andrew durbin Earlier this year, we published your essay about the year in Asian American media.It’s partly about the movie. joyride [2023]. You write that this film asserts that your identity is not just your inheritance, but your friends. This passage prompted me to think about the artistic and aesthetic allegiances that make us writers. Would you like to know about other writers and artists who identify with you?
Simon Wu My family and friends make most of my creative process possible. Friendships are also an exercise for me because I feel collaborative in everything I do. In general, I’m drawn to people whose work exists unnaturally between worlds. Or the people who teach me new ways of working and spending time, like the art collectives CFGNY and Shanzhai Lyric, or Ajay Kuran, who also runs the alternative arts education program New Crits. My friend Julie Chen is a poet and pop star. A parody of David Wojnarowicz by David Wojnarowicz and Ken Okishi. Dan Vo I love when artists and poets write about art, and I’ve referenced many of them for my upcoming book. Claudia Rankine, Kathy Park Hong, Amy Sillman, and Jack Whitten. I also love emotional things. This is a video of Maggie Lee. Poetry by Chen Chen. Lyrics by Lana Del Rey. They teach me how to more powerfully control my emotions.
advertisement The rise of the personal essay over the past three decades or so has tracked a slow decline in criticism. Fewer and fewer people read it and fewer and fewer people write about it. Now, in the art world, we simply call it “art writing.” How would you describe your job?
south wales Much of my recent writing comes from trying to find ways to talk about my encounters with art in my life. Like how a painting comes back to me when I’m watching people warm up at CrossFit, or how something in a novel reminds me how to do that. . Costco has piles of boxes. I have found myself having the most profound artistic experience, with the work of art acting as an angel or devil on my shoulder, at random moments apart from the work of art itself. If personal essays are guided by art writing through character development and ideas, I have recently been writing personal essays where encounters with and evocations of works of art are “important to the plot.” These encounters serve as nodal points in my writing that change the course of my thoughts. But it’s just an experiment. We’re just getting started. Writers like Olivia Lane, Justin Torres, and Ben Lerner sometimes do things like that, but my work may be more artistic.
advertisement dancing on my own An eclectic mix of essays on fashion, art, and politics. Do you have the yarn to knit these pieces together?
south wales On paper, the topics seem wide-ranging, but in my head the connections are very clear. For me, what unites my love for Telfar bags, queer rave? sims [2000-ongoing], Costco and the Asian American Art Collective are centered around people who sit at the intersection of many cleavages: generational, ethnic, and artistic. Often, it’s people who are children of immigrants, or queer, or both, but I don’t think that’s exclusively the case. In my book, I call this “the emotional and aesthetic landscape of class aspirations.” It was inspired by trying to understand the difference between what I want and what my mother wants. She prefers Victoria’s Secret bags to Telfar bags. Are my desires and preferences more important than hers? What kind of system makes that possible, and how do we try and fail to reconcile those gaps? ?
advertisement The title of your book is taken from a song by Robyn, and earlier this year you wrote Lana Del Rey’s There’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard [2023] for Freeze. There’s a tension in pop music between authenticity, authorship, and identity that you seem particularly drawn to.
south wales Pop has a special place in my heart. Because pop made me feel gay before I knew I was gay.The first song I downloaded to my girlfriend’s iPod Nano was “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani [2004].and I think this teenage dreams [2010] Written by Katy Perry. Pop capture is very good and intuitively impactful. I also remember recording a Britney Spears concert on tape and bringing it to elementary schools to show and teach. Then I bought a pirated Aaron Carter CD and ripped it for a friend. Growing up, I refrained from writing about music. Because music felt so magical to me. But then I started writing from the back door.for drift, I wrote an essay called “Party Politics” [2020] – A significantly revised version appears in this book – about the counterculture that forms around music, especially techno and rave culture. That opened the door for me. Later, as I became interested in the indescribable aspects of contemporary art, my theory became less chic and it felt natural to root my artwork in pop influences. It was a simple translation.
advertisement You are also active as a curator. Does that aspect of your practice shape your critique?
south wales The main audience for my critiques is usually artists. I try to write as if I were in their studio, synthesizing what they are saying and giving them feedback and advice. The other audience member is me. I don’t think many people read my critiques, but they are valuable because you can channel your emotions into something. Therefore, it has become increasingly interesting for me to use my curatorial work as a way to “write in space.” Last spring, I did a show called “Victoriassecret,” which was based on an essay. [it’s actually the first essay in the book, ‘A Model Childhood’, about helping my parents clean out their garage]. This created a reciprocal relationship where I would write down my experiences with art, bring that art into curatorial projects with the help of writing, and then write about it again after new experiences. Writing an essay can be like answering the door at a party. We’re trying to decide who to bring in and when. The same goes for curation. Something happens when ideas are expressed as physical objects in a room and people can interact with them. Essays are like architecture and parties. Let’s invite people and see what happens.
advertisement What are you looking forward to in 2024?
south wales My book will be published in the spring and I’m looking forward to telling people about it. I’ve read a lot of novels and want to get back to writing novels. I also really want to surf.
Main image: Illustration: Maria Jesús Contreras
