On Your Radar: Carrie Tang
On Your Radar is a Grad Film News segment that features a current student. We asked Carrie Tang a few questions and this is what she said.
Where do you consider home and what is it like there?
This question should be easy, but it's not. I've lived like a nomad most of my life, never quite belonging anywhere. Guangzhou resembles home most for me. It's a big city in China, but every time I mention it (in the US), I get blank stares until I explain, "Oh, it's close to Hong Kong, and we speak Cantonese!" Ironically, my Cantonese is awful.
My parents are from Shanghai and Nanjing. They moved to Guangzhou when I was 3 months old. I spent my first 15 years in this city that never snows, where leaves fall only in spring, where flower markets open on the coldest day, and where Dim Sum means everything.
Perhaps I grew tired of never seeing snow, so at the age of fifteen, I moved to Wisconsin. Then Boston, Los Angeles, back to Guangzhou, never more than three years at each place. Now I'm in NYC. I don't know where home is yet, but I'm pretty good at packing.
What is currently inspiring you as a filmmaker?
Everyday life. Writing about my personal life is more effective than therapy, and definitely cheaper. I used to believe I had a very ordinary life, until I started exploring it through writing and realized, wow, it's so dramatic and cliché.
I began with the big, traumatic events I could finally put into words after many years, once my body stopped fighting the memories. Basically, I wrote about my Catholic high school and college relationships as an artsy kid. Then I fill the stories with current elements or relive them, like going to church again after 10 years. I love watching strangers and inventing entire lives for them: their jobs, ages, maybe their dating disasters. I collect random serendipity. That's what inspired my 2nd-year film: capturing the mating sounds of street cats, and a man upstairs singing cacophonously.
What did you do last weekend?
My friend visited NYC last weekend, so I became her tour guide for 3 days and rediscovered the city through her eyes, finding charm I'd never bothered to notice living here. We went to Dumbo, shopped for some nude poker cards at the flea market, and had Van Leeuwen by the cold, windy pier and the romantic carousel. (Yes, Past Lives is one of my favorite films, and I'm convinced every Asian's first date in NYC happens in Dumbo.)
We walked through Central Park and then The Met, where I cycled through my entire art vocabulary: "Wow. Great. Amazing. Impressive." Pretty shameful for an MFA student with no real knowledge of art history. Then we sat quietly in the Asian gallery, staring at the Buddhist statues, and I wondered if they were homesick too, living across the ocean from where they were from. We ended the weekend thrifting at vintage stores in the East Village and grabbing Halal Guys, which I hope officially completed her NYC experience.
@carrietang_tigi (instagram)