KVT’s New Mask for 2013

KVT’s New Mask for 2013

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KVT 2013
KVT’s new look for 2013

As you probably know, KVT choses to have a secret identity, and hides behind a mask to do so. And every year at about this time, KVT changes masks.

So we are happy to present KVT’s new look for 2013. Call it crafty, call it foxy, this is the image that will accompany  KVT’s contributions for the year.

And one of those contributions is another thing we have come to look forward to every year at about this time:

The KVT Awards – the Best of 2012

KVT Awards 2012

KVT takes a look back at the arts and cultural scene of 2012 and picks his favorites in various categories.

Watch for it, coming soon here on Grapevine.

12 COMMENTS

  1. @ Jamie Maxtone-Graham

    … any way they are all Canine… and mine is a more precise ‘definition’, since all dogs (including Dingoes) come from Asia…

  2. Hello Ilza

    The Greek tragedy appellation may be apt for as my research into the masks used by KVT indicates they have all been papier mache masks made by artisans and sold in the lead up to the Mid Autumn Festival, commonly called the Children’s Festival.

    Where-as once there were several crafts people making the masks for children to hide their identities behind during the festival and in particular during the lantern parade, now, in Hanoi, there appears to be only one family left that makes them and they sell them near Ma May before the big day for about 30 000VND per mask

    Each traditional mask represents a character from Vietnamese folktales and myths and once these characters were well known to most children

    Now these traditional masks have been largely supplanted by plastic varieties and although some traditional characters remain, every year more globally recognized figures appear in the plastic varieties and last year I saw Spiderman and other Western and Eastern superheroes adorning young faces as well as the usual Disney crew

    Thus the tragedy, as I see it… another extinction

    I think that there used to be about 30 different mask faces in the traditional series

    If he/she has the lot then KVT can continue incognito for a few years yet

    Regards
    Chloe, a part time resident and part time researcher

  3. Hi Chloe,

    Wow — this is interesting !!! Many thanks for the great info!

    …I was thinking about the evolution of masks in the west… and a very broad and rapid vision of imagery went through my mind, but really… I know almost nothing about this tradition in Viet Nam, which sounds so very beautiful to me…
    and…it is very clever of KVT to use these, if indeed they are characters from folk tales… and it’s a pity, I think, that if there’s a “subliminal message” through the masks to the readership on her/his side and some ignorant on the subject people like me do not get it …so thank you again…

    …that said… masks are masks and open to a very wide interpretation as such…

    Cheers,
    ps.
    …and yes… s/he can move onto the western plastic ones too (after exhausting the original supply)… the options there are rather limited but, this is not our problem…

  4. pps…re tragedy: … Chloe, of course you’re right obout that, but I think that people themselves must have the awareness of preserving and passing on their heritage and skills…

  5. Some of your above does seem a trifle superfluous Ilza and your indeeds a bit patronizing, or is that matronizing?

    Cheers.

  6. @Peter

    … forgive me… but, how many “indeeds” have you counted in my comments above…?

    … and on a basis of what exactly you judge & conclude that the “some of your above” to be”a trifle superfluous”, “a bit patronizing, or is that matronizing”?

    Could you please explain yourself?

    Cheers.

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