UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ TRANSMEDIA ARTS ACTIVISM AND LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION: CRITICAL DESIGN, ETHICS AND PARTICIPATION IN THIRD DIGITAL DOCUMENTARY A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in FILM AND DIGITAL MEDIA by Anita Wen-Shin Chang June 2016 The Dissertation of Anita Wen-Shin Chang is approved: ____________________________________ Professor Soraya Murray, chair ____________________________________ Professor Jennifer A. González ____________________________________ Professor Jonathan Kahana ____________________________________ Professor Lisa Nakamura ____________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Anita W. Chang 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures iv Abstract vi Dedication viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 A Discourse of “Image Sovereignty”: Variations on an Ideal/Image of Native Self-representation 15 2 Digital Documentary Praxis: Tongues of Heaven 45 3 An Essay on Editing Tongues of Heaven 93 4 Networked Audio-Visual Culture and New Digital Publics 123 5 Documentary and Online Transmediality: Tongues of Heaven/Root Tongue 166 Conclusion 228 Supplemental File 235 Bibliography 236 Filmography 254 iii LIST OF FIGURES 1. 228 Hand-in-Hand Rally, Northern Taiwan (Central News Agency) 2 1.1. Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack during the production of Grass 18 1.2. Animated map of disputed territory in You Are On Indian Land 24 1.3. Mike Mitchell speaks to Canadian government representatives in You Are On Indian Land. 27 1.4. Mike Mitchell and protestors speak with Cornwall police. 29 1.5. Cornwall police force protestors into cars heading to jail. 29 1.6. Still from You Are On Indian Land 31 1.7. Still from You Are On Indian Land 32 2.1. Co-directors meet in Honolulu: Kainoa Kaupu, An-Chi Chen, Apay Ai-Yu (translator) Tang, Shin-Lan Yu, and Hau’oli Waiau 64 2.2. The film crew visits the Ke Kula ‘o Nāwa-hīokalani ‘ōpu‘u (Living Hawaiian Life-Force School), a K-12 immersion school in Hilo on the Big Island. 65 2.3. Aboriginal Culture Village in Tongues of Heaven 88 2.4. Shin-Lan Yu at the Taroko National Park Museum in Tongues of Heaven 89 2.5. Shin-Lan Yu interviews her mother at their family tribal shop in Tongues of Heaven 89 3.1. Aboriginal Culture Village in Tongues of Heaven 116 3.2. Aboriginal Culture Village in Tongues of Heaven 116 iv 3.3. Aboriginal Culture Village in Tongues of Heaven 116 3.4. Aboriginal Culture Village in Tongues of Heaven 119 4.1. Planet Tonga Website 147 4.2. Visitors create and upload onto The Wall at the Te Papa Museum. 149 4.3. Marokot 88news.org Website 152 4.4. IsumaTV Website 161 5.1. Root Tongue Web Application 168 5.2. StoryCorps Website 183 5.3. Classical Logo 209 5.4. Raw Logo 209 5.5. Modern Logo 210 5.6. Plant Logo 210 5.7. System Logo 210 5.8. Video Clip Topics 212 5.9. Learning to Love You More Web Archive 214 5.10. Root Tongue Video Clip 216 5.11. Root Tongue Prompt 216 5.12. Root Tongue Upload Interface 217 5.13. Root Tongue Community Gallery Page 217 5.14. Root Tongue Community Gallery 217 v ABSTRACT TRANSMEDIA ARTS ACTIVISM AND LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION: CRITICAL DESIGN, ETHICS AND PARTICIPATION IN THIRD DIGITAL DOCUMENTARY Anita Wen-Shin Chang “Transmedia Arts Activism and Language Revitalization: Critical Design, Ethics and Participation in Third Digital Documentary” is a practice- and theory-based dissertation focused on indigenous and minority language endangerment and revival through explorations of case studies and personal stories from Taiwan and Hawai’i. It consists of the feature-length documentary Tongues of Heaven, the companion web application Root Tongue: Sharing Stories of Language Identity and Revival, and a written component describing the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the critical arts practice engaged in these works. This dissertation examines a major thematic in the documentary, which is its engagement with the term “native”—as topic, object and subject—and its attending discourse and practices of authenticity, ethnography, salvage ethnography, and autoethnography. It details the materialization of the documentary Tongues of Heaven through an analysis of the (post)colonial historical circumstances that led to its production; its collaborative cross-boundary and transnational mode of production; and the Third Cinema, experimental and feminist approaches that inspired its media praxis. I then discuss the under- acknowledged process of film/video editing by analyzing the limits of postructuralist endeavors in representation, and theorizing the concept of interval, as it exists vi between and within shots, as a productive spectatorial intervention. In the effort to extend public engagement with documentary issues via digital and online technologies, I initially survey the discursive and technological interventions into the notions of “public” and “participation,” and how offline and online spheres of publics, counterpublics and community operate, intersect and interact to create multiple ways of being together in community, as a public and with oneself. I conclude with an analysis of the critical arts practice in the design and production of the Root Tongue transmedia activist art platform to pilot new collaborations in documentary and new digital media for a third digital documentary practice that provides space for new projects on race and online culture, indigeneity and virtuality, and on ethics and digital publics. Overall, this dissertation contributes to and expands the field of autoethnographic media production while critically considering and harnessing digital and Internet technologies as viable creative, cultural and social tools with unique discursive potentials. vii DEDICATION An-Chi Chen, Shin-Lan Yu, Leivallyn Kainoa Kaupu, Hau‘oli Waiau and their families viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like extend my deepest gratitude to my creative team whose friendship, inspiration and support made Tongues of Heaven and Root Tongue possible in the first place: An-Chi Chen and family, Shin-Lan Yu and family, Yan- Fen Lan and family, Merata Mita, Malia Nobrega, Leivallyn Kainoa Kaupu and family, Hau‘oli Waiau and family, Amy P. Lee, Apay Ai-Yu Tang, Yu-Chao Huang, Sean Elwood, Michella Rivera-Gravage, Otherwise Co., Terry Hwang, Irene Faye Duller, Jessica Yazbek, Marisa Wilson, Shalini Agrawal, Michael Wong, Chevy Lum and Alex Wang. I also want to thank my students at National Dong Hwa University for sharing their minds and hearts and whose experiences serve as the springboard for this study and the transmedia documentary project. I was fortunate to have important community support in Taiwan, San Francisco Bay Area and Hawai‘i and am especially grateful to Ho Chie Tsai, James Y. Shih, Jenny and James Hong, Shin-Fei Wu, Carol Ou, Paul T. Tran and Anna Wu. I am also grateful to my new academic colleagues who offered their expertise at various stages of the creative production and dissertation process: Robert Blust, Andy Wang, Rik Du Busser, Dafyyd Fell, Bi-Yu Chang, Kerim Friedman, Jolan Hsieh, Yi-Fong Chen, Kent Liu, Emerson Odango, Koukalaka McNaught, Bernadette Barker-Plummer and Dorothy Kidd. The discussions that occurred during seminars and conferences were key in shaping many of the ideas in the dissertation project. I want to acknowledge the contribution of audiences at the following gatherings: “Art, Activism, and the Role of ix Asian American Documentaries in the 21st Century Marketplace,” Asian American Studies Association Conference in New Orleans; Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory VII, ReWired: Asian/Technoscience/Area Studies, University of California Humanities Research Institute; Expanding Documentary Conference at Aotearoa, New Zealand; International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa; The School for Oriental and African Studies Film Screenings at University of London, UK; Community Filmmaking and Cultural Diversity: Practice, Innovation and Policy Conference at the British Film Institute, London; Center for Taiwan Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara; “Post-Asia Film, Media and Popular Culture,” Asian Cinema Studies Conference at the University of Macau; The Summer Institute in Asian American Studies: Empire Reconsidered at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Second Annual Stabilizing Amis Language Seminar at Hualien Tribal College in Hualien, Taiwan; Pacific History Association 21st Biennial Conference in Taipei, Taiwan; Interdisciplinary Austronesian Connections Symposium, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa; Visible Evidence XXII Conference at Toronto; and Cultures in Disarray: Destruction/Reconstruction Conference at Kings College in London. The following funding support made my research and creative work possible, for which I am deeply grateful: Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, Art Dean’s Excellence Scholarship, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Graduate Grant, University of California at Santa Cruz President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, Porter College, Creative Capital, National Geographic All Road Seed x Project Grant, Indiegogo Donors, National Dong Hwa University, North American Taiwanese Women’s Association, Taiwanese United Fund, and Big Ideas@Berkeley. Much appreciation is felt for the UCSC community of stellar faculty, staff and students. I’m particularly grateful to Robert Valiente-Neighbors, Tristan Carkeet and Melanie Wylie for their administrative and