The Revolutionary Life of Grace Lee Boggs
At the age of 98, legendary activist Grace Lee Boggs is still traveling around the country giving speeches, mentoring young people, and inspiring new and seasoned organizers with her message of revolutionary change. A longtime resident of Detroit, a close associate of CLR James, a philosopher, librarian, organizer, and wife of autoworker Jimmy Boggs, Grace Lee Boggs has a lifetime of activist experience. A new documentary by director Grace Lee, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, examines Boggs's life through her radical ideas. I attended a recent screening at the DOC NYC festival with co-producer Danny Kim. The segment begins with a clip from the movie trailer, then moves into our interviews with the director and members of the film audience.
Original airdate 12/02/13
Do Ho Suh Finds “Home Within Home”
Korean artist Do Ho Suh's work examines themes of dislocation, memory, and the measurement of time and space. His new show at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York, on view until October 22, 2011, features reproductions of objects from his New York apartment rendered in translucent fabric, drawings of the staircases in each residence he's lived in since 1974, and a resin model of his childhood home in Korea nesting inside an apartment building in Providence, RI. I spoke with the artist at the gallery, where we discussed his idea of home and his movement, both physical and metaphysical, through cultures in the US, UK, and Korea.
Original airdate 09/26/11
Harold & Kumar Take On Christmas
In “A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas,” actors John Cho and Kal Penn set a Christmas tree ablaze, accidentally shoot Santa Claus, and nearly meet their demise at the hands of Russian mobsters. But is the latest installment of the Harold and Kumar series merely a stoner buddy movie starring Asian Americans, or does it offer incisive commentary around race and class? To find out, I convened a conversation with Jeff Yang and Naeem Mohaiemen. Yang, a veteran author and journalist, writes the weekly column “Tao Jones” for the Wall Street Journal Online. Mohaiemen is an artist and writer whose projects include the film The Young Man Was (Part 1: United Red Army), and “Flying Blind: Waiting for a Real Reckoning on 1971” (Economic & Political Weekly, 2011).
Original airdate 11/21/11
Dinh Q. Le at MoMA
The first Vietnamese artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Dinh Q. Le’s work explores his country's fractious history as it relates to war, particularly the Vietnam War. Born in Vietnam in 1968 and raised in Southeast Asia and the US, he now lives in Ho Chi Minh City. His MoMA show, titled “The Farmer and the Helicopters,” juxtaposes a full-size, hand-built helicopter with footage from American movies about the Vietnam War and interviews with Vietnamese citizens about the iconic piece of machinery as it shifts from an object of destruction to one that can be used for benevolent purposes.
Original airdate 08/24/10
