KVT – In the Dark along the Duong

Last Thursday night was filthy. A half moon glowered deep cadmium yellow through smog that you could cut with a knife into big, smoke colored blocks and build opaque, smudgy hovels. You felt that, when riding over Chuong Duong Bridge that you could grab fistfuls of air, mould them into balls and throw them down into the Song Hong to float like grimy baubles. Riding through the streets and alleys in Gia Lam was like being in a Dantesque nightscape of industrial hell. As we pierced through drapes of smog-grey, greasy air, figures would appear like grinning wraiths under streetlights that illuminated stall keepers in patches of chemically-hued orange.

So why did we brave that almost asphyxiating air that caught solidly in your mouth as if you were gulping in gasps of rancid breath from the exhaust fan of a foul fast food outlet? Because I was determined to get out to Om Studio! It occupies a steel shed in a suitably industrial area (suitable because it fitted the apocalyptic feel of the night air) across, and potentially, pollutingly near the Duong River!

Was it worth the trip, particularly negotiating the fuzzily-lit roundabout approaches and rutted roads that lead up to and across the river into Yen Vien town?

Decidedly yes!

All the while I was anticipating seeing the works of the self-professed ‘famous’ artists that were advertised in their PR. I was a bit perplexed but intrigued when the bike parking attendant handed me a mini, plastic flashlight and indicated the small crowd that stood massed around a bright light at the end of a rutted, shadowed yard.

Original noise type music, played by two pretty intense and talented guys, stirred and swayed through the dense, dark heat and a female performance artist was heaving and wobbling her body bits around in a belly dance that puts all other wanna-be and professed-to-be belly dancers in Hanoi to shame. In fact if you are intent on hiring an exotic (sometimes erotic – dependant on your bent) belly dancer for an event then make sure you get this gal. She undulates and shimmies as fast as, longer than, and just as provocatively as a high class professional in Ankara.

By now you’ll have realized that the artists were incognito. No name tags on works, no titles discernible. When you entered the pitch black interior of the tin shed and slithered and slipped on a cobblestone trail of slimy cardboard that was part of a nice installation that may or may not have been to do with slabs of fat, you managed to activate your flashlight, orient yourself and realize that several installations were scattered around and that you were invited to peer at them aided by your own portable light source.

After bumping into a few human shapes and grabbing hold of an arm or two when the wet cardboard got underfoot, I found a couple of bits that, in the gloom, had an air of brilliance about them. I was glad that I caught the really lovely piece made of sculpted and stitched pillowy shapes loosely tied to peripheries by thread and interconnected to those coal cylinders used in portable cooking fires. Because I really like her work (and this was the best bit so far!), I’m assuming it belonged to Virginie Faivre d’Arcier and I’m really glad that I spent some ooh and ahh time with it before an unlucky viewer stumbled, leaned out to steady himself and collapsed the whole, beautiful edifice.

The other work that grabbed me was the fairly violent but really potent piece featuring two large ceramic figurines of traditionally clothed young females perched on stools stuffed with oodles of unspun silkworm cocoons. An ominous machete had almost beheaded one female and was poised to hack at the neck of another. A blade speared through the tin wall.

The rest were also full of potential and if I’d had time and wanted to brave the road in the day time heat I’d have returned by daylight to spend time with them and untangle their tales and allusions. A lot could recognizablely be attached to the styles of a couple of the ‘famous ‘artists and I liked that.

I think that other performance art bits may have been on the agenda but an engagement called so we relinquished our torches to the bike keeper and set out on a return journey through thick air lit by lights that hazily haloed like spectral force fields around street poles and buildings as we bumped along the Duong dyke road and back into the streets of Hanoi that, on this night, needed a photographer with an Hogarthian mindset to capture its dangerously grim and lung-charring beauty.

Congratulations all you anonymous artists out in Om. I enjoyed the experimental experience and look forward to the next show.

Apologies to readers for the dirth of image… but it was a trifle too dark!