the tidal flats: a documentary-collage on east asian american queer kinship

By liú méi z.b. chen
劉梅智文苑陳粱

When this project began, Liú intended to make an oral history-based audio documentary in honor of their Taiwanese grandmother. Struggling with their grandmother’s failing health and the limitations of oral history— When we encounter overwhelming silence, how do we record those silences we find in a way that honors everything that they signify?—Liú decided to probe questions of power within familial storytelling. But what surfaced from their interviews with four other queer and trans East Asian Americans was more visceral and embodied than they expected: feelings of belonging, feelings of kinship. Not answers to a research question, but an extended practice in co-witnessing and story-sharing, in vulnerability and wondering aloud. Episode 1, “finding the tidal flats” follows Liú’s queer diasporic wandering to a local beach, through their family history, and into their lines of kinship.

liú (pronounced “lee-oo”) is a queer and trans non-binary, disabled, mixed-race nerd. Some of their not-so-secret loves include math, musical theater (and music of all kinds), women’s basketball, and bodies of water. Their work combines technology, education, and storytelling to thaw trauma, create connection, empower community members (and themselves), and explore the textures and dimensions of silence. Liú comes from a history and Black Studies background and is dedicated to interrogating and uplifting the wide spectrum of historic and contemporary relationships between Asian and Black communities. They are guided by vanguard coalition activists/scholars such as Grace Lee Boggs, Audre Lorde, and Ella Jo Baker. Liú has often been called a trouble-maker.