Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Julia Huynh - Part II

In this episode we connect with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, professor of Asian American Studies at University of California Irvine, and Julia Huỳnh, incoming curator of the Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California Irvine. We continue our conversation about Photovoice projects and how how participatory action research could work to document some of the current challenges we are facing, including the massive student protests against the war in Gaza. We also explore how social media and artificial inteligence can both help and hinder the value of participitory action research. Contents Episode Books Guest Credits Transcription Books Our public podcast service, paired with millions of discounted books curated into topic-themed collections, provides guidance and tools to support lifelong learning. Add to cart Add to cart Add to cart Add to cart Add to cart Add to cart Add to cart Add to cart Guest Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor of Asian American Studies, the director of the Humanities Center, and the director of Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism, and Belonging (C-LAB) at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University and previously taught at Ohio State University. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013). Julia Huỳnh is a second generation Vietnamese Canadian interdisciplinary artist, community archivist, and independent researcher/writer. As an award-winning filmmaker, her work has been screened at festivals including: ReFrame Film Festival (Peterborough, ON), Reel Asian International Film Festival (Toronto, ON), Aurora Picture Show (Houston, TX) and SEA x SEA: Southeast Asia x Seattle Film Festival (Seattle, WA). She has facilitated multiple workshops on ethics and care in archives, photovoice training, and zine-making to a wide-ranging audience of community members, student leaders, and post-secondary educators. She holds an MA in photography preservation, HBA in art & art history, and a diploma in fine arts. "I think photography is so powerful. It really puts you in the shoes or shows you the perspective of someone else who may be completely different than you are and to try to imagine what it's like to have those experiences and those relationships." Credits Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures. Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how photographs and film, specifically candid or vernacular documentation, captures history, the emotion of a moment before devastation, in the midst of tragedy and triumph, and in the common day-to-day of days long forgotten. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library , this series is designed to be a companion to the project, Through Internees Eyes: Japanese American Incarceration Before and After. Guests: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Julia HuynhHosts: Jon-Barrett IngelsProduced by: Past Forward Transcription [music] [00:00:03] Judy Tzu-Chun Wu: We go through and we think about, "Okay, what's powerful, what's interesting, what's meaningful about a particular image so that we're not just generating image after image but really trying to be thoughtful about what's the story?" [00:00:17] Julia Huynh: There are some groups of archivists across the country that are calling for we need to start documenting the student movement. We need to start documenting the pamphlets that they're handing out, the zines that they're creating because we know that this is going to be something important in the future. Students are referencing student movements of the past, civil rights, ethnic studies, end of Vietnam War, stopping apartheid. Future generations of student empowerment, they might be looking back on this moment right now and they'll need the records to see what was happening and what was being distributed, and what was being shared. [music] [00:00:54] Host: Welcome to Medium History, a collaboration between Chapman University and the curious minds at Past Forward. This series is an exploration of history through multimodal art and expression, allowing us to uncover hidden complexities often overlooked by conventional textbooks. We observe visual material culture, that is, the arts, artifacts, music, storytelling, fashion, and other expressions of a particular time period, and consider its profound impact on our understanding of the past, going beyond mere dates and names to reveal the multifaceted layers of the human experience. It's about immersing ourselves in the emotions, opinions, and cultural subtleties that mold our world. In this season, we engage with authors, museum curators, and educators to see how history has been captured through the photographic image, specifically the amateur photos, the candid family gatherings, the vacation film reels, the images intended to preserve a memory more than document a moment. I'm your host, Jon-Barrett Ingels. This episode is the second part of a conversation where we connect with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, professor of history and Asian American studies at University of California, Irvine, and Julia Huynh, incoming curator of the Southeast Asian Archive at University of California, Irvine, to discuss how Photovoice projects could be used during the current protests on college campuses and the pitfalls and benefits of technology for archiving the history we are living through. Thank you for listening. I'm pulling this out of one of your papers. Photovoice is a participatory action research method described as ethical photography for social change, and we are currently seeing college students and universities thrust into the headlines. How do you see, or how could Photovoice projects work to document this moment that we're in right now, or are there any Photovoice projects covering this that you're aware of? [00:03:11] Judy: I don't know of any Photovoice projects, but I am part of another photography project on the theme of care and repair. That's our annual theme for the Humanities Center. Some of the students are documenting both very personal relationships, for example, with siblings or with partners, and others are looking at acts of social protest to humanize, especially, fears regarding Palestine, fears regarding people who are Muslim, trying to showcase who these people are, what do they value to feature family relationships? I think photography is so powerful. It really puts you in the shoes or shows you the perspective of someone else who may be completely different than you are and to try to imagine what it's like to have those experiences and those relationships. I think photography is a really wonderful way to try to capture the social and political turmoil that we're living through. [00:04:24] Host: We talked about this in our other conversation, that this Photovoice project in particular puts the lens or the camera in the hands of those in the middle of the situation. I think of all the different ways that a project like that could be used, whether it is through the challenges in Gaza and in the Middle East right now, in homeless encampments here in southern California, where we're so used to seeing it from an outside lens that it tends to distort our experience of what's happening, but seeing it from the lens of the person who's actually in it changes the way that we, the outsider, experiences it. [00:05:28] Judy: I just saw a very powerful film called Home Court, and it's about a Cambodian American girl who basketball is her life, and it traces the last several years of her high school career. Now she's at Princeton and was recruited there to play basketball, but I was really struck by these moments when she's just lying in bed and pontificating about her life and her relationships and her goals. I don't know if the film crew was there. I think the film crew did follow her, but I think they also gave her a camera to have a diary, to reflect on things that were really powerful in her life. It's so amazing to see someone transform from 16 to 19, those are such crucial years, and to be able to hear this inner dialogue or monologue, right, that you have about your life and reflections about relationships. I think it's a similar idea. "There's always going to be that relationship that exists once that image of someone is being taken and we as viewers are engaging with that photo." [00:06:36] Host: I'm curious now when we're looking at things like these, the protests we're seeing on campuses, if there was a Photovoice project– for your project specifically, consent was such a big part of it. Julia, how would you suggest somebody who was starting a Photovoice project dealing with mass protests to utilize consent when you're in the thick of the moment? [00:07:12] Julia: I think no matter what, there is always going to be a social responsibility of a photographer and the person that they're photographing. There's always going to be that relationship that exists once that image of someone is being taken and we as viewers are engaging with that photo. For someone who wants to take a photograph, let's say during the height of a moment during a protest, I think there are potential questions that one needs to ask themselves. "Can I safely take this picture for my own safety? Is it worth it to get this 'shot'? Am I going to be jeopardizing someone else's safety if I try to get the perfect image? Do I know that I have access to follow up with the people in the photograph? Hey, here's my contact information. I would like to share this. Can you view it? Do you like it? Do you want me to delete it?" "If you truly have care at your core as someone who is photographing community events, then that care should be very clear throughout your entire practice from the beginning to end..." I think putting in those extra steps of, "Okay, not just walking away. Got the shot. I'm going to go submit it to these major news outlets" because we've seen how that has put students in jeopardy. We've seen how that's been leading to doxing, and their safety is being put in question. For folks that do feel the need that they need to document the faces of these protesters, having those conversations, letting them know, "Is it okay? Do you want me to blur out your image?" because we can do that now. We can put emojis on it when we share it on social media. We can tag people if they want to be named. To me, it's almost like there's no question to it. If you truly have care at your core as someone who is photographing community events, then that care should be very clear throughout your entire practice from the beginning to end, and if your images ends up somewhere, letting that person who's in the photograph know, "Hey, this article picked up your image. I just wanted to send it your way." It's having that continuous conversation relationship-building that doesn't just end once you take their photograph and walk away. [00:09:33] Host: I'd love to know. You mentioned social media. What role does social media play in either helping or hindering participatory action research? As consumers, right now we're so inundated with photos on a daily basis that sometimes the meaning and the context gets lost as we're just scrolling and scrolling. [00:10:02] Judy: That's an interesting question. Maybe Julia has more insights. I think for our project, we were using it as a platform to share. The students had actually developed a whole campaign and a method of releasing photographs at a particular time, having certain tags featuring the showed methodology, so trying to provide context to the images that were being released. For our project, it was very much used as a platform for dissemination. [00:10:40] Julia: I think that's where there's that tricky line that you need to consider. I've seen students share through social media, on the live feature, let's say, of Instagram or Facebook Live at protests or where they're having to face violence from campus police, and that being a call to action asking folks to come and support the students, safety in numbers. I've also, unfortunately, seen social media be used as a weapon, again, as you're mentioning misinformation, not having any context to purposely harass or harm folks. It's always a tough one because I've seen that power of social media, of doing that community-building and enacting social change, but there's also that scary dark side of social media. Sorry to repeat myself, but it's a continuous conversation of if you're going to be filming someone in public, are they aware of it? Just because it's legal and okay doesn't mean that that person is okay with their likelihood being recorded for who knows what when they have no idea, in the first place, so having that continuous conversation, and to go back to your point of, for someone who wants to record at these protests, maybe it's being a little bit more creative. It's not showing student faces, but it's their hands holding the posters, it's collecting the pamphlets, it's collecting the stickers, the buttons, the signs, or taking pictures of the banners because while I don't know if there's a Photovoice project doing that right now, I do know that there are some groups of archivists across the country that are calling for, we need to start documenting the student movement. We need to start documenting the pamphlets that they're handing out, the zines that they're creating because we know that this is going to be something important in the future. Students are referencing student movements of the past, civil rights, ethnic studies, and the Vietnam War, stopping apartheid. Future generations of student empowerment, they might be looking back on this moment right now, and they'll need the records to see what was happening and what was being distributed, and what was being shared. [00:13:10] Host: And what effect it's having. We are seeing that things are changing, maybe not to the level that everybody wants, but we are in this moment where everybody has access to a camera. I say everybody generally, but a majority of people have access to a camera. This thought of being conscientious of what it is that you're shooting, instead of just documenting, documenting, documenting, "Where is the fine line?" because we are just vomiting out content on the regular basis. [00:14:03] Judy: It's interesting, the photography project I'm working on now also entails a lot of workshopping. Sometimes the content creators will have a lot to share, and other times they have a smaller amount. We go through and we think about, "Okay, what's powerful, what's interesting, what's meaningful about a particular image so that we're not just generating image after image but really trying to be thoughtful about what's the story?" Now, I think it takes that communication and thoughtfulness to create interesting images. [00:14:42] Host: And community feedback. [00:14:44] Julia: Something that Judy shared earlier, but just slowing down, being a little bit more mindful of what it is that you want to photograph or what you even want to share. I know a lot of peers and myself included have turned back to analog photography just because of that mixture of, you don't know how it's going to end up, and you only have a limited number of images that you can take, and it forces you to be patient because developing film takes a very long time. It's not in a second like taking photographs on your phone. [00:15:27] Host: We had talked about Photovoice projects initially was something where cameras were handed out. Were they analog cameras that were used for that specific reason, or is it a digital photo or digital camera, or did it matter, does it matter? [00:15:46] Judy: I think we were just using a variety of devices that the students could have access to. Even the photography project I'm working with now, our hope is that the content creators can have access to a good camera, but not all of them do. I think it becomes an issue when we try to do an exhibition and we need a certain quality of image. I think even professional photographers will do a pre-shoot with just maybe their smartphones just to get a sense of what that looks like before they maybe take more of a series of images. [00:16:25] Host: Even our smartphones are above and beyond the digital camera technology that we had 5, 10 years ago. [00:16:37] Judy: It's convenient. "Then once you see an image, that colors your memories, right? I have that experience with family photographs. I'm like, 'Did I remember this, or do I just have the photograph?'" [00:16:39] Host: Now, I'd love to talk about-- We're at this point in technological evolution where artificial intelligence can create photorealistic images, and verifying the legitimacy of an image becomes more and more difficult. How does this technology affect the future of these projects? [00:17:10] Judy: It's interesting. One of my former students is undocumented and has been interviewing other undocumented individuals to record their memories of departure and generating AI-generated images of those scenes. I felt a little bit uncomfortable because I wondered, "How accurate are those details?" Then once you see an image, that colors your memories, right? I have that experience with family photographs. I'm like, "Did I remember this, or do I just have the photograph?" [00:17:46] Host: Yes, absolutely. [00:17:49] Judy: This particular individual said that even when he's presenting an image that may not be completely accurate for the individual, it then prompts that individual to say, "Oh, I remember additional details." They might be just having a conversation with that AI-generated image that then prompts additional recollections and memories. I just thought the methodology was really fascinating. It was not what I anticipated. [00:18:20] Host: Is there a risk of, in this age of what is real, what is truth, what is fabricated, are we running the risk of not being able to trust anything that we see? [00:18:39] Judy: Yes. I think it's important to label something as AI-generated as opposed to coming from a historical archive. There's different ways in the past that you've been able to alter images, frankly, without just being [crosstalk] [00:18:53] Host: Sure, right. Even if it was airbrushing back in the day. [00:18:57] Judy: Right. I think being upfront about what was the original image, if there was an original image, the date, the context, what changed, why the change was made, I think those are all really important details that since I'm a historian, I need to know, right? I think it's an interesting set of questions. Julia, what are your thoughts about it? [00:19:27] Julia: I can see how for folks that perhaps maybe they have limited resources to access materials to create their art, so turning to AI to create generated backgrounds for their video art or making video art entirely through AI can be something very interesting. Similar to you, Judy, I do feel a little bit uneasy. I was just watching Reels the other day, and there is a deepfake, and I couldn't tell at first until my partner was able to circle the movement of that person's mouth being very clearly not real, but at first glance-- and the video itself is grainy, it's already lower-quality, you wouldn't second-guess it until you looked a little bit closer. It makes me think of this one workshop that I went to by Sarah Nguyen. It was called Sharing Stories, Sharing Trust Workshop. It was all about, how do you talk to your parents? This is specific to the Vietnamese community. How do you talk to your parents about misinformation in the media? Part of her workshop was, as a group, determining which image was AI-generated and which was not. She gave really helpful clues to look at people's ear lobes and if it's not matching, if there's earrings, to look at the collar of people's shirts, of course, looking at their hands, whether or not they have fingers because-- [00:21:02] Host: There's 12 fingers. [00:21:02] Julia: Exactly, but then we were also watching these videos of these Vietnamese YouTubers who are spreading misinformation, but they look like it's being recorded in a real news anchor room, but how do we talk to our parents? How do we show them the steps of, "This is what to look out for"? Again, it's that same grainy image. Quick glance, nobody would've known that it was probably recorded in somebody's living room with a green screen, similar to how I was just easily fooled by a two-second deepfake on Instagram Reel just scrolling on my phone. I thought, "Oh my gosh. I need to do more training on this, how to spot these" because like you mentioned, Judy, they don't say if it's AI-generated when I think that should be something automatic if it's not real. "I've been more concerned about the ethical implications once something is online. If someone were to download community images, put them through an AI generator, or create a deepfake out of someone's likeliness." [00:22:02] Host: These news reels, I think I was reading about them. They're in Vietnamese, right? It's the non-English-speaking Vietnamese who are watching them, and there's nobody to be the buffer to say that this isn't real, what you're watching. They take it to be like, "Well, this is what's happening in our world, and this is what's happening in--" Now, the last thing I wanted to talk about, we're talking a lot about digital imagery. As historians, as researchers, and as archivists, is there a fear that the more we move into digital documentation of everything, the less hard copies we have and the more vulnerable we are to losing all evidence of now, of our existence at this time? It's one hack, one viral bug, and it's all gone. [00:23:05] Julia: I guess I never really thought about it in that way. I've been more concerned about the ethical implications once something is online. If someone were to download community images, put them through an AI generator, or create a deepfake out of someone's likeliness. What I'm referencing is a photo colorist took these photographs of S-21 prisoners and had colorized them and made some of the women smile and gave false stories surrounding these prisoners where it led to a family to believe that a cousin of theirs was still alive after the Khmer Rouge, which was really, really violent, just that continuous violence on a community trying to, again, navigate this aftermath of this genocide and to falsely believe that a family member was alive, and not only that, taking these images of people who moments before their death, someone decided to impose their own biases of coloring them, so what their skin tone should look like, putting makeup on women, deciding that they should be smiling. I think more about those implications of when we make our records available online. I think that there's still always going to be a need to collect physical records, so as I mentioned before, yes, taking photographs of banners and posters at these student movements but also collecting what they're passing around to each other. What are they writing? What are they sharing? What are their call-to-actions that they've written down? Some have schedules of their protest week, which I think is so brilliant, first of all, for their organization, but also, it tells us what's important to them. I don't really have a fear that our digital records would be wiped away. That's always a possibility, but you have to do multiple backups, lots of stuff locked up somewhere of these digital records. "I think there's something very powerful about the physical object. I just remember looking at diaries and letters and just realizing that this is the actual paper that this person wrote on or physical objects, right? There's something very emotive about something that was in a particular person's home and that they saved it, and they chose that particular object to save, of all the different things that impacted their lives." [00:25:14] Host: Judy, you're of a different generation, and I think, like me, you came up with a plethora of physical photos and albums. Do you have any kind of fear? I'm probably asking this because I have the fear that we're going to lose everything if we don't have a physical record of it. [00:25:43] Judy: I think there's something very powerful about the physical object. I just remember looking at diaries and letters and just realizing that this is the actual paper that this person wrote on or physical objects, right? There's something very emotive about something that was in a particular person's home and that they saved it, and they chose that particular object to save, of all the different things that impacted their lives. I think there's just something very powerful about that. On the other hand, I feel inundated. You were saying earlier before about being inundated with social media. Sometimes I feel inundated by digital archives. This is perhaps because our university just recently had a policy change, so I had to really go through my materials to declutter, and sometimes I just would like to throw things out. I don't know enough about digital traces, but it seems like even when we delete things, they're not completely deleted. There's ways that we can actually rearchive them and reaccess them. Sometimes we may want to delete some of those things. Some of these issues, I don't know. I don't know if I have a strong opinion, but it's really interesting to think about. [music] [00:27:08] Host: We'd like to thank Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Julia Huynh for their time, their expertise, and their passion. Medium History is produced by Past Forward with support from Chapman University and Dr. Stephanie Takaragawa. For more socially conscious content, visit pastforward.com or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. [music]

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