In the seven years that I have been writing art reviews, I have never directly experienced anything as futile as interviewing Michael Arcega.

It has nothing to do with him — he's a brilliant young interdisciplinary artist. It has to do with the tape recorder I used for the interview. It didn't actually record the interview — the recorder button was broken.

I should have been furious, but it made me laugh. It was "Futilitarianism" at its finest. I "got it," big time. There is a cosmic jokester at play here. Fortunately, Arcega was gracious enough to redo the interview by phone.

In August, Arcega will be 35, and this is his banner year. He is participating in two shows in Honolulu at the same time — "Futilitarianism" and "One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now" at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. He is also doing a residency at the 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles — working on a piece for the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Arts this summer. He plans to finish his MFA in 2009 at Stanford University, where he was awarded a scholarship.

Arcega emigrated from the Philippines when he was 10. Since then, he has overcome innumerable obstacles, both socially and culturally. His resilience has paid off.

He lives and works in San Francisco, contributing to curatorial projects and artist lectures, and has done six artist residencies (including at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu and the deYoung Museum in San Francisco), has been featured and published in Artforum and Artweek magazines and The New York Times, has participated in 38 group shows and nine solo exhibits, and has taught at the California College of the Arts.

He is scheduled to return to The Contemporary Museum in 2009. Until then, this is what Arcega had to say in our re-interview:

Q. Can you explain your concept of "Futilitarianism"?

A. Futilitarianism is based on the idea that there is utility in futility — a common occurrence in thinking about things. For instance, large-box stores propose to help the community, and they hurt it instead. These are self-negating endeavors that look as though they don't fulfill any real need. For instance, rock-climbing. I'm a rock-climber. I don't need to climb up the wall, but there is an inherent good in it, and similarly in making art. As a strategy, I'm thinking about the show peripherally, in phatic systems. This happens when you communicate without really discussing the exact subjects. Humor is prevalent in my work. This is an almost Absurdist body of work. There is really nothing to understand, it's more experiential.

Q. How is it humorous?

A. In general, I take the form/structure of jokes. Person "A" tells the joke to person "B." What follows is a question, and then "A" delivers the punch line. Usually, it is an unexpected outcome of the dialog. I take the form of joke-making and apply it to the visual aspect or formal aspect of my work. For instance, in this exhibit, yellow "caution" tape is changed to yellow "auction" tape. When you first see it, you register that it is caution tape, but the first "c" has been moved. That unexpected twist, when it becomes revealed, is how the punch line works. That's one level. On a deeper read, auction and caution, in the context of an art gallery, questions the role of what barrier tape is, what an auction is to an art gallery and what kind of caution you have to take in this circumstance.

Q. Can you talk about some of your other pieces in this exhibit?

A. "Walnut Traverse V3" is the climbing wall on the left wall of the gallery. It is made from plaque holders or what look like trophy bases — markers of prestige. You wouldn't guess you could actually climb it, except for the marks around the wall. On the opposite wall, there are six silver-gelatin photographs, self-portraits. They were all taken by the spray-can pinhole cameras on the opposite wall. The spray cans are also diversion safes. In the diversion safe, I see residue of a paranoid culture that assumes we are consumers that have certain things. The "Diversion-Safe-Cam: BIG Puncture Seal" assumes we have a car so that we can camouflage the safe-can along with other car stuff. These objects assume we have something to hide, that we need to protect against, using military tactics within our homes — like camouflaging safes within other objects. I also added an untitled piece after the opening. I shed my crutches and made a Velcro bottle holder on the crutch.

Q. When did you know that you wanted to be an artist?

A. I got turned in for doing spray-can graffiti in high school. What attracted me to graffiti, besides the excitement, were the abstract texts — making up your own font. We would paint something, and the other guys would paint over it. Then, the maintenance people would paint over that and give us a clean slate again. I was cultivating art that in the end had no real quantifiable purpose. In a funny way, it's similar to what I'm doing with Filipino accents. Taking a concept, abstracting it through the use of the accent and creating another work in the end. I decided I wanted to go to art school after being bored in junior college. I began with painting, got into sculpture, and at that point became interdisciplinary.

Q. You are also in an exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. What can you tell us about that piece?

A. "Eternal Salivation" is a 7.5-foot by 15-foot by 10-foot Noah's Ark. It follows the format of knock-knock joke-making and steers your expectations in a different way. In the biblical story, Noah brings animals, two by two, to his ark. In the cartoon versions, it's all happy and cheerful. In this case, you find many types of animals, from all over the world, dried into jerky for consumption sitting inside a cellarlike hull. There is, to name a few jerkies — pig, cow, emu, llama, turkey, kangaroo, tuna, shark and snail. The ark is made of a variety of woods and took four months to finish. The piece revolves around the complicated symbolism in the title and plays off of eternal salvation. Questions arise — who is worthy of saving and who is left to drown? Who will inherit the Earth? Who decides?

Q. Where did you get your sense of humor?

A. I inherited a corniness from the Filipinos. I like to do "use-this-word-in-a-sentence" jokes — for example, devastation. Your answer would be wrong unless it was spoken with a Filipino accent. So, the answer would be, I wait for the bus at the bus station. Using a Filipino accent reconstituted the word — "devastation" becomes "de bus stay shon." Similar things happen with the word masturbation. The answer would be, using the accent again, "In Third World countries, there is mass starvation." In the beginning, you relate to the word masturbation as a taboo word. Then, you get hit with the punch line and you think of starving children in developing countries. It's followed by an uncomfortable giggle. I like using the Filipino accent because it's the accent I had when I moved here (to the United States) and was ridiculed because of it. Now, I'm able to use it as a source of empowerment. It's similar to other artists in Hawai'i using pidgin in their work.

Q. Besides humor, what inspires you?

A. I have to enjoy what I'm doing. Having fun doing my work is my motivation. I'm not here to change the world or anything. In fact, as far as changing things, mine is probably one of the least effective ways. But that is part of the spirit of the show. As cultural producers, artists can contribute in small amounts to a greater whole. I'm part of that effort.

Victoria Gail-White has been writing about art for The Advertiser since 2001. She is a fiber artist, teacher and former art gallery owner.