Communal Houses in Cities – Landscapes of constant transformation
10 am – 11:30 am, Sat, 17 Aug 2024
Auditorium, EMASI Vạn Phúc
2 street no.5, Vạn Phúc City, Thủ Đức, HCMC
Registration link
From the organizer:
In the landscape of a Vietnamese village, communal houses are not just physical architecture, but also a hybrid space that fuses daily life and sacredness. It is a place to gather and exchange memories of settlement, life building, as well as to venerate “deities”. To examine the development of communal houses in he past 300 years is to understand how people have constructed these architectures in relation to the legacy of memories and moral beliefs as expressed through the figures of human, natural, celestial deities, as well as the multifaceted relationship with their predecessors and the royal order. With impact from the dizzying speed of urbanisation, and the constant influx of people migrating from the countryside to the city, how has the role of the communal houses, in terms of its sacredness and symbolic power, changed?
In this talk, Hieu Y and Vuong An Nguyen present their work at Architecture Excursion, which surveys the system of communal houses in the South with a focus on their architecture, landscape, and people. At the same time, the talk hopes to raise questions about the changes in the relationship between city dwellers and communal houses–deities.
This programme is a part of Đo Đạc project, and is co-organized by Nguyen Art Foundation.
About the speakers:
Hieu Y is a writer, researcher, and project organizer. His academic interests primarily focus on Visual Anthropology, Arts and Architecture. In 2019 he co-founded Architecture Excursions (Tản Mạn Kiến Trúc), a community project aimed at producing ethnographic knowledge on vernacular architecture in the Central and Southern parts of Vietnam. Through the platform, he co-authored the book Tản mạn kiến trúc Nam Bộ (Brief History of Architecture in Southern Vietnam, 2022). He organized various community programs, including talk shows, field trips, and workshops with the vision of engaging diverse communities across different cultures and disciplines. His second project named gấu-thiên-thể (celestial bear) was co-founded in 2021 to bridge the gap between the public and the Vietnamese contemporary art community. The project has fostered numerous educational events in collaboration with organizations like Nguyễn Art Foundation, Heritage Space, and Sàn Art. Under the pen name Hieu Y, he has published critical discussions and essays featured on Elle Decoration Vietnam, Colonial Architecture Project (Canada), and Architectural Review (United Kingdom).
Vuong An Nguyen is a writer, researcher, and event manager. In his research, he is currently focused on the fields of Memory Studies, Comparative Art Studies, and Spiritual Ecology. Vuong An Nguyen is a research member and co-administrator of the Tản Mạn Kiến Trúc (Architecture Excursions) project, a community-based research project aimed at rediscovering heritage data and knowledge perception. In this project, he provided cultural and theoretical consultation to produce the book Tản Mạn Kiến Trúc Nam Bộ (2022). He organized various community engagement and feedback activities, including seminars, document surveys, life flow research, and field trips. In 2021, he co-founded gấu-thiên-thể, a project based on data collection and connecting the public with contemporary art. The project has organized many knowledge-sharing programs with organizations such as Nguyễn Art Foundation, Heritage Space, and Sàn Art.
Linh Le is an independent curator and researcher from Ho Chi Minh City. From 2024, she is a Curatorial Board member of Á Space, an independent art space founded in 2018 in Hanoi; and Đo Đạc project’s curator.
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