Audrey Tang: All right, let’s get started.

Interviewer: OK. We also have the author here, Hiroshi Ishizaki. He is the one listening with my video right now.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Interviewer: I just wanted to let you know.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Interviewer: The first question we want to ask, what your earliest memories and in what way you felt different from other kids?

Audrey Tang: My earliest memory involves moving from the more central Taipei City, the Bade Road to the slightly more rural place, the Muzha part in Zhinan Road. It involves just moving stuff, change of scenery and so on.

Interviewer: What did you feel different from other kids? What did you noticed first of all?

Audrey Tang: Well, I know from the very beginning that I couldn’t make physical activities. If I exercise too much I may faint, but that’s not different from other kids. It’s different from everyone else that I know, so I don’t consciously make a difference between other kids and other adults in this regard.

Interviewer: Makes sense. Did you have a nickname as a child?

Audrey Tang: I do, but I don’t know if it will work for a Japanese audience. You may improvise and just say, DoriDori or something.

Interviewer: Are there any things that you liked as a child that you continue to like as an adult?

Audrey Tang: In addition to programming and mathematics?

Interviewer: Yeah, maybe. We’re trying to think of some a theme maybe we could use for a cover illustration, like a flower or an animal?

Audrey Tang: Something that’s easier to visualize, isn’t it?

Interviewer: Yeah, something simple like that if there’s something.

Audrey Tang: I like Taoism. I steal quotes from Taoist scriptures. In my earliest memories, in the Mucha Street that I moved to, there’s this futon. It’s something that we sit on with this Tai Chi element on it, black and white with this spiraling design. Maybe you can design some Taoist things into it.

Interviewer: OK, we’ll take a look at that. We’re also hoping to read some of your poems, especially the ones you wrote as a young person.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Interviewer: Could we possibly get those?

Audrey Tang: I think Yaeko Kondō-san did translate one of the poems from my mother’s book, which did include many of my younger poems, to Japanese, actually. I would encourage you to get in touch with her to get that translation because I’ve proofread it. It’s probably one of the more reliable Japanese translations there is.

Interviewer: OK, great.

Interviewer: Was it in one of the books then?

Audrey Tang: Yes. She’s, I think next week or something, publishing my mom’s book, the 《オードリー・タン 母の手記「成長戦争」》. I think it’s next week.

Interviewer: A new one?

Audrey Tang: A new one, yeah.

Interviewer: We will have to talk to her then. Great, thank you.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I think toward the end of that book, it includes the Japanese rendition of one of my poems, and in the original book that my mom wrote there’s several others.

Interviewer: If there are any that haven’t been translated yet, he’s interested.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure. Just get a copy of my mom’s book. It’s originally published traditional in Chinese Mandarin. The names I’ve pasted on the chat and you probably can find it in, I don’t know, any of the public libraries in Taiwan, but I’m not sure in Japan. I don’t think it’s printed in Japan.

Interviewer: OK, then a question about during the time you were bullied which we know was a short time overall, but we wonder how you managed to overcome the frustration and any other hard emotions you had…

Audrey Tang: Reading. I read a lot of books Piaget, Satir, Montessori. Trying to explain what’s happening in my classmates’ minds.

Interviewer: Did that actually help?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course. I come to understand it’s not about them. It’s the structural competition expectation they’re in.

Interviewer: I see. You are kind of able to forgive them in a way?

Audrey Tang: It’s not really about forgiveness. More like figuring out a way to prevent something like that from happening again.

Interviewer: OK.

Interviewer: About how old were you when you started to think about these ways of maybe preventing those things?

Audrey Tang: Eight years old.

Interviewer: Mm?

Audrey Tang: Eight.

Interviewer: Eight?

Audrey Tang: Uh huh. 1989.

Interviewer: OK. You say that when you have a different opinion from someone else, you should try to think of things from their perspective to empathize. Is it around also eight years old that you started doing this?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I mean, you mentioned forgiveness, but forgiveness doesn’t mean that I can actually see things from their prospective. It only means that I agree not to look too hot [laughs] to the situation, but no. I think by empathizing was not only the classmate that bullies me, but also his parents and so on.

Audrey Tang: I come to a fuller understanding of how to prevent something from happening again. That would not be possible without, so to speak, taking all sides.

Interviewer: When you returned to Taiwan from Germany for surgery, you said that just in case something went wrong, you wanted to die in Taiwan. Also, that you wanted to work on Taiwan’s education system and you…

Audrey Tang: Had I lived, yes.

Interviewer: Yes. Very vague laugh and all that.

Audrey Tang: Not from beyond the grave.

Interviewer: Did you feel one of those things more strongly than the other or both?

Audrey Tang: These two are mutually exclusive. I can’t do both. [laughs] There’s really no comparison. It’s plan A and plan B stuff.

Interviewer: Right.

Interviewer: Was there anything in the education realm that you’d like to try doing?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure. Preventing structural individual to individual competition. When I was eight, I figured out that was the root problem.

Interviewer: Do you have ideas on how you might do that?

Audrey Tang: Certainly. When I was a teenager I helped my mom and my dad, later on, to work on the autonomous learning and experimental education systems.

Audrey Tang: Later on, my dad would work on one of the first community colleges. All these educational facilities are ones that are based on the autonomy interaction tool at common good instead of individual to individual ranking or competitions.

Audrey Tang: Our work eventually contributed to the change of the thinking of the basic education in Taiwan. That’s in, I think, 2019. This used to be experimental way of thinking about education became the basic education curriculum in Taiwan. I was also part of that curriculum committee.

Interviewer: Switching gears a little bit, you say you had two puberties or something like that. I understand as well. [laughs] We’re wondering when you first fell in love.

Audrey Tang: Once, during my first puberty and once, during my second puberty.

Interviewer: Nice. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I mean, that’s what puberty does to people.

Interviewer: Is there anything else you can tell us about that?

Audrey Tang: The years, it’s around 1995 and 2005, respectively.

Interviewer: 1995 and 2005. OK. How old were you when you started feeling that your gender was different from the way people treated you?

Audrey Tang: I’ve never felt that way.

Interviewer: How did you decide to…?

Audrey Tang: I felt my gender are more similar to the people that I met. I don’t have this idea that half of the population is different from us. Actually, it’s only the cisgendered people that feel that other people are off somehow, half a population quite literally. As a non binary, everyone is similar to me.

Interviewer: That’s been your sense your whole life?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, definitely. In a sense, I think having gone through two puberties I can relate much more, regardless of whomever that I’m speaking with, their ideas about puberty, and so on.

Interviewer: I wanted to ask a little bit about the time you spent in Dubai, when you worked for Tim. We are wondering what kinds of things are on your mind, even on this trip?

Audrey Tang: It’s more about working through the society expectations, like finishing school, having a career performing things like that. Vis a vis, the kind of culture that I learned from the Internet, which valued one’s values, as any things that we work toward, not the particular types, class roles, or gender, for that matter that we’re in.

Audrey Tang: Trying to work out how to bridge, or, at least, to work through those two acute cultures. These are the main things that was on my mind. As a direct result of working out that relationship afterwards, I decided to quit a public school for good.

Interviewer: Was there anything else that came out of that trip? How you felt afterwards?

Audrey Tang: It’s mostly that I stopped saying things from either it’s my fault that the society doesn’t work the way I think it does, or it’s the society’s fault that it doesn’t work like the way that I expect it does. Rather, instead of treating this fault as assigning blame, I treat it as a crack in everything where the light comes in.

Audrey Tang: I treated it as an invitation of sharing my unique perspectives on whatever societal system that I encountered as a kind of ambassador from the core Internet culture, to the everyday culture. As an ambassador is not about blaming anyone for cultural differences, it’s more about co creating new values that doesn’t leave anyone behind.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s awesome. We read in one of the books about you, or one of them, that you spent time with an indigenous group of people

Audrey Tang: Yeah. It was in the Atayal indigenous lands.

Interviewer: Were there any specific ways that they inspired you?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. They valued giving as one of the main status in their indigenous nation. Someone who is able to give, to care, take care of not just other fellow humans, but also animals and so on, are held in high esteem.

Audrey Tang: Whereas in the more capitalist influence to coach, before I went into the indigenous lands, where people are judged based on how much you own exclusively, the way that you can prevent other people from using your assets, so to speak, determines your worth.

Audrey Tang: Essentially a very different worldview because if you value giving more than hoarding, then you would naturally become a good cultural ambassador because it’s all about sharing your personal experience and so on. On the other hand, if you value the hoarding, you would instead apply for trademark, copyrights, patents, or whatever.

Interviewer: Gatekeeping.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Gatekeeping.

Interviewer: OK. That’s really interesting. I guess you mentioned the Leonard Cohen lyrics, the crack and everything coming in. How old were you when you first heard them? What was the context of your first meeting with them?

Audrey Tang: It was quite late in the game. I think it was around 2010 sometime.

Interviewer: What did you think when you heard them?

Audrey Tang: It cured my perfectionism.

Interviewer: Really? OK, wait. I need to cure mine, too.

Audrey Tang: Because it used to be that I wouldn’t publish anything until it’s at least like 90 percent quality and not for gatekeeping purposes, but just to preserve face or something. [laughs] I discovered that if I publish things that are flawless then, really, there’s not much that people can engage with me other than pressing “Like” or sharing.

Audrey Tang: If I published something that’s only 10 percent on the way, then although people complain or criticize a lot — actually, that’s how I make friends — I don’t have to endure this deadline regime and things like that. Basically, I become much more inviting of other people’s criticism.

Audrey Tang: If they point out something, that’s actually an improvement. I just say, “Yeah, is a great idea within how my idea, and then distinguish it from your idea or everyone else’s ideas.” Perfectionism, really is a symptom that we couldn’t find a sufficient amount of people that care about the same thing, on the same value.

Audrey Tang: If you do, or if you get into this community co creation mindset, then making early mistakes is exactly how you solicit better responses.

Interviewer: That make sense.

Interviewer: Are there any other songs that you may be found inspiration from in your teenage years…

Audrey Tang: In my teenage years, yeah.

Interviewer: …or anything that like that?

Audrey Tang: I listened to this singer songwriter, who I valued a lot when I was a teenager, during my first puberty [laughs] and slightly before. You can probably find quite a few lyrics from this particular singer. Maybe we can correspond through email, which verse that you would like to highlight.

Interviewer: OK. Are there any other instances of either really tough times, or hopeful times that you think kids would either identify with, or learn something from, or just any other?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I think I’ve told the story of me approaching the head of my middle school, trying to figure out a way to convince her that I can spend 16 hours a day, not just 8 hours after school, on research. I also planned this plan A, plan B, plan C, based on the kind of rejections that I will inevitably get from her.

Audrey Tang: To my surprise, she didn’t say anything. She just looked at the email and said, “OK, tomorrow, you don’t have to go to my school anymore. I’ll cover for you.” The moral of the story here is, don’t be afraid of approaching the institution or establishment so to speak.

Audrey Tang: Institution establishment, it’s just one of the possible configurations. The people working in it even head of school enjoy much more pluralistic opportunities, possibilities and so on in their head probably already. It’s just that they wouldn’t say it to the entire school.

Audrey Tang: Basically, if you can get into a mindset that optimizes this approach of creative innovation, as in let’s make something new instead of let’s write off something that’s existing there, then it’s always possible that people there, even if they represent the so called establishment, are in it with you.

Interviewer: [laughs] You want to make him nervous.

Interviewer: They’re wondering if you still play the card game that you became a champion of.

Audrey Tang: I mentioned The Gathering. Not really, I don’t have time to play that anymore…

Audrey Tang: …but I still enjoy card games in email correspondence with the game’s inventor, Richard Garfield. We talk about the video games we both enjoy, like Hades.

Audrey Tang: He recommended me to look at, I think, Monster Train, one of the card games on PC. I also play it a little bit. Also, KeyForge, I think that was his latest creation, but not professionally anymore. I have a job, you see.

Interviewer: The author likes the game a lot, so he was curious about it.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. I can still play MtG. The next time I visit Japan, we can, I don’t know, play around or something.

Interviewer: He says, basically, this book is going to be for kids in Japan. We’re hoping that kids who maybe feel different from other people or some isolation, somehow will read it, and if you have anything that you think would be good to tell them, they would love to hear it.

Audrey Tang: Maybe just the “titling.” There’s a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in.

Interviewer: I’m trying to think of a light inside cracks. [laughs] OK.

Audrey Tang: No, light through the cracks, but yes.

Interviewer: Yesterday, we just had an election in Japan and probably the turnout was pretty low, especially among the young people. He’s wondering if you have anything, especially an idea to encourage young people in Taiwan to vote.

Audrey Tang: To vote?

Interviewer: Mm hmm.

Audrey Tang: Well, vote more, I guess. More voting.

Audrey Tang: It’s not once every year or every two or four years, but rather once every day or something through the citizens’ initiative website. Join the g0v.tw and through the “Let’s Talk Campaign.” In Taiwan, there’s literally dozens of foreign, those online face to face for young people to choose from, to participate in real agenda setting for our democracy.

Audrey Tang: At this moment, more than one quarter of citizens’ initiatives on the joined platform were from people younger than 18. So, if they see doubts, they can actually determine the future of the agenda.

Audrey Tang: For example, this year is about mental health. People hold Let’s Talk workshops simultaneously, to explore various aspects of realizing a better mental health regime to take care of each other in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: I think people do feel empowered because they can start such a forum. There will be ministry appointment to point responses, so when outside of the election and referendum cycles, they can participate, as I mentioned, every weekend.

Interviewer: Thank you for answering all these questions for us. He’s hoping that maybe you’ll be able to share pictures from your childhood or teenage years. I know that would…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, there’s plenty of documentaries from that era, but I don’t think I hold a copyright. It’s the individual televisions and so on. Whatever I had, I think I’ve uploaded to the national — what cultural memory   memory bank.

Audrey Tang: I’ll paste the link to you here, and then maybe you can just choose part of it. It’s all a Creative Commons Zero, as in relinquishing all copyrights. You can freely use it without even attribution. I think that’s easier if you’re working to publish multiple media and so on.

Interviewer: Great. Thank you very much.

Audrey Tang: Sure, no worries. Let me just very quickly find out to you. I think it’s here.

Audrey Tang: There’s also plenty from my dad, actually. I just discovered that. [laughs] The websites called memory.culture.tw. Here are the materials that I just pasted on the omnism chat. It’s a slideshow of sorts, and you can download with it.

Audrey Tang: The first one was when I was, I don’t know, 14. That was the science fair. Then, the next one when I was, I don’t know, seven or something. You can look at your ledger.

Interviewer: Awesome. Thanks. That’s really helpful.

Interviewer: Just a moment, please.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Interviewer: OK, thank you for everything.

Audrey Tang: Works for your purpose?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Excellent.

Interviewer: Thanks a lot for coming, and be in touch.

Audrey Tang: Sure, we’ll be in touch, and thank you for their really good questions. We will also prepare a transcript for you.

Interviewer: Awesome. Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Cheers.

Interviewer: Bye.

Audrey Tang: Bye.