On the Line
2018, 6:45 minutes
single-channel digital video with sound
hand-processed 8mm/16mm film, paint, digital video

Inspired by prewar cannery workers in San Diego, On the Line offers a queer meditation on the Japanese American women who cleaned the tuna, worked the assembly line, and found same-sex intimacy amid sake and fish guts while the men were off to sea.

Screenings
Both Legacy and Memorial: Japanese American Incarceration in the American West, University of Utah, 2024
Kunstmuseum Celle Mit Sammlung Robert Simon, Celle, Germany, 2023
Festival of (In)Appropriation, Le Grand Action, Paris, 2023;
Treize Galerie, Paris, 2023;
Paris College of Art, 2023;
Marseille Underground Film & Music Festival, 2023;
Other Cinema, San Francisco, 2023;
Festival of (In)Appropriation, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, 2022;
Festival of (In)Appropriation, Los Angeles Film Forum, 2022
Marcus Festival, Montalvo Arts Center, 2022;
Cinéastes Indépendantes, Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, 2020;
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) London, 2019;
Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival, London, 2019;
Antimatter International Media Art & Experimental Film Festival, Victoria BC, 2019;
Festival des Cinémas Différents de Paris, 2019;
Art Gallery of Hamilton Film Festival, 2019;
Chicago Underground Film Festival, 2019;
Xposed International Queer Film Festival, Berlin, 2019;
BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival, 2019;
Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2019;
Tuesday Night Cafe, Los Angeles, 2018;
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, 2018;
CAAMFest 36, San Francisco, 2018;

Exhibitions
TT Takemoto: Remembering in the Absence of Memory, Cantor Arts Center, solo exhibition, 2024
Reimagine Peace, No Matter How Long the Path, online exhibition for Hyperallergic, 2024
Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance, Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco, 2024
Into View: New Voices, New Stories / Speculative Fabulations, Asian Art Museum, 2024 
de Young Open, de Young Museum, 2020
Present Tense: Task of Remembrance, Chinese Culture Center 2019
Precarious Lives, SOMArts, 2019
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, 2018

Press / Publications

Sarah Hotchkiss, “Your Guide to This Summer’s Not-To-Miss Visual Art,” KQED (May 13, 2024)

Max Blue, “Japanese American Artists Reflect on Ruth Asawa at SF State,” San Francisco Examiner (April 4, 2024)

Weston Teruya, “Reflections: with TT Takemoto,” Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance podcast (April 4, 2024)

Machiko Harada, “Japanese Diasporic Artists Take on Intergenerational Trauma,” Hyperallergic (February 22, 2024)

Shaquille Heath, “Interview: Curator Naz Cuguoglu on the Asian Art Museum’s ‘Into View: New Voices, New Stories,” Juxtapoz (February 22, 2024)

Ko Lyn Cheang, “Barrier-Breaking Exhibition at S.F.’s Asian Art Museum Empowers Asian, AAPI Artists,” San Francisco Chronicle (January 20, 2024)

J.L. Odom, “Asian Art Museum’s Virtual ‘Queer Pasts and Futures’ to Showcase Two SF Artists’ LGBTQ-centering Experimental Films,” Local News Matters (July 26, 2022), republished in SFGate (July 28, 2022)

Tina Takemoto, “Queer Exhaustion, Speculation, Despair,” Saturation: Racial Matter, Institutional Limits, and the Excesses of Representation, ed. C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp, (MIT Press 2020), 104-114

“Task of Remembrance: Interview with Tina Takemoto,“ Present Tense: Task of Remembrance, exhibition catalog (Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, 2020), 56-59

Tina Takemoto, “On the Line,” Present Tense: Task of Remembrance, exhibition catalog (Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, 2020), 60-61

Sean Au, “Present Tense 2019: Task of Remembrance,” Interview with curator Hoi Leung, KTSF (May 22, 2019)

Joey Orr and Imani Wadud, “Social Histories: An Inquiry from the Integrated Arts Research Initiative,” Art Journal Open (April 18, 2019)

Juliet Jacques, “Artists’ Films at BFI Flare Festival: ‘In Place of the Real’ Focused on Histories of LGBTQI+ People,” Frieze, (April 9, 2019)

“Flare 2019: Lift Little Tokyo, On the Line, Wayward Emulsions, Sworded Love by Tina Takemoto,” interview, Rianne Pictures.com (March 26, 2019)