Katy Luo’s Artist Statement

“The Drive-by”, a short film about distilled memories

My family immigrated to the US from Taiwan in 1985 when I was 11 years old. Our first residence was right at the border of a redlined area, on San Pablo Avenue close to Gilman Street in Berkeley. It was a small complex of one-bedroom utility apartments sandwiched between a Chinese-owned auto shop and a vacant lot that sold Christmas trees every winter. Most of the tenants were immigrants or young international students. I have distinct memories of hardship and confusion attached to this area growing up as a child, and in the last 37 years, every time I would drive by this building (which would be at least once a year whenever I visited family over the holidays), I would always make sure that I grab a hard look at this building before it quickly passes by outside my car window, compelled by the mysterious impulse to want to hold on to fragments of those memories. Those memories included my first adventure to the MacDonald’s down the street; playing my mom’s favorite piano song in our tiny living room and seeing tears streaming down her face; sharing a worn-out second-hand sofa bed with my two siblings which by morning we’ve managed to sink into the middle like sardines. 

The Drive-by is a recreation of that moment when fragments of my family life in 1985 swirl into my mind and puts me in a state of remembering. Even though the policy of Redlining was long abolished by that point, my family and I created a life in the aftermath. Using spoken poetry, recorded conversations, pictures, and manipulated sounds, I hope to share a glimpse of a family navigating life in all the in-between spaces of inclusion/exclusion, past/future, and yellow zone/red zone.