Celine Wong Katzman

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Artist Profile: Katherine Frazer

August 2, 2021

I interviewed prolific digital painter Katherine Frazer. We spoke about productivity software, ikebana, and her artistic process.

Read it on Rhizome.

Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts

February 24, 2021

Christopher K. Ho and Daisy Nam invited me to contribute a letter to Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts, available to order on Paper Monument's website.

This collection of seventy-three letters captures an unprecedented moment in politics and society through the experiences of Asian-American artists, curators, educators, art historians, editors, writers, and designers. The form of the letter offers readers intimate insights into the complexities of Asian American experiences, moving beyond the model-minority myth. Chronicling everyday lives, dreams, rage, family histories, and cultural politics, these letters ignite new ways of being, and modes of creating, at a moment of racial reckoning.

With Contributions By:

Aily Nash and Sylvia Schedelbauer, Ajay Kurian, Alexander Lau, Anicka Yi, Anne Anlin Cheng, Anoka Faruqee, Aruna D’Souza, Asad Raza, Brendan Fernandes, Brian Kuan Wood, Byron Kim, C. Spencer Yeh, Candice Lin, Cathy Park Hong, Celine Wong Katzman, CFGNY, Chitra Ganesh and Sung Hwan Kim, Chris Wu, Christine Y. Kim, Dawn Chan, Furen Dai, Hera Chan, Herb Tam, Holly Shen, Hồng-Ân Trương, Howie Chen, Hyperlink Press, Iftikhar Dadi, J Fan, j.p. mot, Jean Shin, Jen Liu, Jesse Chun, Jessica Hong, Jia Tolentino, John Tain, John Yau, Josh Kline, Ka-Man Tse, Ken Lum, Kenneth Tam, Kim Nguyen, Luke Luokun Cheng, Lumi Tan, Maia Chao, Marc Handelman, Marci Kwon, Margaret Lee, Martha Tuttle, Martin Wong, Mary Lum, Matthew Shen Goodman, Megha Ralapati, Mel Chin, Michelle Lopez, Mimi Wong, Mo Kong, Naeem Mohaiemen and Yara El-Sherbini, Pamela M. Lee, Patrick Jaojoco, Patty Chang, Paul Pfeiffer, Philip Poon, Prem Krishnamurthy, Ralph Pugay, Sarah McCaffery, Zheng Sheng-Tian, WangShui, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Tausif Noor, Vinay Hira, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Zulfikhar Bhutto.

consider the scallion

December 16, 2020

consider the scallion is a risograph anthology I co-edited with Diane Zhou that features a constellation of reflections on the elusive, intricate nature of the scallion. We have always been fascinated by scallions as cultural artifacts with long roots (haha) stretching across cuisines and experiences. Since many of us have been staying at home and cooking more often as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, scallions have become a precious culinary resource. Growing in our windowsill gardens, they have emerged as a symbol of self-renewal, grounding us with the reassurance that time is indeed passing and that we can still find ways to flourish together.

Each edition of one hundred includes a special bleached paper made from scallions by artist Tim Simonds. Other contributors include Luke Luokun Cheng, Matthew Shen Goodman, Anton Haugen, Christina Yuna Ko, Mo Kong, Vivienne La, Fei Liu, Kevin Lozano, Larissa Pham, Stephanie H. Shih, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, Son Kit, Sprechgesang Institute, Jia Sung, Taehee Whang, Rose Wong, Jasmine Yeh, Diane Zhou, and me!

This project was made possible with the generous support of the Brooklyn Arts Council and Asia Art Archive in America.

You can purchase a copy of consider the scallion here.

From Message Board to Crowded Bar: Inside Angela Washko’s The Game: The Game

October 30, 2019

The Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism and The Nation invited me to collaborate with artist Angela Washko to produce an interactive article about the research behind her project The Game: The Game, building upon our conversation in Rhizome in 2017. The Game: The Game is a choose-your-own-adventure style video game in which a player navigates a female protagonist through a bar attempting to meet a friend. In order to advance, the player must interact with pick-up artists blocking her way and deploying the manipulative strategies that gained them notoriety. The article contains text written by me, a Twine game made by Angela and data visualizations she made in collaboration with Aman Tiwari.

Read it on The Nation.

Breaking the System: Sound and Technology in the Art of Tiri Kananuruk

May 31, 2019

I interviewed artist Tiri Kananuruk whose practice explores the manipulation of sound in the context of technological consumerism, examining human relationships through the use of transmitted signals and machine learning, natural language, and bodily movement.

Read it on the Mana Contemporary website.

The Art Happens Here:
Net Art Anthology Book

January 31, 2018

I have two texts published in Rhizome's The Art Happens Here: Net Art Anthology. The 435-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition The Art Happens Here: Net Art's Archival Poetics, on view at the New Museum through May 26, 2019.

Reigns: Her Majesty

April 24, 2018

For the past two weeks I’ve been ruling centuries of kingdoms in Reigns: Her Majesty, reincarnated as queen in perpetuum. The iOS game succeeds its king-centric predecessor, Reigns, in which the player makes choices to advance the narrative by swiping left or right on cards, as in Tinder. Reigns: Her Majesty is not simply a version of the original game with an almighty female head of state, but is instead a complex examination of the contradictory obligations and impossible choices for a woman in (proximity to) power.

Read it on Rhizome.

Artist Profile: Ryan Kuo

November 30, 2017

I interviewed Ryan Kuo, one of my favorite artists working today. We spoke about filing files, diagramming family dynamics in the Mac interface, and publishing content in a medium that can only frame it incorrectly.

Read it on Rhizome.

Artist Profile: Angela Washko

July 17, 2017

I interviewed Angela Washko about her art practice and ongoing projects challenging misogyny in both virtual and IRL gaming cultures. In particular, we discussed her most recent project The Game: The Game, a choose-your-own-adventure style video game in which a player navigates a female protagonist through a bar attempting to meet a friend. In order to advance, the player must interact with pick-up artists blocking her way and deploying the manipulative strategies that gained them notoriety. I asked Washko about her frustrating experiences interacting with the pick-up community, developing counter-strategies for game, and how we, as women, can treat the well-being of these men as a feminist issue while practicing self-preservation.

Read it on Rhizome.

Conversation: opensignal

June 19, 2017

opensignal is a collective of artists based in Providence, Rhode Island concerned with the state of gender and race in experimental electronic-based sound and art practices. I spoke with them about carving out space for traditionally excluded voices in a creative field dominated by homogeneity.

Read it on SCREEN 介面.

The Republic of Samsung

June 5, 2017

I co-authored an essay with Son Kit to accompany the presentation of Samsung by Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries in Rhizome's Net Art Anthology. We discuss globalization, South Korean corporate culture, and the complex nature of Samsung—its existence not only as an economic entity but also as an emotional phantom, reaching its incorporeal fingers into relationships, daydreams, and fantasies.

Read it on Rhizome.

Sondra Perry

November 17, 2016

I wrote about Sondra Perry's solo show, Resident Evil, at the Kitchen. Technology, power, and identity are at play in several new works that collectively comprise an uncanny domestic scene set in a spacious chamber of Chroma-key blue.

Read it on Art in America.

Respectability Politics

September 22, 2016

I wrote about the group show, Respectability Politics at OUTLET which asks how identity shapes participation in the art world and determines the parameters of acceptable behavior. The transgressive energy in these works serves as a reminder of norms of decency in the art world and beyond, prompting a reflection on who gains from flouting them, and how.

Read it on Art In America.

John Russell's SQRRL

December 7, 2015

I wrote about John Russell's hypertext fiction, SQRRL. The text is structured along two trajectories, allowing the reader to toggle between a narrative poem and a series of footnotes. Moving fluidly between contemporary theory and futuristic narrative, the reader of Russell's text finds that this cynical and beautiful vision of a future society, in which a person's consciousness may be distributed among seven lizards, has strong echoes of the present.

Read it on Rhizome.