📸 by me; ft. acnh as a digital altar playing cards (late winter 2021)

I explored the social simulation game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) as a digital altar in collaboration with Maria Mejia, Gavrielle Thompson, Bea Yeh, Maria Mayorya, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, virtual care lab (Richard Phu, Alice Yuan Zhang, Taylor Murray), Roz Crews, and Candace Avalos. I asked How do social simulation games provide a dream space, a neighborhood between IRL and URL relationships? How is online gardening similar to sanctuary making, altar making? My co-conspirators offered me Fuck Tom Nook. In other words, should we build an altar in a capitalist, escapist, and colonialist dystopia? This project @digitalaltar held space for ACNH players to 1) confront these questions & 2) flaunt their islands/works of art. Part of Fall 2021 Art & Social Practice History taught by Ariana Jacobs at Portland State University. Showcased in Loose Body: A Survey of Ephemera from the Art and Social Practice Archive at PSU’s library curated by Marti Clemmons, BB Andersson, Sierrah Bettin, and Lo Moran.

📸 by me; ft. acnh as a digital altar at loose body exhibit (early winter 2022)

~in progress~

~in progress~

📸 by seile tekle; ft. me facilitating a youth for parkrose: financial empowerment workshop (fall 2022)

Starting in 2020, I worked for Historic Parkrose, a Portland neighborhood prosperity initiative, as an AmeriCorps Mercy Corps NW VISTA then transition into their first Youth Program Coordinator, running Youth for Parkrose.

I co-founded their first youth workshop with ELSO Inc. in the spring of 2021. Here, I facilitated eight 2-hour creative workshops for 20 youth of color (ages 14-20) who live and/or go to school in Portland's Parkrose district in collaboration. The “Youth for Parkrose” pilot workshop was part of a larger initiative to empower BIPOC in Parkrose funded by the City of Portland’s BPS and ODOT, Parkrose Community Plan. I helped the youth create projects centered on making themselves and their communities thrive, more resilient, and be in a safer space. To celebrate the youth’s completion of their projects, I hosted a public online event and film screening with Outside the Frame.
find the pilot workshop projects here

To continue Youth for Parkrose programming as an artist, from July to August 2021, I collaborated with Safiyya Algellal who serves youth facing unstable housing in the Parkrose School District to create a housing justice zine. We recruited five Parkrose youth of color personally impacted by the displacement in Parkrose. We also hosted online zine-making workshops and group discussions on housing justice. This project was funded by Regional Arts & Culture Council’s Make, Learn, Build Round 1 Grant and Historic Parkrose
find the zine here

For September 2021, I collaborated on a two-day community filmmaking workshop with Outside the Frame and nine Parkrose youth to confront gun violence and white supremacy in Parkrose. This project was funded by the City of Portland’s Community Healing Arts Initiative. For the first day, the youth brainstormed interview questions and used cameras to interview each other. During the last day, youth used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit their videos in their small groups. This was a private workshop. Not all clips are published.
find a clip here
find media coverage here

For the following fall and winter, I led a financial empowerment workshop series for Portland’s SEED grant, funneling cannabis tax revenue to those most impacted by the criminalization of cannabis. Then I curated and co-facilitated an environmental stewardship workshop series centered on radical movement frameworks with Maria Mayorya, the history of the Columbia Slough with Jennifer Starkey, food as ancestral knowledge with Ridhi D'Cruz, and native planting in the slough for Portland’s Community Watershed Stewardship Program.

📸 by stephen rumph; ft. me and youth for parkrose "working with the land" cohort at the cloumbia slough native planting event (feb 2022)

📸 by me; ft. youth for parkrose at cloumbia slough native planting event (early winter 2022)

Since February 2020, under the mentorship of Roshani Thakore, I have organized with the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and Orchards of 82nd (O82), APANO’s neighbor and an affordable housing unit. I started as a Cultural Work Intern funded by Reed College. Then I became a Cultural Work Volunteer and the Lead Artist for a creative placekeeping project, the O82 Art Crew (fka O82 Curatorial Committee). It started with creating online zine "caring packages" and conducting admin work for APANO’s Arts and Media Project (AMP). Then it transformed into curating and collaborating on exhibits in the O82 and APANO shared hallway.

📸 by self-timer; ft. me and roshani thakore at O82's first exhibit THIS IS KALAPUYAN LAND curated by Steph Littlebird Fogel for Five Oaks Museum (summer 2020)

I designed and organized for Indow Windows as an Emerging Leaders PDX intern. My creative projects focused on challenging the dominant culture within historic preservation. One of my projects involved researching, illustrating, and mapping 10 Black History Sites in Portland. Another project involved recruiting 20+ artists and curating their place-based works for Indow’s Window Zine. Lastly, I interviewed The National Trust for Historic Preservation on Nina Simone’s childhood home, community engagement, and place saving.

As the marketing coordinator for Reed College's SEEDS program, I created videos, social media posts, designs, and newsletters. I also hosted an orientation workshop on decolonizing art and created art activities for the staff throughout the year. Beyond Reed, we collaborated with 60 non-profit organizations and grassroots collectives in Portland in which I organized volunteers for Liberation Literacy, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, and Asians 4 Black Lives.

Reed College's Office for Inclusive Community and Office for Institutional Diversity hosted a month to celebrate first-generation students including staff and faculty. I was contracted as an artist to showcase work in relation to the celebration. I chose to interview 20 community members. Objects included are postcards, social media graphics, and posters.

Receipts was the monthly journal and creative community for and by students, faculty, staff, and alumni of color at Reed College. This was a space where people of color did not have to prove anything through their work, where they do not need external affirmations to legitimize their work, and where the realities of each individual navigating a predominantly white institution were amplified and recognized through their creative and critical works. It was the first publication at Reed for and by BIPOC. Four volumes exist. I was a co-founder with Lucy Xing, Gerardo Velasquez, and Santi Valencia. Editors included Nalani McFadden and Keziah Wong.
find receipts journal archive here

📸 by stephen rumph. ft. me, lucy, and nalani at our vol 3 launch party (fall 2018) in front of tatiana zancajo-lugo's reed college pool hall mural

CNHS Media is a Columbus North High School, Columbus, Indiana student-ran media outlet including yearbook (the Log), and newsmagazine (the Triangle). I spent three years with CNHS Media. And had the opportunity to be formally trained as a journalist through their classes and Ball State University journalism summer camps. I began as the infographics editor and ended as the in-depth editor for the Triangle. CNHS Media taught me how to produce multimedia projects, lead a team, find my voice in a community, and utilize digital tools.

CNHS Media opened doors for me to start a career as a creative. In 2016, I was one of the finalists for Indiana Student Journalist of the Year. I also was granted the Marshall/Gordon Memorial Scholarship and Samuel Simmermaker Scholarship which paid for my first two years of undergraduate studies. Then I worked as an editorial assistant at Bitch Media and reporter for USA Today College. CNHS Media showed me the positive impact and potential of hands-on non-traditional learning for youth, led by youth.
find the archive of my high school work here

📸 by hannah frey; ft. me (2016) leading in-depth team (top) and journal workshop for east high school (bottom)

📸 screengrab; ft. yaejoon and me after oral thesis defense (spring 2020)

Abstract: As the social and political impacts of COVID-19 deepen, the anti-Asian racism and physical barriers to organize continue to painfully grow. I offer my thesis to those who desire to reimagine Asian America/n and social movement strategies. In my thesis, I ask, how do Asian American feminists, collectively and individually, practice and define Asian American feminism by assessing Asian, Asian American, and feminist identities. I also explore how Asian American feminists mobilize and materialize on an image-based social media platform, Instagram. To do so, I delve into notions of Asian American feminism(s) through Asian American feminist anthologies from the 1980s to the present day. These anthologies creatively and critically show Asian American feminism as thought, practice, and movement strategy. In this, the collective and individual histories of Asian/American identities along with their varying positions on the axes of power, are unraveled and challenged to understand the underpinnings and importance of Asian American feminism. In regard to the contemporary anthologies, Asian American feminism is politically driven against whiteness; and, in turn, an effort against anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and imperialism. Then I conduct a literature review consisting of studies on Women of Color, a political identity, and social media.

With Women of Color frameworks and Asian American feminist scholarship, I investigate Asian American feminism in my survey data as an individual practice and movement strategy on Instagram. My data shows how individual college students conceptually understand Asian/American identities, feminist identities, Asian American feminist identities, and these identities in relation to Instagram. Then I analyze a case study of a New York City based activist group, Asian American Feminist Collective, and their Instagram practices. In doing so, I present an explicit and collective understanding of these identities. My overall findings show that Asian American feminism(s) over time and context continues to reshape – in its scope and direction – as individuals and collectives reconceptualize and challenge Asian/America/n, feminisms, and platforms to organize (or practice) political activism. My thesis is an effort to contribute to research on Asian American feminism, image-based activism, and physically distant organizing.

Thesis Advisor Yaejoon Kwon, Thesis (B.A.) Reed College

💡 tip: right click for open image in a new tab to enlarge

As a Creating Connections Consortium Fellow for University of California, Berkeley’s Digital Humanities Department, I conducted graduate-level research on image based activism in the Undocumented Youth Movement. I utilized Max QDA, a qualitative analysis software, to collect and code Instagram data which is less frequently studied in social movement literature compared to predominately text-based platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Presented at the fourth C3 Summit at Middlebury College.

Abstract: The grassroots and innovative media strategies of the Immigrant Rights Movement are brought to the forefront through my examination of #Immigrad mortarboards on Instagram as a counter-narrative to the anti-immigration sentiments of the Trump Administration. I explore personalized mortarboards hashtagged with Immigrad on Instagram because the movement has used an image-based platform with limited features to build solidarity, create a collective identity, and engage in a political sphere controlled by and made for elites. I hypothesize that an image-based platform is a movement tool to achieve social change because online visual communication and face-to-face activism interweave together. To test this, I use MAXQDA, a qualitative data analysis software, to code 90 #Immigrant motarboards on Instagram for a relationship between the symbols and text on the post and on-the-ground movement actions such as storytelling. My research is grounded and guided by image-based activism literature and Sasha Costanza-Chock’s transmedia organizing framework
find presentation here learn about C3 fellowship here

📸 by Alberto Ledesma; ft. C3 Cohort (summer 2018) + Writing Tutor Erin Lam