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(machinery beeping)

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(beads rustling)

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- For me, photography is a very intimate

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and one-on-one encounter.

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(gentle instrumental music)

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Certain materials are understood

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very differently through the camera.

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I think it's amazing when something can be

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really transfigured through the lens.

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I make photographs and videos and

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also have installation elements,

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what I would call
architectural interventions.

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(instrumental music continues)

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Photographs are such
intense condensations.

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They're almost like a dreamwork.

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(people cheering)

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That YouTube, internet
space, it gives me ideas

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to make me feel connected to other people

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who are also trying to make things.

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(gentle electronic music)

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I love watching craft
videos, fruit carvings,

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cooking tutorials, makeup
tutorials, braiding hair.

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These crafts and acts of making

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have a real temporality to them,

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almost like an expiration date.

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Photography deals so
well with the impermanent

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because you can just make an image

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of a very impermanent situation.

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(dramatic music)

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As a photographer, I feel
like it's my imperative

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that I have to take in all
of the trash, you know,

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of the world and I think I
work from this psychic garbage.

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I work with so many discarded materials,

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things that have very little
social value ascribed to them.

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I'll be cleaning my house
and sweep up a pile of dust

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and I'll take that dust
and I'll just bring it

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to the studio in a bag.

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Or maybe I take something
that has social value

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and I turn it back into materiality.

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A successful image happens right before

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everything falls apart and that could be

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because I'm lighting something on fire

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and I only have one split second.

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(funky music)

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I'm touching things and arranging things,

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but it all has to happen within
one instantaneous moment.

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(funky music continues)

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(upbeat whimsical music)

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Sounds that you can't hear
and air that you can't feel

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and all the factors that
you can't experience

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shape what the photograph
ends up becoming.

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(beads rustling)

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By the time I'm finished with an image,

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I don't even remember where I started.

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(beads clinking)

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It's actually a process that's an

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accumulation of failures in my studio.

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It's very improvisational.

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I almost think of it as a
performance I am doing alone.

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(orchestral music soaring)

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(water tinkling)

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I try to work against
that impulse to identify

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and get more towards a place of feeling.

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I think knowing can create a distance.

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Growing up and seeing the way that my mom

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interacted with physical
things in America,

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where so oftentimes in the wrong way,

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in the way that she would pack my launch,

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a sauce in saran wrap,
chips in saran wrap.

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I came home to visit my mom
and she was out in the garden

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and she was just stabbing
fake flowers into the ground,

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amongst real flowers.

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It was just like why would you do that?

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Why do you want fake flowers?

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To her, there's no difference.

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There are the fake flowers
and the real flowers

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filling up the yard and
making it look vibrant.

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Seeing her do that, combine
the natural and the artificial

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for the sake of this cohesive image,

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I felt so much relation
to that in my work.

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There's something about hidden labor

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that actually imbues a
psychic charge to an object.

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I'm interested in these
divides in culture.

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What's trashy and what's seen
as intellectual and clean?

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I really relate to that space of copying,

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wanting to be this other thing
and stepping into that role.

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And I love karaoke.

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When you're singing
karaoke with your friends,

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the lyrics all of the sudden take on

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this totally different meaning.

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It brings out the text
of the original material.

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♪ And the vision that was planted in my brain ♪

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♪ Still remains ♪

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♪ Within the sound ♪
- "The Sound of Silence"

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was written to provoke Western
liberal American sympathy.

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The Vietnamese subject was always

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very peripheral to that sympathy.

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With "Tyrant Star," I was just looking

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for the perfect war song

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and I ended up picking this peace anthem.

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I worked with this girl,
I found her on YouTube.

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She was kind of like the
aspiring star of "Tyrant Star."

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She can't speak English, I
taught her every syllable

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of "The Sound of Silence."

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A lot of the sounds in this song

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are helicopters used
during the Vietnam War.

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I could take these sounds that were

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coming from a very violent place

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and then shift them into a pop song.

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I really like cover songs 'cause
it takes this given reality

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that you know and understand

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and you can completely twist the affect

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on that given reality based
on who's singing it and how.

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Just the act of having someone
Vietnamese sing this song

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was powerful, even for
me to hear her sing it.

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(somber music)

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There's something about being an artist

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that comes from an inability to just be.

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The moment that you speak or communicate,

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there's already mediation.

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There's something that's about intimacy

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that is actually more
important than knowing

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and I wonder all the time what actually

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makes you closer to something.

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(Singing to The Sound of Silence)
♪ Hello darkness my old friend ♪

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♪ I've come to talk to you again ♪

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♪ Ten thousand people, maybe more ♪

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♪ Because a vision softly creeping ♪
♪ People talking without speaking ♪

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♪ People hearing without listening ♪

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♪ People writing songs ♪

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♪ No one dared ♪

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♪ Disturb the sound of silence ♪