#Talkstorytalkplace Project Wants a Digital Archive of LA’s Chinatown
Everyone has a story, and in Los Angeles, Joel Quizon is building a digital archive of memories and tales focused on the immigrant experience.
By S.C. Stuart
Like many creatives in Los Angeles, Joel Quizon is a multihyphenate: a curator-producer-DJ who might soon have to add “historian” to his resume too.
As a producer at media studio Form follows Function (FfF), Quizon is working with founder and documentary filmmaker Maya Santos on a bold, tech-based project called #talkstorytalkplace , which is building a digital archive of memories and tales focused on the immigrant experience. FfF started recording intergenerational interviews in LA’s Chinatown but will be expanding to Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Historic Filipinotown, and beyond.
We talked to Quizon about the FfF team’s use of technology, why the visual arts bind us together, and how he’s determined to create cross-cultural communication in this diverse city of 4 million people. Here are edited and condensed excerpts from our conversation.
PCMag: Joel, full disclosure. I was on assignment in the Arts District for PCMag and read about #talkstorytalkplace in a print copy of Los Angeles Chinatown Quarterly (WAPOW) someone had left behind in a noodle shop.
Joel Quizon: [ Laughs] I love how random life is.
So true. Okay, so tell us how the project came about, who’s involved, and what Form follows Function is hoping to achieve with #talkstorytalkplace.
Sure. So, a group of filmmakers and artists got involved with FfF, after Maya founded it in 2011, including Rani de Leon and myself. A few years ago, Maya and Monica Ly, who collaborated on our current project, were working at [the radio station] APEX Express [in Berkeley, California] and discussed the idea of an intergenerational summit. When back in LA, they decided it was time to put one on.
Wendy Chung from [the Chinese newspaper] WAPOW had invited us to participate in their edition about intergenerationality alongside the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. So we invited 25 people—youngsters and elders—to our first recording event at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive , hosted by LACA’s Executive Director Hailey Loman.
What kind of fancy equipment did you use?
[ Laughs] If we get funding, we can transition to the good stuff. For this, we kept it simple, used voice memo mode, or video, on smartphones, edited on laptops, and uploaded to the #talkstorytalkplace site.
How about storage mechanisms?
We are currently gathering the media and refining how it is presented and made searchable. For now, we will be using [the #talkstorytalkplace] hashtag as well as geo-tagging the content with the specific enclave and/or neighborhoods where the sessions occurred.
Tell us about a couple of the meaningful encounters you captured between Chinese ethnicity elders and young people on the day.
The community activist Mo Nishida was central to our event in helping us frame the conversation and getting everyone talking to each other. Nishida was incarcerated in the camps during WWII when they rounded up everyone of Japanese descent in LA and is a symbol of trust and authenticity for people in the Asian community here. His presence meant that people in their 80s, who came to our event, were able to open up and feel safe. One grandmother, when interviewed by her 10-year-old granddaughter, was able to explain the importance of Chinatown to her family, and the community at large. It was clear that they’d never had a conversation like this before, and that was very moving.
And you were able to preserve it for future generations.
Right. Which is so important, especially as so many communities in LA are being eroded through gentrification.
Did you see this project as not just a social endeavor, but an artistic one, made possible by modern technology?
Yes. I really believe art is the best way to engage with each other, and technology allows us to preserve these experiences forever. Preserving personal history is important. As [an] instructor on the Digital Histories program for Visual Communication, a 20-class film program that teaches film practice to older adults from underserved, ethnic communities, each student is guided and mentored to complete their own short film, which is eventually shown at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
You were born in Manila and came to the US as a child. As an immigrant/expat myself, I know that displacement, even when by choice, means losing connection to familial stories and national identity.
Although that’s true for many people—and what inspired us to do this intergenerational story project-strangely enough, I don’t have that problem [ Laughs].
You don’t? How come.
Well, I was born into a very large family of filmmakers back in the Philippines, and we’re really well-documented with footage from events, all shot on 16mm or even 35mm. The film industry is really huge in Manila, and several of my family members are well-known actors. But, yes, that was the momentum behind #talkstorytalkplace because most people don’t have that. When they emigrate, those ties are gone, and younger family members don’t always get to ask about their history from “back home.”
Everyone has a story. If you ask the right questions, and they trust you enough to tell it.
That’s so true, and technology now allows us to capture them for posterity. Our overarching goal is to create a bank of online intergenerational place-based stories, to help raise curiosity about places and people of other generations.
There’s a huge educational benefit too, especially for communities that have suffered great hardships over the years. I covered Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation technology project to preserve holocaust testimonies within AI-powered holograms, so future generations can interact with them and never forget what happened.
That’s an amazing project. Yes, in a similar vein, we’re hoping our own work can become useful for teachers, historians, community organizers, and more.
You started this project in Chinatown, which was first populated in the 19th century. Where next?
There are many historic Asian neighborhoods in LA County. Next up is Little Tokyo, hopefully Historic Filipinotown after that. Then we’ll see; it really depends on funding. We’re also looking to go further than the Asian communities, to connect with all other cultural enclaves in LA. We want to get a picture of how we’re all connected; where we all came from, and how we ended up here.
You’ve been recording L.A. neighborhoods as a photographer for a while, and have exhibited on EyeEm. I interviewed the founders of EyeEm, at their Berlin HQ. Can you talk about how important digital communities, like EyeEm, are in connecting us?
Digital communities are crucial because they provide us with opportunities to connect with people all over the world; to find our tribe. I was active in EyeEm really early on, when they had an outreach to photographers in other countries. I did a couple of photo walks of LA and met up with so many great people, both in person, and digitally, and we still keep in touch. Then, when I traveled to the Middle East, I did a shoot in a market in Abu Dhabi and posted some of the pictures on EyeEm. Suddenly I got followers from that area, and it expanded my world view still further. It’s amazing.
Talking of world views, that’s a lot of what you do as a curator and programmer for the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. I heard the preview for The Farewell, starring Awkwafina, which hits theaters July 12, was packed.
Yes, we couldn’t premiere The Farewell, because it had already done so at Sundance, so we did a sneak preview screening at LAAPFF in May. Actually, I was at the official LA premiere and award ceremony for Lulu Wang, the director, last night. But definitely look out for Yellow Rose, directed by Diana Paragas, which co-stars [ Miss Saigon] Tony award winner Lea Salonga.
How do you find movies to show, or do they find you these days, using digital submission tools?
LAAPFF is one of the biggest festivals in Southern California now, so most filmmakers submit to us using FilmFreeway , and our acquisitions team is always on the road, traveling to other festivals, including Cannes, to seek out new filmmakers.
You’re also a well-known DJ and produced the Los Angeles/Grand Performances, Disco Manila in 2016. Got any digital mixtapes we can share?
Of course! Check out my mix called Counterflow: Currents In New Filipino Music on Spotify , Soundcloud , or Mixcloud.
Finally, what’s next for Form follows Function in terms of upcoming projects?
We’re currently finishing up a social history documentary project with Dr. Catherine Gudis at the University of California, Riverside to examine the fallout from the nearby 1-million-square foot Amazon fulfillment center , and the history of the citrus industry in the Inland Empire. It has similar roots to #talkstorytalkplace in that we’re documenting people’s history, labor, and communities, alongside the stories of families who have been based in the historical Citrus Grove area, just outside Los Angeles, for generations. Using digital tools, we can record these cultural shifts so they are not forgotten.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com on July 6, 2019.
