30.12.12

明信片背面文字翻譯 - 新苑藝廊 ____之間的距離



英文:這些繪畫或許反映著越南詩意的自然美、著名的當代世界的建築奇觀,像是艾菲爾鐵塔、雪梨歌劇院、或自由女神,甚至是傑出的世界領袖的肖像,像是美國總統或是俄國總理。一張畫從5-20美元不等。– 我的越南護照觀光網站

越文:胡志明市有著不多的當代藝廊,因為大部份的藝廊都很難賣作品,也因為很少當地的藏家,大部份當代藝術的藏家都是外國人。 – Lã Huy



英文:從1960到1975,西貢的越南小孩比較大隻,她說,因為美國人。– 國家地理雜誌

越文:當我看到這張照片,我好奇觀光客覺得他們實際上所看到的東西如何,比起那些從明信片或他們從自己國家購買的書上看到的。事實是,大部份上面寫的資訊及影像都不是真的。– Lưu Danh Quyền



英文:地下的隧道都被拓寬了,所以就算胖的觀光客也可以通過。– 國家地理雜誌

越文:不管你喜不喜歡,戰爭在美國還是一個熱門的話提,但我想要人們以另一個角度來看,停止製造仇恨,或是讓戰爭變成我們的符號。這個經驗應該拿來教導大家如何更恰當的跟人相處。戰爭不是一個好東西。– Lương Lưu Biên



英文:在一個充滿貧窮、飢餓、疾病、文盲的世界裡沒有和平,我們有機會,我們有這個義務,來創造一個先父所談論與尋找的新世界。– 第三世界發展議題

越文:當我剛看到這張照片時,我覺得很酷。我的意思是說,這個游泳池看起來很好很豪華。但我怕水,而游泳池就是一個玩水跟泡腳的地方。游泳對我而言很遙遠因為我怕水。但如果我很有錢,我想我會在我的房子裡蓋一個游泳池,所以我的小孩和老公就會很愛水,比我玩得更開心。– Linh Psyko



英文:到處都是異國情調與日常生活的景象。– Lonely Planet

越文:人們喜歡將越南、或任何發展中國家連結到骯髒。然而,我相信任何國家都有這樣的角落。– Pé Heo



英文:你可以吃蛇、烏龜、鹿茸以及其他異國料理到飽,在Try Ky餐廳。– Lonely Planet

越文:越南,特別是年輕人,在濫用西方文化的進入,有時候他們失去了自己。因為世界是平的。那些沒有特色的文化,會被更大的文化所取代,越南是個很好的範例。– Loan Tran



英文:街頭上的小孩環繞著觀光客兜售T、明信片和打火機,沒有手腳的乞丐用推車拖著自己,扒手們東張西望的在 Dong Khoi尋找著沒有防備好的皮夾。– 越南觀光手冊

越文:孩童的笑容從來不會消失。在發展後,我們很少看到孩子們在公園裡玩。取代的是,我們看到他們在百貨公司。然而,這不代表什麼,因為他們的笑容還是永遠自然跟被珍惜的。– Pé Heo



英文:我們用亞洲的眼睛看,亞洲的腦思考,西班牙的心來服務。– Melia旅館與貿易中心

越文:想像有一天,越南會被發展成像是香港、澳門或新加坡一樣的城市,變成另一顆星星。– Hoang Nga



英文:最震驚的事實是,在這些政治正確的繪畫裡,所有的越南戰爭英雄看起來都像歐洲人,而不像亞洲人。– Lonely Planet

越文:胡志明市的外國人社區常常有著他們自己的聚會,第二區是大部份外國人住的地方,很安全,路也很乾淨,但以前,這個地方是沼澤,所以當漲潮的時候,道路還是會淹水。– Lã Huy


越文:對我而言,這張照片是胡志明市。人們從維基百科來知道胡志明市,但對我而言,最好的是家庭的價值。我來告訴你為什麼(從左到右)。我的二哥曾經是流氓、毒販,他做了一些讓我恨他的事情,但這些都過去了,現在,他有了老婆跟小孩,我知道他關心也愛我和我的家庭。接著是我們的哥哥,他加入軍隊,而且一直是兄弟姊妹之間最負責任的,我覺得他有點傻,但是他有了老婆跟小孩,而且他永遠是家中的男人。接著是他的老婆,我不太知道她的事情。接著是我們最大的哥哥,我們永遠是兄弟,但是我們從來沒有什麼話聊,他是個被誤導的一代,大部份他的朋友都因為毒品而死,而他還活著。接著是我的繼父,他是中國人,永遠很負責人又幽默。我總是尊重他。接著是我的姐姐,她很吵但是總是聽我說話也瞭解我。我覺得她是家裡的美人,是瞭解整個家庭的人。我的媽媽(後)是我信任的人。我有次問她,她在1975年4月30日那天在做什麼,她回答,我正要去學校,然後在聽了連續兩天的槍聲後才回家。接著是我的外婆,她總是看著我們然後微笑。接著是我大哥的兩個女兒,一個很新潮另一個很好笑。我相信她們會是我們的未來。– Phan Minh Tuấn (Liar Ben)


16.11.12

Art Taipei - MIT新人推薦特區 / Artist Fair, Nov 2012

Involuntary Reader was exhibited in Taipei for the first time, and Kunst (this is what we do) was exhibited for the first time worldwide at Art Taipei. 




Dubbing Project was exhibited for the first time in Taiwan at Artist Fair.


Thank you for your support!

Between you and the place you believe you thought you knew


The project is collaboration between artists – Ting-Ting Cheng (Taiwan) and La Huy (Vietnam), as the outcome of Cheng’s artist in residency at Zero Station, Ho Chi Minh City, invited by Outsiders Factory for the programme South Country, South of Country.

Cheng is interested in how our impressions towards a city were formed before the actual visit? Is there a gap between the impression and the reality? But is there a reality? Somehow we look for the images that match our impression, and then telling ourselves, “Oh this is place I know.” So how do we decide what is “Saigon”, no matter for Saigonion or foreigners?

Postcards were chosen as the main medium in the project. Cheng intended to ask, why the images on postcards in souvenir stores were chosen to represent the city? Even though the images are not necessarily close to the everyday life, but rather be images that people believe can “represent” the place. What is the “identity” of a country? Are the cultures being preserved and displayed because of the gaze from the others? And is the way we see ourselves influenced by the way others see us?

She used images taken by a local friend and herself to form a set of postcards. On the back of the postcards, there are text in English and Vietnamese. Unlike traditional postcards, they describe different content. The English texts are quotations she found in tourist books, magazines or websites. The Vietnamese texts are written by local residents, about their feelings towards the images.

Cheng raises questions about the concept of East and West, developed and undeveloped, exoticism, westernization and modernism.

Apart from the postcards, the project also includes photography, video and the documents that she collected, mainly before her trip to Vietnam, including tourist guides, magazines, postcards, computer games…etc.
















10.9.12

Involuntary Reader (非志願性讀者) at Taitung Art Museum 台東美術館


Involuntary Reader is exhibited for the first time in Taiwan at Taitung Art Museum as part of Austronesian International Arts Award 2012. The exhibition goes until 12 Oct, don't miss it!
Then it will tour to a number of locations in Taiwan, including 國父紀念館 in Taipei.

非志願性讀者入選今年南島國際美術獎,目前在臺東美術館展出,是該作品繼德國Nord Art及莫斯科年輕藝術雙年展後第一次在台灣展出,展覽到10月12日,接著會巡迴至台灣其他縣市展覽,包括台北的國父紀念館,不要錯過了!




4.9.12

III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art


Involuntary Reader was exhibited at III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art at Moscow Museum of Modern Art.



Thank Francesca and her friend for taking the pictures for me!

20.8.12

Classifieds at SIA Gallery, Sheffield - until 23 Sep


My recent show - Classified - at SIA Gallery in Sheffield, opening last Thursday.

Thanks for Sheffield Institute of Arts, all the participating artists, and those who came to show :)








The ubiquity of information and data in our daily lives is pervasive, but we rarely question its nature and origin. The messages presented to us, are they truthful? How are they selected and classified? Who filters and controls them? And who has the authority to decide which information is worth seeing or preserving it?
The exhibition includes five UK-based artists, Estefani Bouza, Ting-Ting Cheng, David Penny, Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly, using photography, video and installation to explore and interpret the use of codified language in everyday life, challenging the authorized subjects and the way they categorize messages. In the artworks, the artists imitate the selecting, presenting and receiving process used by museums, libraries and mass media to raise questions related with classified information.
Estéfani Bouza's project Collection consists of fifteen photographs. Each of these images depicts legumes, nuts or raisins, which are enumerated. In the first picture of the project, one thousand and one items appear in the image, and in each photograph of the series one more is added. Each element shown is classified and ordered in reference to the recollection process used in the land notebooks of the XIX century.
The different elements are presented as catalogued specimens for analysis and observation in a way that indicates their significance, but it is also through this mechanism of representation that the ideology of the museums and the prerequisites of their collections are exposed and questioned.
Ting-Ting Cheng's I judge a book by its cover explores the relationships between language, identity and foreignness. In the project, She borrowed books of foreign languages from a library, and photographed the side of them in piles. Apart from the clue in the titles, the viewers cannot tell what language the books belong to. Language, in our society, works as a selection mechanism. It selects audience, deciding who would be able to read the books. By randomly choosing books of the language the artist cannot understand, Cheng positioned herself as a ‘cultural outsider’, that ‘she judged a book by its cover’, which signifying the distance between different cultures and how nationality/identity influence the way people judge others in our society.
David Penny's The Ship and the Nose was initiated through a residency at Manchester Central Library: the artist was invited to make a piece of work as the huge collection of the libraries archive was moved from its home to be temporarily re-housed in a local salt mine. From looking for remnants of objects and scraps of paper in bins, amongst dusty corners and under sets of shelves, things are given a new narrative potential. The library contains knowledge that is provisionally ordered and classified, waiting to be found again and processed in a new context. The same approach has been taken with these lost objects, they are found, re-ordered and grouped for display. Since working in the library Penny has developed the work to incorporate new imagery, responding to a sense of a narrative journey that the Ship and the Nose has come to represent. There becomes scope for movement of the imagination between the groupings of objects and images and an archive is re-built, re-interpreted.
Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly's Longbridge is a mock-documentary video about an incident which never happened. The artists used Google Earth to plan the entire shoot of the video from their home in London. Locations were mapped-out, and the set-pieces were planned. The artists also went to Copenhagen and executed the shoot disguised as tourists with an entirely virtual, minutely-planned itinerary. The subject of the film was drawn from Copenhagen’s famous son Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote at length about the serious moral implications of leading ‘the aesthetic life’. By throwing this criticism into the entirely aesthetic experience of the tourist, the artists attempted to flush out new experiences to be had from the old, treating cliché and truism as fertile, rather than barren soil. To then round this experience off, the O’Reilly's then posted images from the film back onto the locations on Google Earth, disseminating covert experience through the channels of distribution.

http://www.shu.ac.uk/sia/gallery/events/event.html?id=81

23.7.12

I know what you are trying to say, until 2 Aug

Thanks everyone who came to the opening.
It was really nice to see you all!!!

The exhibition goes on until 2 Aug. Today (23 July, Monday), from 4-7pm, I will be there, playing The mechanism of speaking Chinese with audiences. If you are interested in, please come along!!!




I judge a book by its cover

Dubbing Project

The Mechanism of speaking Chinese

I know what you are trying to say
N4 Library, 26 Blackstock Road  London, Greater London N4 2DW

Thank Rowan Arts and curator Fiona Parry for realising the exhibition.

http://www.islingtonexhibits.com/exhibitors-gallery-2012?item=319

9.7.12

I know what you are trying to say - my first solo show in London!


Opening: 19 July, 6-8pm, N4 Library, 26 Blackstock Road, N4 2DW

Play the game with the artist: 21 July, 3-5pm / 23 July 4-7pm

Please come and join us!

Thank Rowan Arts and Islington Exhibits for realising the exhibition.


4.7.12

It's fine, you can talk to me - exhibited at GlogauAIR Open Studio












Continued my interest in relationship between locality and foreignness, in It’s fine, you can talk to me, I transformed the negativity of language barrier between immigrants and local residents into a positive connection.

During the residency, I used advertisements with tear-off stripes and social networks on the Internet to invite local residents from Germany to tell me a secret in German, the language that I cannot understand. The processes of revealing secrets were documented by video, but without audio.

In this case, the participants shared their secrets with me, but without worrying that anyone, including me, would know or judge. The secrets still remain as secrets. I intend to narrow down the gap between outsiders and local residents, encouraging people to open their hearts to a stranger/foreigner. Here, the person who cannot understand one’s language becomes the person that one can trust.

The exhibition includes images and documents to illustrate the process of looking for participants, with the number of people who contacted me, the way they know the information, and the results, accompanied by the videos.  





Thanks all the participants who shared their secrets with me. 
Thanks everyone who came to the exhibition. 
Thanks everyone who I worked with in GlogauAIR during the period.

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