KVT – DIA is …………Southern Journal Part Seven

KVT – DIA is …………Southern Journal Part Seven

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Has the locus of Vietnamese contemporary art shifted from Hanoi to HCMC?
KVT headed south to take a look for himself. The result is a series of articles about his encounters.

Read more articles here.

KVT gets his thoughts into DIA mode down south.

It seems to be an ethos amongst a few artistic personalities in Ho Chi Minh to establish experimental art spaces that are funded by those personalities and that encourage experiment and extended investigation. They also establish residencies whereby Vietnamese artists can spread their wings and fly further… or where foreign experimenters can share their ideas and learn and work with the locals. This article is about one of these personalities….and what a personality!

Whenever you read an article about advanced contemporary art thought and practice in TPHCM, it invariably touches on DIA/PROJECTS, on Rich Streitmatter-Tran, or both and as I came to realize, he’s one those intellectual resources that all dynamic art communities need.

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I missed Rich Streitmatter-Tran’s talk at Hanoi’s ‘Skylines With Flying People’ project last December but became intrigued with his installation that made a corner of Manzi into a philosophical  press bench that instantly  made me  flex the metaphoric muscles of my imagination as I delved deeper into the meaning and purpose behind it. As I did this I became engaged with the series the artist’s works that brought together imaginary encounters with ancient philosophers and modern science and technology (images from this series on the postcard images scattered through this text)

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So meeting the man in question was a top priority of my journey down south.

Finding DIA/PROJECTS on the other side of the SaigonRiver in TPHCM is a bit like coming to terms with the philosophy of its director that art, maths and science are closely co-related. All of the streets around DIA are numbered – but not always in sequence so it makes one do a few mental twists and twirls before you and the taxi driver are at the front door.

DIA/PROJECTS was established in 2010 and spreads across the top floor of a small apartment building in the midst of those numbered streets. It’s a self funded contemporary art experiment and functions as a place to talk pull out the threads of ideas, to converse and philosophize; a resource center with a few thousand books and periodicals about contemporary art, science, and philosophy; It is a fully equipped workshop; a living space; a place where networks are explored and utilized; it offers a limited residency program where its intellectual and material facilities can be exploited by artists, curators and researchers ……It differs from other local experimental spaces in that it has no programming, is not an exhibition space. It is an extension of the artist’s own practice and changes to suit the needs and necessities of that practice.

As Rich Steitmatter –Tran explains, the heart of DIA is conversation.  It could be called an art matchmaking center as it allows serious artists and curators to investigate those necessary networks that allow them access and exposure in an increasingly complex, globalized art world.

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Rich was born in Vietnam in 1971 and was adopted and brought up in the Boston area in the USA. He has a degree in simulated media and made some of his mark as a performance artist http://www.wooloo.org/exhibition/entry/94595 . These links (link 1 and link 2) explains his detailed background and artistic and intellectual life far better than I can hope to and with the main body here:

Richard STREITMATTER-TRAN (b. 1972, Bien Hoa, Vietnam) is an artist living and working in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He received his degree in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

His solo and collaborative work has been exhibited internatonally including Kandada Art Space in Tokyo, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in Hong Kong, the Singapore Biennale (2008/2006), Ke Center for Contemporary Art in Shanghai (2008), Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Eslite Gallery in Taiwan, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale (2007), Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, Asia Art Now at Arario Beijing, 1st Pocheon Asian Art Festival, Gwangju Biennale (2004), the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, Chula Art Center in Bangkok, the Asiatopia Performance Art Festival, and Art Tech Media 06 in Barcelona. In 2011, exhibitions include The Singapore Art Museum/Centre Pompidou video exhibition at SAM, The Asia Triennial in Manchester and the 4th Guangzhou Triennale.

He was an arts correspondent for the Madrid-based magazine Art.Es and and Ho Chi Minh City editor for Contemporary and has published in several catalogs and periodicals. In 2005 he received the Martell Contemporary Asian Art Research Grant from the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong for his year-long research project, Mediating the Mekong. He was Teaching Assistant at HarvardUniversity (2000-2004), conducted media arts research at the MIT Media Lab (2000) and a visiting lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh Fine Arts University in 2003. He was an advisor to the Para/Site Curatorial Programme in Hong Kong. He is currently a lecturer at RMIT International University Vietnam.

Upon relocating to Vietnam in 2003, he helped form ProjectOne, a Ho Chi Minh City-based performance art group now defunct. Two years later he became a founding member of Mogas Station, a group of international creators (artists and architects) based in Ho Chi Minh City, working to promote and present contemporary art in Vietnam. Its members came together in 2005 to create Ạart, the very first artist initiated bilingual contemporary arts magazine in Vietnam launched at the Singapore Biennale 2006. Their second major work, Rokovoko, premiered at the 52nd Venice Biennale as an official collateral event with Migration Addicts project.

For the Singapore Biennale 2008, he collaborated with Burmese artist Chaw Ei Thein to create September Sweetness, an life-sized pagoda constructed entirely from 6 tons of sugar that slowly eroded throughout the life of the exhibition.

As co-curator he developed The Mekong exhibition with Russell Storer of the Queensland Art Gallery for the 6th Asia Pacific Triennale (APT6) in 2009.

In 2010, he established DIA/PROJECTS, a contemporary art experiment and studio space in Ho Chi Minh City. Activities include speculative investigations into contemporary cultures of science, theory and art. Projects have included collaborations with CIANT (Prague), The Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong), The Japan Foundation and The Japan Society. In its first year, dia/projects hosted three researchers-in-residence from Bangkok, Manila and New York.

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Rich’s next exhibition will be part of a group show in Korea and as usual he is stretching his mind and experimenting with new materials. His new work , he says, will have less narrative than previously.

As he begins to undertake serious academic study he sees DIA as becoming more of a personal thinking space, where people can have more intimate and directed conversations and where residencies will become more selective.

He shares a  workspace for making large works with successful and dynamic artists Bui Cong Khanh and Nguyen Manh Hung in another part of the city.

I see Streitmatter –Tran as a rennaissance type person, too often, these days, a disappearing species…and this article about him was intended to be a reflection of his intellectual charisma and talent and foresight but I’ve beaten around the bush too much to do enough justice to his drive, energy and his project. But if you are a serious investigator or practitioner of art theory and practice and wish to  share and bounce off some of his discourse and dialogue then you’ll have to do the same as I did and arrange to share time in his conversation corner at DIA. Like me, you’re sure to come away with your mind spinning deliciously.

I recommend Rich and his resources to all thoughtful, open minded, adventurous and adaptable young artists who wish to elasticise their brains.

After indicating that women artists are on the rise in Vietnam, that it would be a good thing to have an effective dialogue between the art scenes in the north and south, and that Hue had the potential to become an experimental art hot spot, he pointed me in the direction of ZeroStation (Ga 0) as one of the best things in the present Vietnamese contemporary art scene and which became the next scene in my southern journals….which will continue in a month’s time when I get back from a jaunt around yen tinh bits of southern European.

Kiem Van Tim is a keen observer of life in general and the Hanoi cultural scene in particular and offers some of these observations to the Grapevine. KVT insists that these observations and opinion pieces are not critical reviews. Please see our Comment Guidelines / Moderation Policy and add your thoughts in the comment field below.

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