a little more context for the piece. In some ways I realized that a short film that is
also humorous might have more impact in just getting that one tiny idea out there, which is
there were queer people in the camps. Just getting that idea out, and also asking the question,
Why don't we ever hear the story of same-gender-loving individuals in the JapaneseAmerican camps?
If someone leaves my screening with that nugget of idea, likeOh, I've never thought of
queers in the campsand then also associate it with fisting bread, like, an odd person fisting
bread and dancing around, then I feel that that's pretty effective. I'm beginning to understand
the power of humor and also the power of the short format film. I think we can write academic
articles, and I think people whose interest is sparked, hopefully then they will seek other kinds
of information. The essay that I wrote was published by GLQ, and you can access it through
the library, so there are other ways that people can access information. I did feel like I wanted
to just get the idea on the table.
Nia: Outside of just to an academic audience.
Tina: Yeah, outside of an academic audience. And speaking to the communities that I care
about most, which are the queer community and the Asian-American community, and the
Asian-American queer community, so that's overlapping.
Nia: I wanted to talk to you about Her/She, the series that you
Tina: Her/She Senses?
Nia: Yeah.
Tina: Yeah.
Nia: So this is a series of performances you did that's comprised of several different parts, I'm
not sure exactly how many. I guess my first questionbecause there's images of it and a
description of it on your websiteis what sort of connects all of these things together? In
some ways the performances seem very disparate, but I think there are things that sort of
connect them.

Tina: Yeah, so Her/She Senses began as a collaboration among three artistsmyself, Angela
Ellsworth, and Jennifer Parker. Initially we were doing live performance work that dealt with
body issues, issues of femininity, and each of us had our own issues that we were tackling. So,
in early pieces I was really grappling with expectations of Asian femininity, so I developed
strategies for sharpening chopsticks in my wig, and stabbing them into a dress, so that it
would be like acupuncture or hara-kiri or something like that.
Nia: That one I interpreted very literally as, like, these restrictions or stereotypes are
physically causing you pain.
Tina: Yeah, I mean, it was pretty literal at that point. [laughter] And then Angela Ellsworth
was dealing with issues around perceptions of size and body weight, so she would do
performances where she would clip clothespins to the flesh on her face, or interact with piles
of Hostess Snowballs. So, those were early iterations. Later, around 1995, Angela Ellsworth
and I started a project called Her/She Senses: Imag(in)ed Malady. And that was specifically
addressing the fact that she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and that we were using
some of our previous performance and artistic strategies that were deploying humor and all of
these other elements. But we wanted to somehow document and gesture towards the
experience of life-threatening illness within this collabration.
Nia: Why Imag(in)ed Maladies?
Tina: Because it was a collaboration between a person who was not sick myself, or well, and
then someone who was sick. We were really thinking about issues around visibility and
invisibility, but also the way in which things like cancer also challenges our notions of what an
ill person looks like, or what a well person looks like. So, for instance, you may have cancer for
many years, but it's at the moment of diagnosis that you are rendered a sick person. And the
visibility of your illness may only be present after you begin treatment, so that it's the impact
of, for instance, chemotherapy or radiation that is actually altering your physical appearance,
rather than the illness itself.
We were constantly engaged with ideas of, how do we visualize the thing that's going on inside
her body, and we developed this thing that we called visual rhymes, where we thought of
rhymes as two images that look similar, but remain remarkably distinct. She would document
things that would happen to her body based on medical interventions. So, for instance a
biopsy scar that was left on her neck due to a procedureshe would take a photograph of
herself, and then I would take a photograph of myself, and I would put surrogates on my neck
that would mimic the scar on her neck. I would scotch tape a worry doll on my neck, or I
would draw a line with eyeliner pencil on my neck. And we would place them side by side. And
we were trying to be very insistent that my body, the well body, could never be the same as
the ill body. But also, the difficulty of trying to make visible illness, both physically and
psychologically. So, there were these constant plays back and forth.
Nia: And then you had a piece that involved a tremendous number of carrots.
Tina: Yes. Caffeine and Carotene was a durational performance piece, so it would usually last
from 3-5 days. I would do a series of activities about making carrot juice for Angela, and she

would in turn make coffee for me. I was on a stationary bicycle, and it was supposed to look
like I was powering a carrot juicer, and so I would make gallons of carrot juice for her. The
reference to carrot juice has to do with, carrot juice is one of the alternative treatments to
lymphoma. When she was diagnosed with lymphoma, many people sent her juicers and
recipes book for carrot juice, so it kind of became a running joke. But we also wanted to create
a system in which we were trying to convey the labor of illness.
Nia: Yeah, and that's definitely what I took away from that, too. When I was thinking about
the themes, labor was a huge one, and sort of like, human-as-machine?
Tina: Yeah, and also, labor in terms of care and self-care.
Nia: Yeah, that's totally whatit brought up so many feelings for me. In terms of this idea
that you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like Oh, just juice some carrots and you'll be
fine! [laughter] is like, incredibly insulting on some level.
Tina: Yeah, and also, you know, Angela Ellsworth, her observation was, Cancer is a full-time
job. So, anyone who has a long-term illness that requires different levels of care, you are
managing your life and all of your appointments, and all of your treatments. And so we were
trying to make connections between exercise culture, coffee culture, like this is just another
activity that we have to manage. And the amount of labor that goes into that. And then also
the ways in which, when we focus on the labor of care, sometimes we might distance ourselves
from the emotional aspects of what is going on. So, you know, if you drink enough carrot juice,
the logic is, you will get better. But the reality is, some people don't get better.
Nia: And it's not their fault.
Tina: And it's not their fault. So, how can we be somewhat self-reflective about the kind of
self-help logic of self-care.
Nia: Yeah. Do you feel like you went into this piece with a disability justice analysis or
agenda? Because that's certainly, when I was reading the piece, that's kind of what I was
taking away from it was a sort of analysis around this idea that you can and you should heal
yourself, and there's just all this really messed up stuff we're told about being sick, and how
it's sort of like, Oh, if you just keep fighting, or if you don't survive it's cause you didn't keep
fighting, oryou know?
Tina: Yeah. We were really trying to be playfully critical of, you know, these pamphlets that
she would take home that would say, Cancer and You, and it would have this bright horizon.
So we would go to Sears Portrait Studio and take photographs with all our self-help manuals.
We were also trying to develop a way that we could talk about our own anxieties around
illness, around mortality, around loss. And because we had already developed a practice that
involved humor and abjection, and kind of deep issues, but through humor. I think, just on a
personal level, it was the way that we could have conversations through practice that were
more difficult to have in person.

Nia: I'm really interested, too, in how audiences received your pieces that were maybe part of
the community that you were addressing, or dealing with the issues that you weredid you
get feedback from cancer survivors, and what was that feedback like?
Tina: Absolutely. I think one of the things that we learned the most, or that I learned the
most isfirst of all, each one of us were presenting these works in different venues, and we
weren't always together when we were presenting the work. I think what it meant for me as
the well person presenting the work was entirely different than when Angela presented the
work. That's one aspect.
Another aspect is because we used humor, and for some people humor is not an appropriate
response to illness, or humor is not the appropriate expression, whereas other people felt very
moved because of the humor. It taught me to be really both open and respectful of that
people's responses might have everything to do with their own experience and where they're
at with their own experience. If you are in the midst of dealing with the loss of someone, from
a caretaking perspective, or your own experience of life-threatening illness, it may be the last
thing that you want to see. It may feel like the most insulting thing that you could see. And
there were people who would walk out. And then there were other people who would cry
because they were moved. So, really, a broad spectrum of responses.
Nia: And them, a number of these performances also had this reallyI believe the website
described it as I think compulsive was the word they useaspects of very intense physical
labor. I don't know if you can answer this, but I'm curious how it might have affected your
friend's health to be doing this really intense physical stuff while ill, as performance.
Tina: Yeah, so the first time we did the performance with the carrots, it was just called
Introvene Carotene, so it was a much more one-way performance. Meaning that the
performance was mostly about me making carrot juice for Angela. And it was partly because
Angela was really in the midst of receiving treatment, and her health was very fragile. So I
actually set up the performance, and the activities and all of the props with the help of
someone else, and she showed up to the performance and we scripted activities that were
within what she could do and what she wanted to do.
Nia: Was she just drinking carrot juice the whole time?
Tina: Yeah, so she was sitting and drinking carrot juice, and making carrot tumors,
bandaging carrot pulp. But she was stationary most of the time. And then as she regained
help, she wanted to be more active, and so she came up with the activities around making
coffee for me. Also, we have our different skill sets and our preferences. I like to be more
heavily involved in activity that might take me further away from audience interaction,
whereas she's much more comfortable literally on the ground level doing an activity that
would also involve eye contact with viewers. So we orchestrate our activities based around
what we want to do and what our skill sets are.
Nia: Is she still with us?
Tina: Yes, absolutely. She's alive and thriving and is an amazingly productive artist, doing a

lot of amazing work with her partner Tania Katan who is also a cancer survivor and activist.
They do both collaborative work and independent work. It's incredible.
Nia: Are they local?
Tina: They are based in Phoenix.
Nia: Phoenix, OK. Cause that's where a lot of the exhibition was taking place, the
performance. I would like to discuss your forthcoming film, do you want to talk about it a little
bit?
Tina: Sure. Sex, Politics, and Sticky Rice. Sex, Politics, and Sticky Rice features interviews
with five out Asian-American lesbians who were among the first generation of out AsianAmerican and Pacific Islander folks, and many of them were active in the San Francisco Bay
Area since the 1980s.
The documentary is very short, it's under 9 minutes. Folks like Helen Zia, Lia Shigemura, and
Zee Wong talk about what it meant to be in the Bay Area, both as activists but also the ways in
which they created community, and created community around things like potlucks, and
around food culture. Which I think is pretty distinctive for queer of color community
organizing. Zee Wong hosted this Asian-American lesbian potluck that happened on a yearly
basis, and it was one of the most important sites of activism, of heartbreak, of all of these
different forces coming together. And a lot of those relationships, both personally and
politically, have lasted for decades. It's a pretty conventional documentary, but I try to get
somerice porn in there.
Nia: [laughter]
Tina: I wanted more rice porn in there, but I tried to get some aspects of playfulness, and
Nia: When you say rice porn, you're referring to the literal close-up footage of rice, correct?
Tina: Yeah. But even the title Sticky Rice has multiple valences for the Asian-American queer
community. Sticky Rice usually refers to queer Asian-Americans who date Asian-Americans.
Nia: Oh, okay.
Tina: But also, sticky rice as a food was something that folks ate at these potlucks, so it's
supposed to have these double valences. Which is also why the rice theme carries through.
Nia: Interesting. I feel like if it had been a non-Asian person making this film, using that
imagery and using that title, I feel like it would be very different and very problematic.
Tina: It would be totally different! It would be completely problematic! I'd be protesting
[laughter] No, no I wouldn't. But it was a very deliberateit was for and by the sticky rice
community. [laughter]

Nia: [laughter]
[musical interlude]
transcribed by Amirah Mizrahi