 Hello, and happy Valentine's Day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Pauline Schruck-Mokchin, your host for Outside In. Most people specialize in doing one thing in life, but some people like to combine seemingly disparate ideas and interests. For example, one person loves to combine medicine and art. And that is my guest today, Dr. Kowan Jeff Bisa, an immunologist by training, a curator of art exhibitions and one of the co-founders of the Honolulu Biennial. Aloha, KJ! Happy Valentine's Day! Same to you, Pauline. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you very much. It's a bit gloomy today, but I suppose it's a romantic day in some respects. So we've got a lot to cover because you do several things, KJ, and it might strike some people as a little bit odd what you do, but you love two subjects the most. One is medicine and one is art. So could I first ask you why you like to combine these two ideas together? Well, I've always been fascinated with the combination of disparate things. I like to think of it as drawing from the fringes of the Gaussian curve. And so combining things has been a natural thing for me to bring disparate things together. So medicine and art aren't really as disparate as people think. There are many overlaps in terms of experimentation, the sense of wonder, approach. These are all things that these two fuels have in common. So if you take someone like Da Vinci and other people, other Renaissance people, they've always mixed science and medicine or science and art. And architects do that, too. They use both sides of their brain in their daily activities and designing buildings, mathematics and spatial awareness. So it's not so strange after all because I combine strange concepts like you, and I always get that sort of half-animal look when I explain things like Freemasonry and Japan together, because I think most people, they kind of do a very mundane routine task that a robot will probably take over in 10 years. And their mind is not so open to this kind of concept, whereas there are polymaths. It was more common to be a polymath a few centuries ago. People were a musician, and they were also an architect or something else. So I don't know whether it has to do with the educational system or it's just not trendy. It's not promoted in society. What do you think? Primarily, it's a geographic location. I think in the US, people tend to think that you can't do more than one thing well. Whereas in Europe and in Asia, there are many people, many professionals that are writers and musicians. I think there's part of a cultural upbringing that's part of that as well. Okay, and why did you study medicine in the first place? What drew you to the medical profession? Well, primarily because we come from a family of people who are caretakers in the health field. We have physicians in our family, nurses, x-ray technicians, dietitians. So that was a primary reason for me to get interested in it. But also when I majored in physical anthropology and marine biology, again, two disparate subjects at university, it was again combining these interests. Actually went away from medicine for a while and then came back when I was in the Navy as a dental technician that allowed me to take care of people and the kind of caring and the kind of preventive measures in dentistry actually caused me to come back into a healing practice. I didn't know that about you, KJ, because my father is a dental surgeon. Really? Okay. He has something in common. Yes, that's right. A medical family as well. I was the black sheep. I studied law instead. I didn't want to say in terms of choosing the subspecialty that I did, first was pediatrics because that was an area I felt in even the greatest care in terms of preventive care. So people now are assuming habits that would abuse themselves. And secondly, because it's a field that is very preventive, it's not organ-specific. You're not just treating the heart or the lungs. Now it's a very holistic because you're treating a patient in his environment. You look at lifestyle, diet, lifestyle changes, those kind of things. And that's what attracted me to the field. And KJ, you still see patients now. Is that correct? No. I've segwayed from a clinical practice which I had in California and New York and Honolulu into a tech-based practice. So now I work on a medical app called Medical Avatar that's online, and it is a digital solutions company that addresses community health and corporate wellness. This I founded with a fellow colleague in New York City. And this is this business about the three-dimensional anatomical avatar of the patient. Well, that's one aspect of it. We're using the scanning techniques in health clubs to look at changes in body mass, muscle volume, those kinds of muscle size, tracking that over time. My emphasis is looking at the communication between physician and patient. There's a fact that doctors interrupt their patients 18 to 30 seconds into the interview. And then from that point, commandeer the conversation. Oh, really? Okay. So I'm developing an app with Medical Avatar and Virgil Wong, who's my collaborator in New York City, to have an application called, the doctor will hear you now. Very good. It's a way to prepare the history-taking in a way that's more digestible to the physician who needs to listen. Is it a particular kind of physician that does this because I can't imagine a psychiatrist doing that? As a general, I was just speaking with the dermatologist the other day, a fairly good friend, Dr. Doug Johnson, who practiced here, and he's very aware of that in his field as well. And so he's modified that to listening and examining patients as they're giving your history. So that is actually an improvement. Why do you think the doctors tend to interrupt their patients? Is it because they think they know better? No, I think it's the way we're trained. I think we're trained algorithmically and on key words. And so when you hear key words, your mind starts racing towards a diagnosis, putting things together. Really? Okay. Because when I was in law school, we were taught how to listen, so that's not taught in medical schools as much, or you just go into a, if you see patient after patient, you get into a rhythm where you do this. I think we're taught to listen, but I think that the pressures of medicine now in terms of time and technology put us in a different position than previously. Okay. Now, linking your interest with immunology. You specialize mainly in allergies, is that correct? That's correct. So you're particularly fascinated by the sense of smell. And there is this Art of All Faction Institute in Chinatown in Los Angeles, which I want to see when we're both back in California at some point. And why are you fascinated by the sense of smell? Because to be honest, that's the sense I would be most happy to be rid of. I would be traumatized if I lost my sense of sight, but sense of smell. Actually, interesting you mentioned that, because there are studies with people who have lost their sense of sight and hearing, and people would say they really develop depression. People who lost their sense of smell develop depression, and there's a person with a band in Australia that actually was suicidal because of loss. It has to do with quality of life, but I think in segue to the beginnings, I got into the sense of smell and old-fashioned area because of people that I saw in the allergy field with chronic sinus infections. And those people lose their sense of smell and affect their quality of life. And because of that, I was looking for links between the sense of smell and Alzheimer's, which is a type of memory disorder as well. And that was basically the link that got me from allergy into looking at more neurology in terms of neuroscience, in terms of links between memory and the sense of smell. And there is a link with Parkinson's, is that correct? There is. The sense of smell is the first thing that's lost in both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And there should be a screening test for all physicians to test for that. And there are testing packets available. So for people, I know there are a lot of people in Hawaii who visit California or originally from California, such as myself. So if they wanted to visit the Institute of the Art of All Faction, can people go to a website and go visit? Do you have an exhibition that rotates? We have an exhibition, but it's also an educational site. We do have an organ, a scent organ, which is actually an array of fragrances, where people can learn to make their own fragrances. Okay, brilliant. And I guess that people can just Google the Institute of the Art of All Faction. Actually it's the Institute for Art and All Faction. For Art and All Faction. So if you go to Google, you'll find it's very easy. There's only one of it, I'm sure. Now, so you concentrate on the sense of smell in this particular museum and organization, but you also put on other exhibitions all over the world that link science and art. So can you give the viewers and listeners some sense of the combinations you've delved into in recent exhibitions? Sure. Well, the science and art also spills into other areas, but if I can point out certain areas, I did an exhibition in New York City called Seeing Ourselves. And basically that had to do with imaging technology and medicine and how artists deploy these, so artists are using MRI scans, X-rays, PET scans, ultrasound in terms of their art. There was another one that was very similar in which artists used these techniques in a different format, which was presented during a photography conference in upstate New York. Yeah, some of the things that look at the disparate nature of things is one called D'Afrique de Zee, which is in French, which means from Asia and from Africa. And a lot of people don't think of Africa and Asia in the same mindset. So the exhibition was about African artists and Asian artists looking at the ways that Africa and Asia are brought together in one mental set. Is that only an American perception? Because I lived in London for a very long time, and London is famous for so as a school of Oriental and African arts, or studies, I should say. But is that a perception only here? No, no, not at all. I think it's a manifestation of finding the artists who are actually working on it to make an exhibition. So it's widespread phenomenon, but in terms of an exhibition, it was easier to select artists from New York. Okay, and now we were talking about cephalopods earlier. So can we get to them? I'm very curious about this because it's intriguing. So you have in your notes cephalopods, but you've done an exhibition about octopi or something like this? No, there's, well, we'll segue to collecting. I collect images and objects of cephalopods. But the interest actually came, again, going back to my original minors and university and majors university, which was physical anthropology and marine biology, actually worked with cephalopods at HMB, the Hawaii Institute for Marine Biology in Coconut Island. And that combination of the two, or an example of the two disparate things that I was doing, putting together. Is the cephalopod collection the largest theme in your collection? No. Why do you have this fascination with? Because I've worked with them before. No, my collection is Catholic. I always say Catholic with a small c, which means universal. And basically I'm collecting Ganeshas. That's one of my passions. This is the elephant god that brings prosperity to businesses in India. That's right. So if you want to be successful in prosperous in business, you pray to Ganesha. He's a remover of obstacles, which is the reason I like him. But also I collect Philippine gold. I collect textiles, many different things. As I said, it's as a... You're a bit like Doris Duke, except it's not Islamic. It's Catholic with a small c. I would say live in an environment that's almost like a livable cabinet of curiosities. OK. And do you collect these creatures yourself or only in their art form? No, no. I used to collect them when I had a marine aquarium, when I lived here in Hawaii. Is this something like Dr. No with the shark swimming? No, no, no. It was saltwater aquarium, which is very common to have here. And in California, I had one as well. But the water's colder in California, so I installed my aquarium in a refrigerator. OK. So now I finally figured out why you travel so much, because I didn't realize how eclectic your art collection was. And do you paint yourself? Is that why you love art so much? Or do you appreciate the beauty? Have you tried to paint yourself? All of you both. All of you both. I love to paint. OK. What do you like to paint? Representational is my area, and my kids have most of my work. They enjoy it. And I enjoy giving it to them. OK. And you have a favorite color? No. No. OK. And now I remember when we were liaising about doing the show that you were doing something with amoebas, an exhibition at LAX Airport with amoebas. So maybe that. Was that in the planning, or it hasn't been executed yet? I think the amoeba reference was in terms of the way that I cured exhibitions, because there are multiple amoebas have pseudopods, which are links outside of protoplasmic links outside of the organism. So my shows are concurrent and multiple. OK. Brilliant, KJ. So we're just going to take a very quick break, and we'll be right back after this break. Thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. On Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We're speaking with KJ about his interest in medicine and art. So you are one of the co-founders, one of the three co-founders of the Honolulu Biennial. So the first time this happened, that's where I met you, was last year, and you already have the dates for the next one, and this is March 8th through May 5th, 2019. And I had Marcus on one of the artists. He's on the advisory board, and we mentioned that the theme is an open boat. And as one of the co-founders, how did you meet Isabelle and Catherine? Were you friends before? Was it by Serendipity? That's a very long story. It goes back to 2010, I would say, way before the, even the first iteration of the biennial. You know that we had a chain of fire, which was a prelude to the Honolulu Biennial in 2014. It was supposed to be as a biennial in 2016, but we needed more time, so we went to 2017. It was just when you saw it, you know. But I think that the comment about the biennial is that it's very strong. I've always been supportive of it all along. I think it needs to be recurrent, which is what was planned. If it needs to be recurrent, then it also needs to be continuous, needs to be sustainable. And I've always been an advocate of the Honolulu Biennial and the foundation. And we wanted to give a shout out to Scott Larmor and Nina Tonga, who are the curators during this next exhibition, and wish them the very best. They have my entire support. Brilliant. Okay, so it's HonoluluBiennial.org, and people can learn more about the upcoming, get ready for the updates and things like that through. It's not a newsletter, but you send email shots out regularly. You can sign up on the website for a newsletter. That's correct. Okay, great. Now, you're a co-founder of that, but you basically curate. You're basically a curator of the other exhibitions that you do worldwide. Right. What are the upcoming exhibitions you've got? So people, maybe if they're in that particular city or country, they can go visit. Right. Well, if you're traveling through Los Angeles, Los Angeles Airport, LAX, I do have an exhibition that's reopening in June of this year through January, and that is called Wild Blue Yonder, and it addresses the color and concept of blue. So the concept behind blue would be religious, it could be thematic, it could be chromatic, and that's at LAX between terminals, seven and eight United Terminals. And you selected the color? Uh-huh. Well, it was a concept that I came up with, and it was based on the Wild Blue Yonder that's in the Air Force song. See, that's why I asked you what your favorite color is, because most men, if you ask most men what is your favorite color, it's some kind of blue. I think you're right. If you had to pin me down, I would say teal. Okay. A little bit of green in there. Okay. Greenbird, like Guffin and Baldini. Okay, so yeah, because it's quite common, my father's favorite color is sky blue, a lot of men like navy blue, some kind of, because it's very calming, and men generally are very calm, right? One of the exhibitions I'm developing now with Keiko Hatano at Fishcake, and Lisa Sheroma who's at High Sam Gallery Shop, Maury Arton Flea, I have the whole thing in there. We're working on an exhibition at High Sam at the long title that I gave, and it involves artists from Hawaii and artists who have moved away from Hawaii. It's actually based on a small metal box we're distributing to the artists, and the concept is similar to that of Marcel Duchamp, Valise Mouat, and also Tom Cloby's Shoebox series, and so this is an exhibition that's going to open on the 4th of May during first Friday here in Hawaii, and they were very excited because we have some very exciting artists involved in it. Okay, so apart from Hawaii, any other U.S. state or abroad, any other country you're delving into at the moment? Well there are projects I'm developing in several countries, I'll name just the countries as described in the exhibitions a bit long, Outer Mongolia, Punjab Province in India, Bangkok, Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is Kinshasa, and Fukuoka, Japan. Oh good, because we're a sister state, yes, Fukuoka and Hawaii are sister states, and that's very good, we have a Japanese link. So you're focusing on Asia, any European ones in the works or in the future? Well I've done recent, I mean these are future projects. This past summer I did exhibitions, two exhibitions in Vienna, then also traveled to Krakow and Dusseldorf and Berlin to set up exhibitions as well, and residency programs, that's something I'm very interested in doing as well. And how do you select your artists for the exhibitions, do they know of you and they send material or images of their work, or do you source them from something catches your eye? All of the above, I'm really fortunate to have been invited to be on several arts organizations, on the boards of them, and so I got to do a lot of studio visits, I got to look at a lot of work either in online or in physical form, I would say probably see up to maybe a thousand artists a year in terms of their portfolio, it's just because I'm, yeah, but what it allows me to do is build what I call a Rolodex of information, so I catalog the ones that I like and keep them in mind for exhibitions to come up. I have more ideas than venues, and so I have ideas cooking all the time, so I ain't looking for venue funding supporters for that, that's what moves it along, but ideas I don't have a lot of. Sometimes extremely talented artists can be very difficult to work with, like a highly skilled chef in a very top restaurant, they're very temperamental sometimes, so do you have an attitude check or something like that, do you, even if the artist is extremely talented, is there a point where you just, the person had, the character of the person has to melt with you as well, is this a difficult call to make? Well it is a complex question, but if you can make an analogy as to choosing, say a surgeon, you know, to have an operation, he doesn't have to be the nicest person, he doesn't have to have great bedside manner, if you're confident in his technical skills you will select that person, so along with artists I would select mainly for quality, that's the first thing, and of compatibility, if it's a person who's difficult to work with, it's, you know, it makes the exhibition harder to pull together. Yes, your analogy as surgeons is quite useful, because among all the medical disciplines the surgeon is the one most likely to be a psychopath, there's a higher, there's a higher, I didn't know that, there's an increased number of people with psychopathy in the surgical area, which makes them good, because a book came out as the wisdom of psychopaths, because psychopaths can actually do things other people can't in an organization, they're very decisive, they can hire and fire people at a whim, because they don't, they lack conscience, so they can actually move things along quite quickly, they do have their attributes, so that's a good analogy to bring up, because artists can be like that too, so. But quality is first, that's why I like that. Yes, quality is number one, now, obviously you travel quite a bit, I know that, and you must go to an awful lot of museums yourself to get ideas about exhibitions, how to do something in a novel way, how to do something in an innovative way, because there's so many galleries and museums now, it's very trendy, so is there any particular museum anywhere in the world that immensely impresses you, or there is a particular way the founder or the curators put on permanent or temporary exhibitions? I think the sources of inspiration for me are legions, so it's not just museums, it's galleries, it's walking around in the open, going to the wilderness, going to the desert, co-founder of the Joshua Triniel, and the Mojave Desert with Bernard Leibov, and so that's another source of inspiration. But if I can come back to your original point, you're asking about other sources of inspiration, like a museum, I would have to put one that I haven't visited yet, and it's called Mona Museum of New and Old Art. I've been there, I showed you the picture of how the David Walters' parking space. The parking spot, right, exactly, so I have a personal link to the person there, and so I'm hoping to do an exhibition, I will visit it first, but also to do an exhibition of one of my dreams. Yes, KJ, you are aware that I'm not a fan of contemporary art, it really depends on what it is, but I have to say Mona is extremely impressive, so if your brain switches off at Michelangelo or the classical arts, it's really worth it to go to Hobart, to Tasmania, and see this magnificent, he's really done a wonderful job, because they're very unusual installations and exhibitions, and they are contemporary, but they get you thinking, it's even if I'm very hesitant to go to such things, but I loved it when I spent the whole day there, so it's really worth it, and also you must go to an awful lot of art fairs, so we have several of those in London, the antiques fairs, the art fairs, are you a fan of antiques also? I collect antiques, but I'm not a fan of going to the fairs for antiques, like Maastricht, like those, no. Okay, so on the medical side now, you are focused on medical avatars, is that correct? Any other medical projects at the moment? All the medical projects besides medical avatars have to do with the sense of smell and its relationship to Alzheimer's, as we talked about before, it's the first sense that's lost in Alzheimer's in Parkinson's. I was supposed to do a project with Oliver Sacks, we're both on a panel at MoMA together in New York, unfortunately he passed, but it is an interest of mine and how to link curative things from the sense of smell, the olfactory field with Alzheimer's or other neurodegenerative diseases. Are you going to write a book or is purely in the exhibition category, the art exhibition category? No, it's actually linking up with actual researchers at NYU in Columbia. The book I'm planning on the olfactory sense has to do, actually it's a primer of olfactory diagnoses. There's actually a book with smells that will train doctors to detect certain medical conditions based on smell. For example, there's a very characteristic fishy smell to a certain disorders of metabolism in kids. It's also ketoacidosis, people more familiar with it in diabetics. There's a certain type of smell with pseudomonas, which is a bacteria that causes infections. So these are the types of things I think could be of interest and also instructional for physicians. And do you do anything related to perfume? Because that's the nicer side of the sense of smell I personally like. I'm also keen on the other bacteria things you're talking about. Well, they're part and parcel of the same spectrum, but I have worked with the perfumers at major perfumed companies like IFF and Fermanage in New York City and have done exhibitions on the sense of smells themselves. Okay, and do you have a particular... I know a lot of men, they like a lot of sandalwood in their cologne. So do you have a particular scent you favor? Not really. Again, I have Catholic tastes in my case and perfumes. In sense. No, actually, oud, I would say is one of my favorites. Oh, oud, yes. It's very favorite. But also, I'm trying to get someone to mix peppercorns and pomegranate with me and see what can come up with. Oh, yes. So I think they do that with macaroons. So you can do anything with that. Peppercorns are very useful. No, I think that would be an intriguing smell. Yes. And your links to New York, did you have a gallery there? Is that right? No, not at all. I was drawn to New York because I'm probably the only physician that applied to and got into the Whitney Independent Studies Program, which is a one-year non-degree awarding program associated with the Whitney Museum. That opened up my entire world of curating because it introduced me to so many curators and artists and critics. And I stayed on in New York. I opened a clinic. I was actually providing free medical care for artists, uninsured artists in New York. That was my community service. But at the same time was curating exhibitions throughout the world based in New York. OK. That's fascinating, KJ. And I love guests that have more than one thing going. If I could tell anybody, you know, it's easy to do. It's not that difficult. You can mix the two interests together. And thank you so much for being a guest on this Valentine's Day. My pleasure. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day, again, everybody. And I'll see you next Wednesday on Outside In at 2 PM. Aloha.