The first installation of new community project Livinwondrexpresses the stories and creative ideas of the public through transformative media art.
In Vietnam, there are a number of established and independent art organizations and individuals working tirelessly toward the broadening of public access to and understanding of art. These programs include the development of educational talks and workshops, particularly regarding the state of Vietnam’s contemporary art practices and their relationship to the country’s economic development as well as polarizing social and urban shifts.
Now, through media art, the new community project Livinwondr invites people to express and share their thoughts through art.
Led by Saigon-born, American-based multimedia artist and filmmaker Hung Viet Tran, Livinwondr’s first project, Stars in Our Eyes: Creating a Sense of Place, launched as a fundraising exhibition last Friday at Galerie Quynh.
When I meet Tran for an interview the day before, he is busy assembling the stainless steel inox bars on his modifiable – or, as he likes to call it, “living” – sculpture. The project is based on three core interpretations of the phrase “live in wonder”: to thrive in an environment of fascinating beauty, to live in desire and curiosity to learn and to create a miracle or spectacle which is alive.
Tran has dedicated himself to building this platform for the past couple of years and chose the theme for Livinwondr's first project: Stars in Our Eyes invites people to reflect on the history of Vietnam and its present situation.
“After 4,000 years of war, now Vietnam is developing,” he tells Saigoneer. “A lot of people are moving to urban areas, Saigon is over-populated [and] polluted, and people throw garbage everywhere. There is a crazy commercialization, and this is one of the countries with the youngest population. What are these young people concerned about?”
Envisioned as a collective art project, which evolves and changes according to the environment in which it lives and on the creative contributions of individual people, Stars in Our Eyes features drawings, photographs, comic strips and written texts submitted online by the general public – including pieces created during a children's workshop at Hanoi’s Six Space(formerly Blossom Art House) – and renowned artists such as Tiffany Chung, Thong Van Nguyen and But Chi.
“There are a lot of levels of participation,” Tran explains. “I select the submitted work based on whether it fits with the theme, not so much on the artistic quality.”
The chosen pieces are converted to black-and-white vectors and then turned into negative film. Tran's inox bars are then covered with light-sensitive paint and the negative film is applied and exposed to light.
Even though he is overseeing the project, the Saigon-born artist often repeats that Livinwondr does not belong to him but to the people.
“I’m interested in crowdfunding technology and in creating works that can be shared online, in complete democracy,” says Tran. “This project is not even mine.”
With Stars in Our Eyes, Tran aims to tap into the current expressive limitations which the community faces. “People in Vietnam have individual ideas and there are a lot of different opinions,” he says. “It is just that they don’t come forward or they do not know where they can express them. I want to invite them to ask themselves how we are developing and how they can contribute as individuals.”
In addition to the artwork which appears in the installation, Livinwondr is also cultivating a digital archive where creative professionals can share their work experiences through video as well as their thoughts on the theme at hand.
Among these video clips is Never Forgotten, a beautiful three-minute short which features designer and cultural conservationist Dinh Mai Thu Trang, who speaks on her contribution to the project as well as her research on the preservation of historical motifs from the King Dinh and King Le temples at Hoa Lu in Ninh Binh province.
Video via YouTube user Livinwondr.
It is contributions like these which motivate Tran to further cultivate Livinwondr. “I want this [sculpture] to continue to expand so much so that people in the future will want to come and see how it and the people that contributed have evolved,” says Tran.
Aside from having the Stars in Our Eyes installation exhibited at the National History Park as well as Thang Long in Hanoi, the artist's wish is to bring Trang's Hoa Lu-inspired submission full circle by exhibiting the project at the same temples in Ninh Binh which inspired her design work. In this way, the contemporary rendition of these historical motifs can live side-by-side with the 14th-century original, evoking the same connectivity and historical relationship which are at the core of Livinwondr's current theme.
The nine-day fundraising exhibition aims to support both this current project as well as the next one, which is intended to take place in the United States. Visitors can purchase limited prints of the artwork as well as the actual engraved inox bars.
Stars in Our Eyes: Creating a Sense of Place will be on display until May 14 at Galerie Quynh.
151 Dong Khoi, Ben Nghe Ward, D1
10am – 7pm, Tues to Sat
