ImaginAsianland

This month's ImaginAsian exhibit in Lafayette, Indiana marks the first time a piece of work of mine has been featured in a museum exhibit. My ImaginAsian submission, the script for this summer's The Palace: Like Stuff It, White People, turns up in these photos of the exhibit by organizer Kate Agathon.


My script is the black binder that's inside the display case with a copy of Far East Movement's Animal CD that was signed by the band. Also appearing in Kate's snapshots are ImaginAsian submissions by author Lac Su, jozjozjoz of "Racist Camera! No, I did not blink... I'm just Asian!" fame, Secret Asian Man creator Tak Toyoshima and Secret Identities editor-in-chief Jeff Yang.

As part of a fundraiser for the Asian American Network of Indiana, ImaginAsian is auctioning off on eBay a second script I donated. It's the Palace: Death to Skinny Jeans script packaged together with the finished Skinny strips themselves, which I posted here back in December. The exhibit continues into Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and runs until May 9 at the Tippecanoe Arts Federation at 638 North Street in Lafayette.

I contributed a script of a Palace arc to the ImaginAsian exhibit

Purdue University grad school instructor and Colonial Viper pilot Kate Agathon recently invited me to contribute artwork to an Asian American art exhibit she organized, and the collection is worth checking out if you're in the Hoosier State. Her ImaginAsian exhibit began its run at the Tippecanoe Arts Federation in Lafayette, Indiana yesterday and will last there until May 9:

In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2010, ImaginAsian is a collection of cultural artifacts intended to raise awareness and understanding of the contemporary Asian Pacific American community as articulated through a variety of art including photography, visual and literary.

Sponsored by the Asian American Network of Indiana, the exhibit is comprised of sixty-six pieces of work donated by sixty contributors from 13 states including writer Lac Su, artist and author Kip Fulbeck, civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama, director Michael Kang, Senator Daniel Inouye, G.I. Joe creator Larry Hama, and other stakeholders in the Asian American community.

Instead of new artwork, my donation to ImaginAsian was a script of a future arc of my webcomic The Palace that I haven't drawn and posted on this blog yet (though the dialogue is finished), so ImaginAsian gets a taste of this arc before everyone else. (I wish I didn't have to draw this arc. I'd rather have somebody draw it for me, but as I've said before, I don't know any cartoonists around my hood, and I've got no money to pay a penciller/inker, so I've had to do everything myself.)

I hope I can finish drawing this Palace arc in time for the week before The Last Airbender's July release date because it revolves around the making of a Last Airbender-esque cinematic turd. The title of the arc is The Palace: Like Stuff It, White People.

A new addition to "Assorted Fistful": George Shaw

I wish A Fistful of Soundtracks had more Asian American listeners. On my station, I stream a lot of '70s scores that Asian American beatheads would get a kick out of (as a longtime beathead, it's impossible to resist the themes from say, for example, the original Assault on Precinct 13 or Superfly, which are in rotation on AFOS of course). I think I know why film and TV score music doesn't appeal to many Asian American listeners, besides the fact that it can be an acquired taste for listeners of any color. It's because there are barely any Asian American film composers for listeners like the folks from the Boston Progress Radio crowd to follow and support in the same way they follow the API hip-hop, spoken word and indie pop artists who get airplay on BPR.

The world of American film and TV music is a very white world. So it's always wonderful news for us aspiring writers or filmmakers of color (who want to see more diversity behind the scenes) whenever an up-and-coming film composer of color comes along, and he's really good at it. George Shaw is one such composer, so I've added some of his score cues to "Assorted Fistful" rotation. I've only seen one feature film George wrote score music for (the James Kyson Lee rom-com Asian Stories), but I've heard his cues from low-budget thrillers like J-ok'el and Marcus and enjoyed those pieces. "J-ok'el" and "The Search" from J-ok'el and the Black Christmas-esque Marcus cue "Carol of Death" can now be heard during "Assorted Fistful" on AFOS.

I can count on one hand all the Asian American film music heads who are active on the blogosphere. There's me... and George. He's such a huge John Williams fan that he made a brief shout-out to Williams' Superman: The Movie score during a moment when an actor referenced the Superman character in J-ok'el.

There are a few things I regret about my absence from BANANA (I'm glad I'm not the only blogger who thinks the event name makes little sense--that's like if a panel of African American bloggers called their event "HOUSENEGRO"(*)--or maybe Lac Su and Steve Nguyen were being wry). One of those things is not getting to meet George face-to-face. I'm sure we would have talked about politics (we share the same political views) and film music. Here's George discussing the craft of film music:



(*) "Banana" is slang for an Asian American Uncle/Auntie Tom, and none of the panelists who were there are Michelle Malkin-style Toms.

I bet George will someday overtake Gary Chang as the most prominent Asian American film composer. He's that talented.