KVT – Traffic-king in Hanoi
(Shortened Vietnamese version available)
KVT is totally impressed but totally saddened
Saw an important installation a couple of days ago that really impressed me and has stayed with me, niggling away as it should, and was intended to do.
Hardly any one in their right frame of mind gets old fashioned artists to make work that will have an influence on the public mind set….not when there is all that soopa doopa digital stuff out there.
Even the late 1900’s trend of getting popular musicians to sell social justice messages in big arenas has become pretty passé.
But MTV EXIT (End exploitation and trafficking) has done all the old stuff in its campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking in Vietnam. There was a big name gig at My Dinh National Stadium on Saturday night and a Human Trafficking Art Exhibition in the foyer of the Workers’ Theater in Trang Tien last week that involved a documentary, a performance artist, an installation artist and a photographer.
There were a couple of invitation-only bits to the exhibition that seemed to be on the first couple of times that I passed by, and lots of Youth Union activities on the other days that I caught it.
I missed the performance art, was suitably impressed by the documentary, and totally blown away by the collaborative photograph/installation part.
Luckily this part was not only seen where it would normally be exhibited, in an art gallery or art museum (where it would also have been stunning and packed a mighty punch). It was positioned where the participants milled about and passed through.
Luckily it’s a simple and portable exhibition that could be, and should be, set up in a host of public places as a mute example of man’s inhumanity to his fellow beings…though I guess in the monstrous business of human trafficking some of the monsters are women… though the real villains of the piece are the complacent public that shrugs its shoulders or turns a blind eye to it all because it doesn’t appear to directly affect them… and its all seems so far away…and is only happening to the poor and/or ethnic who don’t really need a second – or even a first-thought!
Basically it’s about the way that most of us knowingly or unknowingly commodify human life… giving it an economic rather than a compassionate value. This commodification is shown by the ubiquitous bar codes that are plastered across the faces of the Ha Giang ethnic minority people in the 40 or so black and white portrait photographs hung around the walls. The kids and women are made anonymous and insignificant as humans but valuable as tradable objects. (The bar codes are individualized, containing with the international designation for Vietnam, followed by the birthdate of the person and the date they were trafficked.)
The humans we see in the photos are those that have been rescued from being sold into lives of drudgery, abuse, slavery, even death in the live organ trade, and who represent the tens of thousands from throughout Vietnam and the millions of mainly poor throughout the world who have been successfully sold or abducted.
The brief texts under each photo are telling. Sometimes the abductor is a person known and trusted by the victim.
