discussion

One art pieces that I really love is by the artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.
I saw some of his work on Malmö Konsthall in Sweden 2005.

“Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba is a Vietnam-based artist who works with film, photography, conceptual objects and installations. In a long series of works he has used Vietnam’s complex history as a starting point and created “alternative histories” and “memorial projects”. Since 2001 he has produced a series of four films recorded in water.”
/ Malmö Konsthal - http://www.konsthall.malmo.se/

The films show different things, all under water. In one of them you see young men struggling with getting their bike taxis (and if I remember also wheelchairs further and further out into the sea, dragging them along the sea floor. In another of the films white “tents” are set up on the sea floor. In yet another balls of colour are realized from a “machine” places on the sea floor whilst a huge asian dragon is moveing around in the water above.
The films are totally capturing. It is something with this pointless struggle in the films that is so beautiful, and bizarre. Also the total tranquility is amazing.

I later read that the film title, In Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex – For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards, was a tribute to the millions of boat people who entrusted their fate to the waves, and that Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba wanted to show the suffering and struggle for survival which has plagued the Vietnamese people both during and after the war with the United States.

I personally like the work better without that explanation. It is truly beautiful in itself.

In class I also mentioned Wanås sculpturepark (http://www.wanas.se/). Kind of crappy webpage but fantastic park with works by Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer, Charlotte Gyllenhammar and many more.

In connection to the talk about the hotel project in the area Transvaal in The Hague I thought about the book The Tipping Point. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, talks about the way in which trends are spread and developed. He does not speak mainly of fashion trends but also trends within all sorts of areas. The way he sees it trends spread in the same way as an epidemic develops, and at one point something that was before just a small thing tips and becomes popular.

As an example he mentions a housing area. If one window within this is broken, and then left broken for a long period of time, this will signalise that this is ok. The risk that other windows in that area are broken are much higher than in an area without broken windows.
This is of course interesting and valid in the opposite way as well, like in the Hotel Transvaal project. Interesting to see when it reaches the tipping point.

For you who haven’t read the book I warmly recommend it.