Tokyo, Drones, and the Importance of Mixed Voices- An Interview with Director Asuka Lin

Edited for Clarity

Asuka Lin is a Japanese-Taiwanese filmmaker and visual artist currently based in Los Angeles, California. although the topics addressed in their photography, zines, films, and installations vary greatly; they are all united under Asuka's strong interest in the post-colonialist human experience.

Addison Lee: To start do you think you could introduce yourself and say a bit about what you do

Asuka Lin: My name is Asuka Lin and I'm a Japanese Taiwanese filmmaker living in Los Angeles and I specialize in experimental short films that range from Documentary to Narrative. 

AL: What would you say is your relationship with your multiracial identity.  

A: I’ve had a lot of trouble with labeling myself and sticking to those labels. When I was in high school I often addressed myself as Asian-American but I felt like that was such a broad term and I got existential about what the term Asian-American even means because I don't have citizenship for America and I'm a first generation immigrant from Japan. And I've been living in America for a long time so I feel like the term Asian-American is really complicated and I still am struggling to decide on what constitutes as Asian American and what constitutes being American. So often I just kind of go with the term Japanese-Taiwanese because that's just kind of like how I am, just parents wise.  

My dad is Taiwanese and my mom is Japanese and so I kind of just labeled myself with that for awhile and that's what I continue to label myself. But just being Japanese and Taiwanese is very weird because historically Taiwan has been colonized by Japan and that kind of history is reflected in my past. I didn’t really understand that I was Taiwanese until I was older and a lot of the time I just referred to myself as Japanese instead. Even in Taiwanese culture there is a lot of Japanese elements to it because of the Colonization and because Taiwan has just been forced to learn Japanese and do all these different customs under Japanese rule. 

 So I feel like my life has paralleled that in some weird sense because I've only been exposed to Japanese culture my entire life and I don't really know much about my Taiwanese relatives. I had this identity or part of my past just kind of buried in a sense before I even knew of it.

I think really what's important to remember is that mixed people are also full people, like you're a whole person too. I feel like a lot of people who are mixed kind of go through life thinking that they're partially a person or not entirely real or not entirely this, not entirely that. I think what's important to remember is that we're all human beings and we all have different backgrounds and different upbringings and the way that we were all raised could be different, so drastically different from each other. 

I also just had different layers of honestly unfinished identities.

For example, I was in America and I was trying to make friends with all of my white classmates at school and at the same time I was under the impression that I was Japanese the whole time until like five years ago when I finally realized that I’m also Taiwanese and found that whole side of me that I haven't really explored. 

Whether I consider myself Asian American, whether I'm still Asian-American if I don't have citizenship, you know? It's like all these different questions that are kind of left unanswered. They’ve never really satisfied me and made me feel like a full person. Even when I go to Japan now I'm still seen as a foreigner just by the way that I dress, by the way that I talk or walk. It's not just skin color or physical features but it's also just that your presence is also read as foreign and it's hard to feel so alienated and isolated when you're growing up. I think in having immigrant parents and being an immigrant yourself, you struggle with the idea of fitting in your entire life. 

AL: Moving on to your art, most of your work grapples and explores the concept of race. Why do you think that ended up being something you focused on so centrally in your films?

A: I think when you're a person of color, it's hard to make work that doesn't revolve around your own race. I think your race really shapes the way that you view the world. And that's not really something of your doing but it's more what society has done to you. 

For example, growing up in a really white town and going to school with white classmates and being treated differently is already something that sets you apart from everyone else and gives you really strong, almost traumatic experiences of how you view yourself and how you structure your own identity. 

I think a lot of my work does deal with race because a lot of my experiences are informed by race and they're also informed by wanting to fit in or being alienated from a certain environment, or feeling disconnected from this “mother land” that you come from.  

I also think when anyone starts studying racial injustice and the history of racial injustices it becomes very clear that race informs almost everything in the world right now. This country itself is already built on racism and genocide. So I think it's so important to talk about it and to talk about voices of people of color talking about their own experiences of being alienated or of experiencing injustice. 

AL: Your genre of experimental narrative is so enthralling and in part because of your both brilliant and at the same time wildly intimate voiceovers. What drew you to really include your own voice in your work?  

A: I'm really interested in storytelling and recently when I was thinking about it more I realized that I grew up with my dad reading me children's books and every night he would read me a book from the library or it would be like Harry Potter or something and he would just read for 20-30 minutes while I fell asleep. And it started my interest in storytelling at a very young age. I also think it really starts a child's need to create things and imagine things with their brain. And I think this act of reading someone a book or reading someone a body of text is something very very intimate and maternal. I think that was one of the most simple and intimate connections that I first experienced as a kid. I really value intimacy in my films a lot. I often try to feel really close to the viewer. I want them to feel like I'm in the room you know, sitting with them and talking with them.

AL: Another rich motif in your work is the ocean, what really drove you to see that as a source of inspiration?  

It was kind of like something that I just started with and then after I made "Sakanatama"(watch below) I sort of started to realize how much deeper my relationship with the ocean is. I have this really strong memory of when I first started writing my new film that I'm working on right now, I was at the beach with my really good friend Abe and we were kind of talking about why we're so drawn to the ocean and they were saying that the ocean is kind of this place that a lot of immigrants and refugees look for comfort because the ocean is this symbolism for escape. 

I like to think of the ocean as like another mother. When I look at the ocean I think of my grandmother, I think of my mom, I think of my grandfather who passed away, and I think of all the different stories that I grew up with. And so it is so rich in history and culture that it's kind of hard for me to not make movies about the ocean because it's just such a deep, deep well of metaphors and symbolism. 

AL: How would you say your relationship with the ocean differs with your relationship with Tokyo?

A: Tokyo's really different because the ocean is like a mother and Tokyo is just a crazy city.  

I feel like Tokyo really serves as a political tool because of how many white people come and portray Tokyo as just this booming metropolis that’s cyberpunk and also futuristic and then also super capitalist and all this sort of stuff that is very cliché. So whenever I make a film that portrays Tokyo at all I often stray away from those clichés and try to make a Tokyo that is accurate to my own experiences. 

I also think Tokyo is very vulnerable with misrepresentation whereas the ocean isn't, just because the ocean is such a monolithic symbol. Tokyo is misrepresented in so many different ways. I'm just so angry about white dudes coming to Tokyo and filming things there that so many other people have filmed before and thinking that their work is new and cutting edge. I'm just so annoyed with it and so annoyed with the repetition of it, that in my new film we wanted to make a Tokyo that is just completely the opposite of what everyone thinks Tokyo is. 

 So we purposefully filmed the movie at 3 Am where nobody is around because I wanted to film a Tokyo where it was completely empty and quiet. 

A lot of the renditions of Tokyo in mainstream media are so racist and really, really one dimensional and just so inaccurate of the actual people who live there because I think people come to Tokyo thinking that it's some kind of theme park.

 And I think it's so ignorant to believe that because Tokyo is a place where people live and people have normal lives and have families. For example when people like Logan Paul come to the country or dudes who come and sexually harass the people working and living in Japan. They're not props and they're not objects that you can just throw around. These are real people and they need to be represented in that way. 

 I also think pickup artists are just such a problem in Asian countries. And I think they're even worse in Southeast Asian countries too, just because these men from Europe or from America come to these Asian countries thinking that they'll just get an Asian girlfriend or hook up with an Asian girl just because mainstream media portrays Asian girls as very submissive and very quiet and will do anything for you.

AL: You do this in “Headless.exe” and also really well in “The Phantom of the Officer's Daughter: A (Vertical) Love Story” but can you speak at all to your ability to give really intimate and crazy personalities to inanimate objects? 

A: I think with Headless,when I make those kinds of films, I think of those objects as avatars and I start to funnel all of my rage and guilt and anger and frustration with the world into them and then have them speak on it instead of putting my own body into it. I'm really interested in magical realism and sort of anthropomorphizing objects and having them come to life and talk about their own experiences as that object. I think that's really interesting to explore because of what I said earlier about how race informs almost everything in the world, including inanimate objects and including JPEGS and including websites on the Internet or including how we talk to each other and I wanted to point out how those kinds of problems exist inside objects like drones and the Officer's daughter picture, and like the headless doll in Akihabara.

I like to believe that objects are these sponges that take up the environment that they're in. I want my films to give voice to those objects and have them talk about what it's like to be that object and what it's like to be in that environment. 

AL: It's also really exciting how it applies in terms of how objectified people of color are through just living in America. It's definitely something you don't see very often done in such a unique way. 

A: I think what you said is really important, where it parallels the way people of color feel objectified because a lot of politics can be written into objects. For example, drones are both seen as a tool for filmmakers but are also these deadly weapons. And so it kind of affects what these objects are and how they're being used and what purpose. For Headless, the anime doll is very objectifying of Asian girls and it's a doll that really mirrors the way that certain races are portrayed in real life. 

AL: What advice do you have for young creators and for young mixed people? 

A: I think creating art and sharing art and making art accessible to everyone is really important because when I made Headless for example or "Sakanatama", I've had people come up to me and talk about their own experiences relating to the movie and being like, "I really relate to this story. I've never seen stories about this". Being through a similar thing made me feel less lonely. And so I think with mixed people I think we can give a really interesting perspective on the world. Just because. Our identity has so many layers and so many unfinished questions and those kinds of questions can be tools to use to make provocative artwork or to talk about very important issues that are not really touched on in mainstream media. I would really encourage anyone really to keep making what they want to make and use those things to explore the questions about themselves and that doesn't mean that they need to answer the questions. But just having the question itself is already such a powerful thing to share. 

AL: What is your experience in being mixed in the film industry?

A: I've actually been thinking about this all week. So sometimes when I'm on different sets and I'm just working on stuff or I'm setting up things I suddenly have this crazy panic settle in when I start to realize that I'm the only person of color in the crew. I've been through moments where I stop and jus tlook around myself and I just see all white people and I have this moment of panic where I'm like, "What the heck! Why am I the only person here that looks like me?" 

I start to panic about how much different I am than everyone else. It's kind of really scary to sort of realize when you're on set and that can get in the way of you focusing on the task at hand or making connections to other people. And I've definitely had moments where I was on set and I've had breakdowns and stuff where I hid in the bathroom to cry. And I think it's really important to talk about those experiences with other people of color and other mixed people in the industry. I feel like one of the things that I'm most thankful for living in L.A. is that it's so diverse. There actually are a lot of POC artists and filmmakers in the city and literally this past year I've just been able to make friends like start making friends who are also mixed filmmakers and I think just reaching out about different organizations in different communities in your area and creating a community of your own that harnesses the solidarity of other POC with other mixed filmmakers and artists as well is so helpful with your own mental health and your own progression in your own career. 

See Below, Asuka’s film Sakantama.