KVT – An Essay, of Sorts, about an Accessible Mountain Hideaway

KVT still enamored of the Muong Cultural Space Museum

After 10 days in a lone, empty hotel on a long, wave swept beach in the south of Thanh Hoa province watching fishermen in flimsy woven boats and bamboo rafts haul in morning catches of shrimp…..

….and shell seekers comb the sands at low tide for edible delicaciess…..
swimming and catching waves for foam swirled body surfs; sun soaking on those incredibly warm Tet days; reading, reading and reading some more, free from the pressures of internet and mobile phones….it was time to leave and head back to concrete dusted Hanoi…..

……but why waste time on a five hour motor bike ride on Highway One when you can spend three or four days wending alternate roads and tracks, postponing the inevitable before the weather turns to popsicles!

So it was into the mountains and hinterlands where farmers were transplanting rice crops…

…..and around the Laos border lands before finally finding myself approaching Hoa Binh town and the turnoff to the Muong Cultural Museum which I’ve visited a few times since it’s establishment in 2011 when it started off with a bang and lots of really great stuff in its excellent, open air sculpture park…see this link for images of those installations

And each time I visit the place melds more and more seamlessly into its mountain environment with some of the original sculptures still sharing space with carefully encroaching trees and bamboo…..

And it was interesting to observe if some of the sculptures created in 2012 by local and overseas artists at a live in residency called ART UNDER THE ROOF had become naturalized

This trip was a good chance to see what progress had been made with the 2013/2014 phase one of I Camp

And the work by some of our best artistic minds

With the aims and goals of the project outlined here.

I was more than happy to be greeted by Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai’s huge, site specific piece, ‘VESTIGES’ about our increasingly throw away society. It’s a very logical progression of her work seen in an international environmental traveling art exhibition about S.E.Asian rivers a couple of years ago.

Then there was a marvelous bed of shattered glass in the ruins of a burnt out Muong house by Vu Hong Ninh titled ‘BED OF MEMORIES’

In the stilt house just up the stairs from the reception area….

…is a simple light box installation of some of Nguyen The Son’s photographs of urban scapes that are incongruous in this place where suburb-inanity seems eons away

Up to the sculpture park on the undulating hills and you are immediately intrigued with Pham Hong’s suspended, eye catching installation titled ‘BLOOMING’

Glowing like a red Tet flower through the trees is Nguyen Tri Manh’s
wonderful grouping…..

….which sits near the edge of the swimming pool….

…..and up close becomes ‘WAITING FOR REAPING’ a meditation, I guess, on the earthly delight of waiting for death and entrance to the nether world of the ancestors

Some of the work is ephemeral in that it hasn’t weathered well …take Ngo Thanh Bac’s ‘CITIZEN TREE’ which is, I take, a take on American War cemeteries and it fits the site perfectly but its paint is peeling away and I have yet to come to terms as to whether that’s intentional or not

Other works relied on electricity to make them seen or workable and perhaps my next visit will see them up and going.

And my next visit will be a long one, for a few days at the very comfortable guest house incorporated into the site… at 300 000VND per night which is chicken feed if you wish to soak up the peacefulness that fills the air of this retreat only a couple of hours from Hanoi…with food available on site or in the pretty town of Hoa Binh only a few km away.

One of the really exciting works in progress at the site is the concept of expat Australian artist George Burchet and I’ll let the signage tell the tale

…with images of the installation as of now

There’s lots more to see around the Cultural park and lots of places to sit and enjoy the peace and quiet or a cup or glass of something refreshing in the undercroft of the stilt house reception area and at 50 000VND per personentrance fee it’s a totally worthwhile experience and you leave with the water wheels rotating in your mind, spilling water onto metaphorical rice paddies

Back to Hanoi…not on your nelly!…still some rutted tracks to explore along the Da River and an overnight stay at the riverside house of a friend who’s named after the great stream that flows past his village. A final Tet meal of chicken and fried banh chung…..awakening next morning to a cold spell sweeping in from China and a shivery trip to the metropolis and all of its inanities.

And speaking of cold weather…..here’s a lovely clip that’s got nothing whatsoever to do with today’s subject but one that will have you wriggling your chill blained toes, tapping your shivery fingers, wiggling your hips and shaking your booty in time to a bolero. So turn up the volume and enjoy……

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn7CYzPMf2o[/youtube]