Michael Rippens: Care Talk
LISTEN TO
Care Talk was an interactive storytelling project that amplified the voices of caregivers working on the front-lines of a global pandemic, created and facilitated by artist Michael Rippens.
Owing to a complex history of colonization, cultural propaganda, immigration politics, and global economic forces, the past 70 years saw an influx of Filipinos moving to the U.S. to work as health care professionals. Rippens’ own mother immigrated to Los Angeles from the Philippines in the early 1970s and studied nursing at Pasadena City College. She worked as an RN in the Intensive Care, Cardiac Care, and Behavioral Sciences units at Huntington Memorial Hospital for over three decades. She eventually left the hospital to start up and manage a small caregiving agency, which she operated for many years from a desk, and telephone she had installed in her kitchen.
Care Talk was inspired by Rippens’ mother’s immigration story and her life-long commitment to helping others. This project paid homage to the many hardworking and dedicated caregivers that she worked with—most of whom were also Filipinos, immigrants, and women of color.
The Care Talk project utilized a telephone voicemail system as a physically-distant platform for sharing stories. Caregivers and home care aides were invited to call the hotline number (626) 427-7293 and record their personal experiences of living and working during the COVID-19 pandemic. As more voicemail stories were shared, the Care Talk website served as an expanding public archive of these recordings. Additionally, visitors could contribute written messages to the project via the website’s contact form.
In collaboration with dublab, Michael created the Care Talk Radio Hour, a two-part series featuring caregiver testimonials and conversations with experts.
In the first installment, five L.A.-area caregivers described their experiences living, working and caring for others amidst a global health emergency. These personal accounts were recorded during telephone interviews that Rippens’ conducted between October 2020 and January 2021.
In the second installment, broadcasting live and in-person, Rippens spoke with Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and author of Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History. The show also featured interviews with Aquilina Soriano Versoza, Executive Director of the Pilipino Workers Center, a non-profit serving and organizing the low-wage Philipino immigrant community in Los Angeles, and the host’s mother, Remy Rippens, an immigrant from the Philippines, and retired RN.
Featured music:
“Dreamland” by ESTA.
“Bronsé” by Pantayo
“You’ve Got a Home” by Fanny
“Ordinary Guy” by Toro y Moi, featuring the Mattson 2
Original Care Talk theme music by composer and artist Nathan Matthew David w/ Angela Asistio, Music Supervisor.
BIO
Michael Rippens is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores issues of economic inequality, identity, class, and accessibility, as well as the basic human desire for belonging and connection with others. Through public performance and social engagement projects, Michael orchestrates unexpected, personal interactions that create empathy, build community, or simply put a smile on someone’s face. Originally from South Pasadena, CA, Michael currently lives and works in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Follow Michael Rippens on Instagram @rippens_projects
Michael Rippen's residency dialogues with “Mobility Archived”, Side Street Project's 2020 curatorial project that looks at the relationship between histories of mobility, movement, and the archive.