select productions, as artist

Speakeasy Podcast

is an experimental podcast produced by Nami in collaboration with producer/filmmaker Janice Duncan. Episodes feature conversations and interviews with the provacateur and with attendees of the Black Bar Social, delving into the provocative questions on the future of culture posed during the evenings. Themes include: the future of labor and technology in relation to historically marginalized communities, Afrofuturist visions for the future of society, the relationship between ancestors and their progeny, AI and social logics of hospitality, and the role of ancestral intelligence and diasporic worldmaking in emerging technologies. The podcast extends the impact of the program beyond the physical space of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion and fosters broader dialogue about the future of cultural and technological innovation. Nami leads the production of the podcast, designing and executing interviews, authoring the script, composing the soundtrack (and other ambient sound design capturing the live essence of the event), and spearheading the audio editing of the 60-minute episodes.  

Flood of Memory

(2024) Manzanar, CA

Flood of Memory is a documentary by Maya Castronovo shedding light on children’s experiences of incarceration during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Nami composed and recorded the soundtrack for the documentary. Listen to “uguisu song” (nightingale song) and “kazoku shashin” (family photo) here. 

The film will be screening in Spring 2024 at Yale University, Wisconsin Film Festival, and NFFTY in Seattle. It can now be streamed on Director’s Library.

they never told us these things 

灯台下暗し

 
is a multimodal sound installation that was held in Osaka, Japan in July 2023 as a reiteration of they never told us these things. This iteration centered Japanese voices and experiences of nuclearization.  

등잔 밑이 어둡다 (December 2023-January 2024) | Seoul, South Korea

was screened at CICA Museum in Seoul, South Korea in Contemporary Landscapes, an international exhibition running from December 13, 2023 to January 17, 2024.

tntutt: screendance

they never told us these things: screendance is a short film filmed as a companion to the aforementioned installation of the same name.  A collaboration between Nami (music, sound art, projections), Christine Lin (director, dancer), and Tobi Lee (main dancer).

azine 

azine is an Asian/American art collective in New York that centers queer and women-identifying artists. As co-founder and head of curriculum, Nami developed and led biweekly arts workshops designed to spark dialogue around identity and community care. The collective also organized teach-ins in partnership with the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER) at Columbia University, advocating for the departmentalization of the center and the hiring of more tenure-track faculty of color. In collaboration with the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies (CCIS) at Barnard College, azine successfully pushed for the establishment of an Asian American Studies track. The zines featured above capture the cumulative work of these workshops, documenting both creative outputs and moments of collective reflection.

Wild Wild East is a hybrid talk/music radio show hosted by Nami and her friend, Christine. They co-authored weekly episodes on the transnational circulations of music emerging from East Asia.

New York, NY & Hiroshima, Japan