InCenDiaRies IN THE making

The word “incendiary” tends to have a negative connotation. According to Google, “incendiary” means “tending to stir up conflict,” meaning something—or someone— is seen as controversial or provocative. However, the word “incendiary” can extend far beyond those negative labels. An “incendiary” can be exciting. They possess a unique energy captivating and inspiring those around them. Young creatives Jason Johnson (JJ) and Alexander Hoefer (AH) both exhibit “incendiary”- like qualities as they pursue their creative and career passions. Sitting down with both University of Georgia students, we talked about self-expression, inspiration, and how they are (or will be) “incendiaries” in those pursuits.

SW: What’s your major and classification?

JJ: I’m a 3rd year with a Cognitive Science major.

AH: I’m a Senior, double majoring in Entertainment & Media Studies and English.

SW: Are you involved in any other creative pursuits besides modeling?

JJ: Fine (creative) arts allows many of us—me included—to express ourselves in a way unlike any other. I dabble in other creative arts for the same sake and maybe the added benefit of “just cus.” (creating for the sake of creating) This ranges from creative direction, poetry, graphic design, and dance. These double as my outlets and positions I hold through the various organizations on campus.

AH: My filmmaking aspirations extend beyond the fashionable and commercial. My first love has always been action movies — big and bombastic, like true Hollywood fanfare, or more subtle and artful, like espionage films. My true love, however, has to be Asian action cinema: martial arts films, like those out of Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea. It certainly has to do with my own identity as (1) a martial artist and (2) a sort of de facto immigrant, though I have always been legally American. I moved to the States at age eleven from Southeast Asia — my mother is Sabahan Malaysian, so I was born in Singapore and had lived in a couple other cities in the region — and my need to consume Asian martial arts films probably kicked in (pun intended) as a kind of longing for my other half.

SW: What are your life aspirations?

JJ: I aspire to serve as a model and inspiration to both those around me and those who watch/look up to me. Of course, I have my occupational, financial, and relationship (both platonic and intimate) dreams as much as the next person, but platonic and intimate) dreams as much as the next person, but I aspire to aid others on their journeys of breaking bonds and freeing themselves from whatever box society has placed them in. Growing up, I didn’t see very many people who looked like me, nor had I witnessed many others who modeled any idealized version of myself I could formulate. It wasn’t until I started to question teachings that I started to find just breadcrumbs of who I am and could develop to be.

AH: I have plenty of common aspirations — a wife, kids, for us all to be happy — and those are just as important to me as the professional/artistic. I suppose I could sum up the latter in a single statement: I want to be great. I’ll be damned if I don’t try, though I think it’ll only seem more impossible to distinguish an individual voice in today’s media cacophony.

I want to put martial arts stories on the screen in ways that are often hard-hitting, and other times subtle. I want to be able to do Crouching TIger, Hidden Dragon, and then I want to do it way different. My magnum opus would be something like John Wick, if it was adapted from a Borges short story, directed by Wong Kar Wai, styled by Tom Ford, with dance/ fight choreography from Yuen Woo Ping: it would be a balletic martial arts film with pronounced romantic themes, multicultural/multilingual aesthetics, and a tilt toward the cerebral and fashionable. It would also have Michelle Yeoh in it.

SW: How would you describe your individuality?

JJ: The foundation of my individuality stems from stubbornness that doubles as a form of rejection; a rejection of blind tradition and harmful societal norms. Why CAN’T I be like this? Why CAN’T I do that? Confrontation I have faced has pushed me to become multifaceted in ways I never thought was possible. Each skill, each new attribute I obtain, in some way, builds upon the last. I can become everything and anything I desire, not what people choose of me.

AH: I think, for me, my individuality has always been necessary. Not always in ways that I enjoyed or felt in control of. For one thing, growing up as the only White kid in Southeast Asian public schools meant that I was always an American landmark, though I’d never been there; after that, growing up as an Asian kid who looked kind of White in a predominantly White Buckhead charter school meant that I learned to insist on my individuality—my otherness, which in this case, had become my Asianness. My individuality has always been rooted in tension, or suspension, in a neverreally-belonging. I need to insist on the parts of me that feel in jeopardy, because the moment I stop, they will cease to be.

SW: How do you express your individuality in your work— professional and creative?

JJ: I simply do me.

AH: I think film functions like a gravitational center around which my hobbies and interests revolve. I try to find the interests that seem as different from each other as possible (like Malaysia and America, or Tango and Tae Kwon Do) and mash them together in strange ways on screen.

SW: Do you sometimes struggle with expressing your individuality?

JJ: No! To some degree sure, but my individuality in essence is who I am and I don’t know how to be anyone that isn’t myself.

AH: Nah. I think I struggle whenever I can’t. Like bro. I need this shit. I need so many ways to do it, or I’ll just feel like I’ll blow up.

SW: How do you ensure your individuality is valued amongst yourself and your peers?

AH: It’s always a balance between making yourself heard and not being overbearing. Personally, I always struggled with the former, because I was so extremely shy and withdrawn as a child (I often wonder if that was an effect of my peculiar cultural upbringing). So my philosophy tends to be to remain quiet until what I have to say is valuable, or at least a little funny.

SW: How were you an “incendiary” in this photoshoot?

AH: The allure that surrounds an incendiary has a lot to do with their mystery. It’s the potential, the will-he-won’t-he that draws in the onlooker. The conversation surrounding the incendiary then is something of an attempt to fill in the gaps: to fictionalize. I think what I tried to do was leave those gaps.