Born 1970 in Minnesotta, James T. Hong is a San Francisco based artist. His work mostly focusses on philosophical topics and controversial class and race issues. Hong has an expressive visual style with heavy contrast, sometimes aggressive music, and meticulously edited archival materials. His works are not supposed to entertain, but to shake the viewer up through straightforwardness and directness.

James T. Hong has finished two works: an adaptation of an excerpt of William Luther Peirce’s infamous white supremacist novel, The Turner Diaries, and a children’s film based on Spinoza’s life and work entitled The Duck of Nature/The Duck of God.

His films and videos include Behold the Asian: How One Becomes What One Is (2000), Condor: A Film from California (1998-1999), The Form of the Good (2005-2006), Taipei 101: A Travelogue of Symptoms (2004), Suprematist Kapital (2006), and The Denazification of MH (2006). Hong’s feature lenght documentary Lessons of the Blood (2004-2010) examines the use of biological warfare in Japan. Potraying the ingorance of elderly Chinese who got contaminated brings the cruelty of the events close to the viewers. The filmmaker wants to highlight how nationalism and the United States have influenced the Sino-Japanese history conflict, and how governments, ideology, and propaganda affect the reception and perception of “historical truth”.

More information on James T. Hong’s work can be found here.