I Would’ve Been Happy

2023

An attempt to map a fraught relationship through the use of intricately coded pictographs and schematic abstractions applied onto glazed ceramic tiles and quilted cyanotype fabric. The aesthetics of architectural language are used to reconstruct memories of my family's domestic spaces in the hope to uncover logic to a broken home.

production, direction, animation, and sound by Jordan Wong
glazed ceramic tiles + quilted cyanotype fabric + embroidery + 16mm + CGI
March 2023, 8:52, color, sound, video

Completed at California Institute of the Arts.

STILLS

OFFICIAL SELECTION & UPCOMING SCREENINGS

2024
Carnegie Museum of Art - Film Series: Urban Legends [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]
CAAMFest (Center for Asian American Media): Animontage Shorts [San Francisco, CA]
VC Film Festival (aka Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival) [Los Angeles, CA]
+ Golden Reel Award Winner for Best Documentary Short
Doclands [San Rafael, California]
Shadow Kitchen #37 - LA LOCAL v1 [Los Angeles, California]
31st Florida Film Festival - Sunspots: New Visions of the Avant-Garde [Orlando, Florida]
37th European Media Art Festival [Osnabrück, Germany]
62nd Ann Arbor Film Festival [Ann Arbor, Michigan]
+ Awarded the Terri Schwartz Asian Film Award
True/False Film Festival [Columbia, Missouri]
International Film Festival Rotterdam [Rotterdam, Netherlands]
Chicago Critics Film Festival [Chicago, Illinois]
Slamdance - Experimental Shorts [Park City, Utah]
San Diego Underground Film Festival [San Diego, California]
+ Awarded the Jury Award
Light Matter Film Festival: Experimental Film & Media Art [Alfred, New York]
Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation [Los Angeles, New York, Chicago]
Walla Walla Movie Crush [Seattle, WA]
Film Maudit 2.0 [Los Angeles, CA]
Malt Adult #29 [Chicago, IL]
Rooftop Films [New York City, NY]
Champs-Élysées Film Festival [Paris, France]
Onion City Film Festival [Chicago, IL]
Mammoth Lakes Film Festival

Behind the Scenes: Ceramic Tiles

“Hopefully You Remember This”

The glazed ceramic tiles featured in the film were produced through the California Institute of the Arts Summer Ceramic Residency in partnership with Mission Tile West under the tutelage of Hideo Franco in 2019.

When arranged correctly, the 210 glazed ceramic tiles form “Hopefully You Remember This”, a tile quilt and experimental comic book. Utilizing recalled domestic spaces and architectural language, intricately coded pictographs and schematic abstractions are used to map a fraught relationship. The tile quilt also functions as a map that navigates time and geographical space in 3 unique quadrants: San Francisco, New York, and Hong Kong.

The entire piece contains 70 unique tile designs spread over a total of 210 physical ceramic glazed tiles. I created the designs in Illustrator and each unique design had to be silkscreened onto individual tiles.

When assembled together properly, the tile quilt spans the approximate size of a queen-sized quilt at roughly 97”x 88”x 8”.

Each square tile measures 6”x 6”.

It was designed to be modular and can be installed in pieces.

Tile Animators

Behind the Scenes: Cyanotype Quilt

“Other Than That, I Had A Good Time”

The fabric quilt featured in the film is comprised of cyanotype and machine embroidered fabric. Following a similar process as the tiles, all designs were made in Illustrator first. The cyanotype squares were created with an exposure unit. The embroidered squares required converting designs into embroidery language to then be embroidered.

I commissioned Bronwyn Maloney to fabricate the quilt together. This piece would not have been possible without her tremendous patience and beautiful craftsmanship.

The entire quilt contains 90 unique tile designs spread over a total of 210 fabric squares.

The fabric quilt spans slightly larger than the size of a queen-sized quilt at roughly 107”x 98”x 2”.