Some video tests using cheap xerox prints and diptych strategies to combine images of “tunnel rats” and exposed sewage holes around my family home on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. “Tunnel Rats” were often shorter American troops who crawled thru underground tunnel systems in search of Vietnamese guerrillas who built the tunnels to evade aerial assaults. The sewage holes are a result of a contemporary botched real estate development on land that formally trained guerrillas to fight the French and American colonizers.
Filtering by Category: Studio
Ration Eater 2.0
Ration Eater 2.0 is a make shift dining piece for live tastings of the foods produced with my survival rations.
Ration Market Special Progress
Overall, it has been a very satisfying time building this new commission. It makes me want to produce more sculptures to fit into my world building practice.
Harvest, A Golden Sickle Is Just For Show
Ration Eater v0.3
New developments. This wall work is nearing completion. It is composed of eight signage ‘panels’ that depict a failed housing development in HCMC and a green wash creeping from the sides that contain highly detailed drawings of river spinach.
Ration Market (11.02.2022)
Ration Market (11.02.2022)
200 survival rations made of river spinach/通菜/rau muông, 1 cut plastic sheet, 3 found plexi sheets, 9 red stools.
Moving forward, I’d like to make every installation of the ‘Ration Market’ unique by detailing the materials used to install the work, the amount of rations being installed, and using materials around the site of the installation.
Each iteration of a ‘Ration Market’ should be noted by date and documented. The installation should be provisional and low-end.
Packaged Rations
Forever sunset
In contrast to the wet and nocturnal images of my ‘degradation pictures’, these sunset images convey a clarity in their fidelity, and a literal brightness in their illuminated form.
As the sun sets in Phong Phú (Ho Chi Minh City), the emerging moon pulls the rivers that surround the commune upwards which floods the land. The severity of the flooding is based on the height of the rivers which is further determined by the seasons, like the monsoon periods, as well as oceanic sea level rise that engorge the rivers. Night fall is then akin to an omen for things to come. As the lunar flooding of tonight becomes the permanent flooding of tomorrow. The southern half of South East Asia is due to be underwater by 2050 according to today’s climate predictions.
Here with these photographs, a permanent sunset is staged through a yellow-orange light that radiates through the smoggy skies of each image depicting Phong Phú in the early Twenty First Century. This current moment in 2022 does indeed feel like a sunset period. A moment before the flooding is permanent. A moment before the flooding is simply known as the shoreline.
This also feels like a sort of mourning.
Above is a picture of my friends observing the rising river waters in Phong Phú during sun set.
Wet Pictures, Degraded Pictures, Sad Pictures
I’m constructing pictures that build up a visual world for the tong choy rations and Hole Story to exist together in for printed and exhibition contexts. A visual world that conveys degradation from a repeated cycle of wetting and drying.
Photography has existed in my practice for the purposes work to accomplish a specific project. While I take many photographs in leisure, typically with a phone, I had never used these leisurely images in my art practice. These two modes of image production were distinct operations. Now, I have been able to work with my leisure images with these ‘degradation pictures’ (a temporary name). Leisurely images that are specific to the geography of my tong choy rations and Hole Story are selected and given a treatment.
This type of work constitutes a deeper intimacy between myself and the artwork because these ‘degradation pictures’ are sourced from moments when I wasn’t actively laboring. In other words, these are images from my normal daily life tied to a specific and relevant geography and time. These images are a product of life and curiosity while living and researching somewhere. They are low-fi and compressed jpegs. These are photographs that a person makes and are then repurposed as a material to make art with.
When I view a ‘degradation picture’ I recall the moment or the reason why I took the picture. It is not as sentimental as it sounds, these pictures are usually just some curiosity that I come across in mundane life. When the added treatment transforms these images into ‘degradation pictures’, I impose an anticipated underwater future from sea level rise in Southeast Asia. Tragedy occurs when present time mundanity meets a dreaded future.
In an odd way, I think this is a preparation for mourning.
Tong Choy World Wide
A flowering Tong Choy (Ipomoea Aquatica) is positioned in front of a faded hammer and sickle.
Ration Eater v0.2
Ration Eater v0.1
Composition sketches for the Tong Choy rations.
Tong Choy Ration Prototyping
What would a contemporary ration or shelf-stable emergency food made of Tong Choy look like?
During the reunification of Vietnam and the country’s reconstruction, my family was rationed Tong Choy as a primary food source. The plant, carrying both high-nutrition and toxic elements from American ordnances, was easily cultivated in the wet lands of the newly formed Ho Chi Minh City. Today, the plant grows in wild abundance in many parts of the city.
Here, over 45 years after Reunification, I have been prototyping the form, packaging, and aesthetics of a ration for future emergencies. It is important that these rations look ‘handy’ as if any civilian could produce them, that the packaging is simple without specialized packaging and tools used to make today’s highest-end rations, like the USA MRE; and that they look like the could be sold by any street vendor.
Tong Choy Sketch No. 1
Tong Choy Pigment Production 2
Tong Choy Pigment Production
Natural Pigment Production Experiment #1
Ong choy/tong choy/water morning glory
Work-In-Progress: Workers' Dance (Young Workers, 2021)
Modeling the Phong Phú Commune in Hole Story
Over the course of 2020 and 2021 I have been learning 3D modeling to supplement my camera-based studio practice. These models will supplement camera-based footage in Hole Story. The models produce an uncanny appearance as camera-based footage, which is captured with without depth, is warped and modelled into a 3D landscape that does have depth and its own parallax.
Work-in-progress model of the Phong Phú Commune (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), image still from computer rendering, 2021.
Lifebuoy for Te Magazine at TANK Art Festival (TANK Shanghai)
Lifebuoy in still image from computer rendering.
Lifebuoy is a new sculpture made in continuity with Life Preserver + The Arrival for Te Magazine at the upcoming TANK Art Festival at TANK Shanhai. A total of 144 imitation beef and fish balls (鱼蛋 and 牛丸) are vacuum sealed into 16 packages similar to those found in food markets. They are then bound together using plastic strings that are vernacular to daily life in Asia Pacific. Inspiration for Life Preserver + The Arrival came after noticing how meatballs eaten in the food cultures of Asia Pacific have a tendency to float in the soups that they are served in. This style of meatball originated from the Southern Chinese who, just like their meatballs, were ‘buoyant’ in the liquids of the South China Sea as they sailed for new homes across the region. Lifebuoy accompanies the inaugural launch of Te Magazine, an art and anthropology publication. I contributed two recipes and a reflection on food that has been developed and adapted by the Chinese diaspora in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Lifebuoy, 21x21x1”, 2021.
Lifebuoy, Work-In-Progress documentation.
Lifebuoy with wall vinyl of Lake Ontario (Toronto, Canada) in still image from computer rendering.
Lifebuoy situated in TANK Shanghai, still image from computer rendering.