Interview with Valerie Soe

Valerie Soe: When I was a kid I never thought about being an artist. I didn’t think about really pursuing art until I went to college at UCLA. Growing up in a mostly white suburb, I encountered a lot of people who were prejudiced against Asians. That was definitely part of what colored my life. At the same time, I had these strong family connections with being Chinese American and so was attached to my cultural identity. That really balanced out a lot of the prejudice I had to face back then. When I got to college I was a bio major for about a week, and then I switched to English but I didn't like that either, so I finally decided to work in film and art. That’s how I ended up in the art department. But even then, I was working a lot with the Asian American studies department while also editing the Asian American student newspaper. I just really wanted to find a way to combine my interest in activism and organizing and so forth with creative practice. UCLA has a really famous film school, but it was more conventional in terms of how it taught form. Even the documentary program was very straightforward and geared toward narrative Hollywood stuff. It was only when I found the art department that I began to have more freedom to look into issues about identity and culture and politics and do it in a way that was more formally interesting. That’s why I found the art department more interesting that the film department.

KC: Despite not going to film school, you still managed to do many film related projects at my age?

VS: At that time back in the 80s, there were a lot of people making video art that was not straight filmmaking. I was able to see people who were using the video form in a way that wasn’t for television and create work in the same way. We were artists who were really trying to expand the uses of the medium in a creative way.

KC: I’m interested to know if your parents were supportive of you pursuing an education and career in the arts? I know many 1st generation kids get a lot of harsh criticism from their parents about going into STEM because it’s a feasible option. My mom still calls me every other week asking about law school. What was your experience within your family as a young artist?

VS: Hahaha, well I was actually really lucky because my older brother. who is 5 years older than me, had started as an engineering student at UC Berkeley, and he dropped out to go to art school. He became a really talented graphic designer and made a lot of success for himself. So I think my parents really did soften up to the idea that you could do something that was not necessarily so strict or conventional. We didn’t have to go to grad school or law school or something. They were definitely still worried about me getting a job, but they knew it would work out one way or another.

KC: Could you talk about your first jobs making films?

VS: I never really made a living making movies, because you can’t do that unless you’re working in commercial film. I always had odd jobs or regular desk jobs, and eventually I started teaching 5 or 6 years after I got out of grad school. Before all of that, I worked as an office manager, an apartment building manager, I even taught art to little kids! I did all kinds of things that patched together an income. I never made money off of my creative or filmmaking practice. I probably lose money. I try to tell people if you really wanna do it you shouldn’t necessarily think about only monetizing your work. You can do something just for yourself and for the sake of doing it.

KC: You mentioned going to grad school. That’s definitely a daunting path that me along with many of my filmmaking friends have sort of shoved to the back of our minds. As a filmmaker who went to grad school how did your time there inform your work and what do you feel you gained from pursuing higher education past undergrad?

VS: For me going to grad school was a way to focus on learning more in depth about what I wanted to do with my practice. I got my MFA in video and photography at the Chicago Art Institute. It was a little different, because I was used to being in California - this huge multicultural place. Chicago was multicultural in a different way. It didn’t have much of an Asian American population. But what I gained were years of practice to really focus in on how I wanted to use moving image. My bachelor's was never enough. I was finally able to intensively practice my experimental work in grad school.

KC: Having moved around so much and living in different places for school all while pursuing your art, do you feel as though where you live informs the kind of work you make?

VS: Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to come back to the Bay Area after I got out of grad school. Chicago didn't have the kind of cultural activism that I was interested in as far as Asian Americans are concerned. Coming from California, especially growing up in SF and studying undergrad in LA, I was really surrounded by all of that, and I wanted to come back to a place that had this culture of political activism. And also in the late 80s and early 90s, SF was in the middle of this big experimental and alternative film and video art scene. Working with all these artists, indie people, hippies, and beatniks really nurtured a lot of the creative work outside of the commercial Hollywood world down in LA. SF had this amazing, alternative filmmaking community that had fostered a long tradition of counterculture. The city attracted all these people to make their art! Punk rock bands and independent galleries and film screenings in everything from big movie houses to little teeny micro theaters. At the time it was a really lively place to be as far as being an artist and filmmaker.