An Asian American artist recorded the racist things men said to them in bars and released the audio in a short film

• The artist Kyoko Takenaka recorded encounters they had with racist men at bars.
• A few years ago, they compiled the audio into part of a short film called "Home."
• The film was initially released at film festivals but revived amidst a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes.
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For the past several years, Kyoko Takenaka collected visual memories: pictures and videos of their old home in Massachusetts and audio clips of the racial microaggressions of men in bars without really knowing what they were going to use them for.

One day, they were reflecting on the idea of "home" and sat down and wrote an entire piece of poetry they later used as the basis for a short film. Takenaka then went back into their collection of memories to find visuals for this poem.

"As I sat through the writing process, I also was sifting through all of my hard drives and memories of how I collect different visual media forms throughout my life. I think as artists … as photographers as filmmakers, we feel something, we capture something, and then there are stacks of hard drives and we're like one day it's going to be used for something," Takenaka said.

The rise in anti-Asian hate crimes prompted Takenaka to quickly release the piece to the general public.

Takenaka, who is a second-generation Japanese American, compiled the poem, audio clips, and video segments into a short film titled "Home." The film was initially only shared at local screenings and film festivals but Takenaka reshared the film more broadly after six Asian women were fatally shot at three Atlanta salons in March.

"This topic and this film is something that I was working on many years ago," Takenaka said. The reason that I shared it was to connect the collective grief and the collective ways that art can foster change; really thinking about how the film could be used for Asian Americans, specifically Asian American femmes to unburden the labor of explaining their experience during such a triggering time," they said.

"I kind of instantaneously decided to just share it right then that week and was moved to do so."

Hate crimes have been on the rise for the past year

Reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans have increased dramatically in the past year.

Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center that tracked cases last year beginning March 19, soon after the novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic, said it received "over 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate" crimes from March till the end of 2020.

Hate crimes against Asian Americans have been reported well into 2021. Earlier this month, a 65-year-old Asian woman was yelled at and assaulted while on her way to church Monday morning in New York City and a man used a metal post to trash an Asian American-owned convenience store while yelling racial slurs in Charlotte, North Carolina.

"As Asian Americans and as people of color growing up in America, I think it's a pretty vast sentiment where all these things happening currently are getting news media attention and folks are starting to talk about these issues, but it's nothing new for our community and we've built ways to support one another throughout that process, I think throughout history," Takenaka said.

The film is broken up into four segments, all meant to attempt to answer the question: "What is Home?"

It starts with images of Takenaka's childhood home as it's about to be demolished, and cuts through clips of Takenaka reciting their poem before moving to images of Takenaka overdubbed with audio of others speaking to them.

This segment, containing recordings of racist things men said to Takenaka in bars, resonated with many.

"Your face is very beautiful and it's very Oriental," one man says in one of the clips. In another, a man says, "Koreans have very puffy cheeks."

Takenaka says they included the clips because it helped them reclaim the experience. The moments were nonconsensual and happened in private situations, but they wanted to present them publicly.

"I think a lot about how all of those situations happen in one-on-one settings to Asian-American femmes ... There are no witnesses, usually, there's no support when that kind of microaggression happens," Takenaka said.

"I always felt like there was something collective about this, but it always happened in individual situations. I wanted a way for it to be of collective use," Takenaka said.

Using the non-consensual to bridge the collective experience of Asian Americans

Takenaka said they wanted to create something productive out of these exchanges, something to whom others who have experienced these micro-aggressions can relate.

"I think so often we are gaslighted about our experience or even friends of ours saying: 'that's not what they meant' or 'you're making a big deal out of this.' Or oftentimes in those situations, I think the victim themselves would deny the situation and it was easier to do it that way."

Even though the encounters were non-consensual, Takenaka said they were generous in concealing the identities of the men they recorded.

"I still kept them anonymous and I focused not on their expression, but my expression visually ... I think if anyone wants to come forward and claim those recordings by all means - but I wanted to find a way to still amplify the truth of that situation while maintaining their anonymity," Takenaka said.

They added: "It was more about having autonomy over and gaining autonomy over those situations and using my art to do so. So often we don't get to choose when we're visible and like those microaggressions are examples of that, where we're visible for our race or we're fetishized for our race, but it's nothing that I had autonomy over."

Takenaka thinks the film resonated with the public because it took ownership of the narrative, as it was told from their perspective, not that of the men making the microaggression.

Watch Kyoko Takenaka's "Home"

Home (A film by Kyoko Takenaka) from on Vimeo.

They said they received a lot of feedback, especially from other Asian Americans who said the film allowed them to start having conversations around microaggressions and their experience with friends.

"They finally feel seen and heard for the first time and represented," Takenaka said.