An American cis-male born from Chinese and Malaysian immigrants, I am expected to self-identify as Asian. I have also self-identified as ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American), First-Generation American, Asian American, Chinese, Cantonese, Hakka, and Malaysian. For all these identities that have been defined as Other, there are also places.

This presentation shares recent work using visual techniques to communicate and explore how much is designed, including history and place. And how we are now together unpacking the sedimentary layers, excavating bias, then dismantling, mocking, remixing, recasting, reclaiming. The International Style as a carrier wave to redeliver historical oppression as a mirror. Mangling modernism. Free improvisation and cut-up. Détournement and dérive. Experimental publishing. Design as therapy. Design practice as acts of reclamation.

“Those with the power of definition can, in a sense, create ‘place’ by arbitrarily regionalizing the external world.”
—Kay J. Anderson