U-M Creative Currents

Impossible Conversations (Part 2)

• Arts Initiative • Season 3 • Episode 4

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In this episode of U-M Creative Currents, host Mark Clague continues the conversation with artist and filmmaker David Chung, professor at U-M’s Stamps School of Art & Design.

Building on Part 1, this discussion delves deeper into Impossible Conversations, exploring themes of restorative justice and the personal transformations that can arise when individuals with opposing ideologies find a way to communicate. 

Professor Chung’s work focuses on how identities are shaped in immigrant communities and the challenges of refugees as they integrate into new homelands. Chung’s work has been exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Asia Society, the Walker Arts Center, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Project Rowhouses, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Gwangju Bienniale, the Tretyakov Gallery of Art (Moscow), the Williams College Museum of Art, and in a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.




Season 3, Ep. 4: Impossible Conversations | Pt. 2


[00:00:13.634] Mark Clague:

Welcome to Creative Currents, a Michigan Arts podcast where we explore the power of collaborative creativity and how the arts can spark meaningful conversations. I'm your host, Mark Clague, and today we're joined by artist and filmmaker from the U of M Stamp School of Art and Design, Professor David Chung, for part two of our conversation on his film, Impossible Conversations. Professor Chung's work focuses on the challenges faced by refugees and how identities are shaped in immigrant communities. He has exhibited his drawings, prints, and video in installations at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Professor Chung is also the director of the MFA graduate program at the Stamp School of Art and Design. David, welcome to Creative Currents. Thank you. Tell me a little bit about your journey to become an artist. It sounds like you had a very interesting childhood, moving around a lot of places as the son of a diplomat.


[00:01:05.763] David Chung:

Yes, well, I always was very interested in the arts, and it was really in high school when I went to a public high school and they had this kind of trip where you could sign up and go to a printmaking studio downtown in D.C. And I didn't know anything about that. And I went and I was just amazed at the studio environment, the nice music playing, people working on their drawings and prints. And I was hooked. And I said, this is what I want to do. So I got really interested in that studio life and in drawing and try to make that my profession.


[00:01:44.625] Mark Clague:

amazing. So you'd been exposed to the arts, but in a sense that spark to become an artist didn't happen until relatively late, high school years.


[00:01:53.495] David Chung:

Right, when I knew that it would become a reality. I'd been drawing and painting all my life, but it was really that. And then an experience after college where I started to work in film and television. I moved to New York and unknowingly just thought you could move to New York and answer an ad the paper for artists and get a job. And I ended up working in slide shops where you made, this is before that PowerPoint run.


[00:02:25.068] Mark Clague:

all done by hand. Yeah, I remember printing out slides and having a projector and having to go through them in the early days of PowerPoint. Well, that's really interesting and speaks a lot to what we do at the Arts Initiative, which is to try to expose students at Michigan to the arts, you know, to sort of light a spark of a new imagination, new possibilities for their career. So Sounds like you did exactly that. So this is part two of our conversation about the film Impossible Conversations. We have a previous episode where we talked to your colleague Pratap Raghani from the University of Arts London. And listeners will definitely want to check out that episode as well. And we should say that the film is– it's not only an impossible conversation. It's a pretty difficult conversation. It's about community violence in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2012 and specifically killings at the Oak Creek Sikh Temple. And this film opens, I guess, with a conversation happening between Arno Michaelis and then the son of one of the men killed at the temple, Satwat Singh Kaleika, is the founder who's killed, and then his son Pardeep is the one you're talking with. So how did this film come about?


[00:03:30.258] David Chung:

Well, it came about through a collaboration with Pratap Raghani. So in the beginning, years ago, we began an initiative to work for faculty from our university and Pratap's university to work together. And so we've been talking over the years about different things. And then Pratap really came up with this idea to work. He asked me, would it be possible for us to work on this? Can we make a film about this? And I said, and I was immediately drawn to it. And I said, yes. And so then began our work together on formulating an idea.


[00:04:10.300] Mark Clague:

Well, what prompted you or made you aware of this incredible friendship between this former white supremacist who, you know, sort of founded the gang at which the murderer comes from, and then the son of one of the men killed. How did you become aware of that?


[00:04:23.954] David Chung:

Well, I was immediately drawn to the story because it really symbolized to me this sort of American story about the Sikh community growing up in a bubble or in a place by itself. And then alongside it was this white nationalist neo-Nazi skinhead group that was kind of growing up 20 minutes away and these two groups were growing up side by side and then they collided at this terrible mass shooting at the temple but it was a very to me it was a very American story about an immigrant community and about a white nationalist sort of group thinking about ideas of actually wiping out people who they think don't belong and it was a fascinating story. Once I got to know Arno and Pardeep, I was really, they're both charismatic people. They're really involved in what they're doing. And I was really interested in telling that story.


[00:05:28.444] Mark Clague:

So the film in some ways is an act of restorative justice. I mean, you're bringing these two people to talk to each other. They very dramatically hold hands at one point in the film, which is really powerful. But can you talk about some of the challenges of representing such a difficult conversation on film?


[00:05:45.262] David Chung:

It is very challenging because of the, you really need to know the backstory in order for the conversation to make sense. And that was a really big challenge in how to present that. And on the footage we got, and then the amazing footage we got of Arno and his youth. There's one thing that we don't point out in the film, and that is a scene of a white power band that's playing music. And it's actually Arno who's singing. Oh, really? Sort of towards the beginning there. Yeah, towards the beginning. And then just the scenery, the city of Milwaukee also became a character in itself. And that's why we chose a lot of the footage, the aerial footage, and also the street scenes. But kind of coupling with the scenes of Pardeep's community, his family, and the Sikh community, it was a very rich experience. And there was a real clarity to how this film should be constructed and how the story could be told. And so once we had started the filming and we got the footage, it started to make sense in terms of how to lay down the backstory, explain what's going on, and give rationale to this conversation, which just seems totally impossible for a victim of one of the Sikh community to talked, he actually, Pardeep actually


[00:07:16.980] Mark Clague:

Arno and wanted to know why. Yeah, his spirit of generosity, just to even have the conversation is an incredible example for us today where there's so many things we're not talking to one another about. Exactly.


[00:07:28.151] David Chung:

Yeah, there is a part that we had to leave out of the film, but it's a part where they meet at the first time and they're both incredibly nervous before they meet each other. It actually comes out in their book they wrote about this. about how there were a lot of misgivings about, should I go ahead with this? And there's this story about how Pardeep stayed. They were going to meet in a Thai restaurant and Pardeep drove to the restaurant and he just spent a long time in the car agonizing about whether he should go through with this or not.


[00:07:59.886] Mark Clague:

Well, I wanted to ask you about some of the creative choices of how you represent this dialogue. I mean, it's a really striking experience.


[00:08:09.997] David Chung:

to do, what we wanted to do with the film was there were a lot of scenes where you had to walk through and see what's going on, but there were other scenes that normally would be outtakes from a film. Those were scenes that you would cut out and would leave on the editing room floor. Well, we wanted to include those scenes. And one of the very important things, which we also don't point out in the film, is that the walking tour lasts exactly six minutes, which was the actual time of the shooting. Oh, wow. So we wanted to make sure we kept that the same. That's why it's six minutes long in the film. But all the other scenes, which normally in an editing room you would take out from a single screen film, here you can see them all. And I think it really adds to the experience.


[00:09:04.691] Mark Clague:

Yeah, it was very powerful. Well, this is interesting because this is faculty research at the University of Michigan. You're a faculty member. This is your creative practice. but it's part of what you're paid to do and supported to do. I'm glad you mentioned Tom Bray because Tom is sort of the secret weapon in the tech department for many a project at the university. But it's one of the things that happens when you have a bunch of researchers and sort of the support facilities, the filmmaking facilities, the art making facilities. So your project was supported by an ARIA grant, which is one of the grants that comes out of the University of Michigan Arts Initiative and our partnership with the Office for the Vice President for Research. And I wonder if you could just talk about you know, what that grant meant for this project?


[00:09:45.990] David Chung:

Oh, it was absolutely critical. You know, it was really great to get the acknowledgement from our peers and people who didn't know anything about the project who, you know, gave the consent to go ahead with this. That was a big boost for us to have that acknowledgement. But also the financing was critical. We couldn't do it without it. And so the ARIA funding is greatly appreciated And we're really glad that we have this opportunity to apply for those resources.


[00:10:21.509] Mark Clague:

What has it meant for your own artistic practice to sort of be in a research university as opposed to be an artist? I mean, you've worked in New York, you've been an independent artist, but you've also been attached to a research one, as we say, at the University of Michigan. And how does that change your perspective as an art maker?


[00:10:40.269] David Chung:

when I first came here, which was 2018, years ago. I was working in film and television and in video installations. But I recognized right away that at this institution, they take research very seriously. It's not like a side thing. It's like the main thing. And I really appreciate that. When I first came here, I made a feature documentary film about the deportation of Koreans in Kazakhstan. And that film went on to be shown in many different places and live the life of its own. But it's the kind of seriousness with which the school takes research and the work of faculty that's really different from other schools.


[00:11:28.380] Mark Clague:

I mean, your work seems to exemplify what I've come to understand as part of the magic of the stamp school, which is that it's not focused on individual disciplines. You don't have, you don't come as a sculpture major or a painting major or a film major or a digital major you're actually like your practice you're a visual artist as well as a filmmaker you're there's it's not about the artistic medium it's really about the creative process so can you talk about a little


[00:11:55.789] David Chung:

yeah i direct the graduate mfa program and that is um a program where we don't have um media specific disciplines we do it all together so students who are painters sculptors filmmakers choreographers sometimes they'll all come together and we all work together so we crit together so that you know when you present your work at a crit you might be showing paintings but with you might be a filmmaker who's going to be talking about your work and we find that really important how that you know there's a lot of cross-fertilization people are learning from each other about different things people change their medium they might come in as a drawer and end up as a filmmaker or the other way around and that's very interesting so the emphasis is not about a specific discipline it's about how to make and create the work like what is the best meaning


[00:12:57.855] Mark Clague:

to express this and I can see that in the opening of the film which is sort of this I don't know this drone shot of Milwaukee you're sort of coming in over the highways and it's this amazing painting in a way that sort of stretches across the visual field which is introducing seeing each of this community and made me feel like this community could sort of be anywhere. Like that kind of made specific to one city, but it also was so typical of cities and just of communities. So I can see how all those, your visual work and your filmmaking work really speak to each other.


[00:13:29.009] David Chung:

that's a, you picked up on a very important detail. We talked for hours about whether we should ID the place, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Typically movies do, you know, but we decided not to because we wanted to represent any city.


[00:13:44.245] Mark Clague:

So when we talked about Pratap, you were just about to open the film at the Stamps Gallery here in Ann Arbor. What's the future for Impossible Conversations?


[00:13:53.515] David Chung:

Well, we are planning a screening in London probably this summer. That's definitely on the books, but we're also planning feature screenings around. We've been talking to several faculty colleagues and they've been, you know, pointing us to other places where we might screen this work. And so it's, we hope to show it around. It is, you know, one of the things that we are considering making a slightly smaller version in terms of the width of it so that it can be screened more comfortably in a theatrical setting.


[00:14:34.879] Mark Clague:

Well, I think it's really important work and I thank you for it. It seems like the kind of catalyst we need to have important conversations that may seem impossible but are actually critical to the world today. So thank you so much for your work and thank you for joining us today on Creative Currents. Thank you, Mark.


[00:14:52.356] David Chung:

It's been my pleasure.



[00:14:57.953] Mark Clague:

Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, a student at the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theater, and Dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative please visit our website at arts.umich.edu thanks for listening