Home Other A Lone Coastal Odyssey

A Lone Coastal Odyssey

Other

Posted on 11/05/2015

A number of prominent performance artists have made endurance an important part of their practice.They may involve themselves in rituals that border on torture or abuse, yet the purpose is not really to test what the performer can survive but to explore issues such as human tenacity, determination and patience. Marina Abramovic, Tehching Hseih, Allan Kaprow and Zhang Huan (to mention just one of the many Chinese performance artists who have experimented in this arena) are famous names in the performance art world.

Sometimes the performances are to a live audience, often they are recorded on video. With modern technology it is apt that Facebook has become a canvas that records installments in the duration of a performance.

A Vietnamese man, Hoang Van Truong, who was born and raised by struggling fisher folk in a fishing village in Thanh Hoa province, has long been fascinated by the way in which subsistence level Vietnamese, particularly fishermen and women, but also struggling farmers and ethnic mountain people, often-still-live their lives studded with hardships that are continual physical tests of their endurance and spirit.

Truong is not a practicing artist but is a believer in the maxim that all of us have an artist inside our imaginations wanting to escape.

His escaped long ago and persuaded him to undertake epic journeys by bicycle and on foot throughout Vietnam to capture and somehow record the essence of those hardy people and the personal and cultural stories that succor them. Also to discover his own reserves of patience, resourcefulness and intellectual hardiness and to invent a volume of his own interior stories.

Last year Truong, from Bookworm, embarked on his most recent, personal, solo odyssey to walk the entire coastline of Vietnam, eschewing main roads, in annual episodes. In 2014 he walked from Quy Nhon to Ho Chi Minh City (approx 550km) in 14 days, averaging about 40 km per day. He carried a small backpack and had no support crew.

Yesterday on (May 10) Truong started chapter two at the coast near Vinh and hopes to arrive in Quy Nhon 17 days later (approx 650km). Again he’ll carry a minimal backpack and have no support crew.

Truong’s quest will be updated daily on Bookworm’s facebook page.

A final record will be considered after the coastline has been walked in its entirety.

Truong defines an Odyssey as a long, intellectual, even spiritual wandering that is marked by many changes of fortune and chance. His journey is sponsored by Bookworm, Hanoi.

His odyssey is not unique. Marina Abramovic walked half the length of the Great Wall of China, episodically, while her estranged lover walked the other half towards her. At the conclusion they parted amicably.