In a work commissioned for the 2001 Yokohama Triennale of Contemporary Art (and also presented at the S?o Paolo and Sydney Biennials), Jan Nguyen-Hatsushiba focused on cyclo drivers in his video project, Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex-For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards (2001). Filmed on location in Vietnam?s Indochina Sea, this remarkable 13-minute video depicts a number of young men struggling to propel cyclos across the rock-strewn, sandy, ocean bottom. Working in teams, they pull, push, and pedal the passengerless vehicles; and periodically they must rush up to the surface for air or risk drowning. The water grows deeper; the boulders get larger; the trip to the surface takes longer; and the task is increasingly arduous. Finally, the drivers abandon their cyclos, and swim together toward an underwater ?city? composed of tents made from white netting strung between boulders, a metaphorical memorial for the many Vietnamese boat people drowned in the aftermath of the war.
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s video work, Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex—For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards, was filmed in 2001 on the southeast coast of Vietnam. This was the artist’s first video work and offers captivating images of local fishermen pulling cyclos (rickshaws) underwater toward an area where the artist stretched about thirty mosquito nets across the sea bed. The cyclos, submerged in deep water, represent the weight of tradition and reference Vietnam’s historical past in the context of the country’s struggle with the processes of modernization.
Nguyen-Hatsushiba was born in 1968 in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Vietnamese father. His family moved to Texas when he was nine years old, and he received formal training in painting in the United States before moving to Vietnam in 1996. He now lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
http://artscal.mit.edu/index.php?template=1&fulltext=film&start=20080801&end=20091231&id=11280004
http://sites.asiasociety.org/arts/nh/index.html
Hi, Jason.^^.
ReplyDeleteNguyen Hatsushiba 's work is so nice , he likes make video works. This works can show people are so painful when they are working. it tell us the situation of Vietnam. people are living in the darkness.
Hi~~
ReplyDeleteHis works are really vivied and powerful.You did a detialed bakeground Knowledge of the project and the artest.
For my opinion,This Project focused on the concepts human nature and progress which come out from the Enlightenment.It's talking about the price that we paid during the developing of our society and how people struggle with their lives~