”Skylines with Flying People 3″ – Knowledge Exchange Seminars

Conversation between Oscar Salemink and Nguyen Phuong Linh:
Sat 17 Dec 2016, 2 – 4.30 pm
5th floor, Hanoi Creative City
1 Luong Yen, Ha Noi
–
Conversation between Kirsten W. Endres and Lena Bui:
Sun 18 Dec 2016, 2 – 4.30 pm
Mam-Art projects by Cuc Gallery, 5th floor, Vietnam Women’s Museum
36 Ly Thuong Kiet, Ha Noi

From Nha San Collective:

“Skylines with flying people 3” warmly invite you to our two last dialogues in the KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE seminar series. The first one is the talk between professor Oscar Salemink and artist Nguyễn Phương Linh, taking place in Saturday afternoon, December 17th. The second one is the discussion between professor Kirsten W. Endres and artist Lêna Bùi on Sunday afternoon, December 18th.

Seminar 1. Conversation between Oscar Salemink and Nguyễn Phương Linh
The seminar will be held in English and Vietnamese
Moderator: Trương Quế Chi
Free entry

Tây Nguyên: Lifeworld or Heritage? – Oscar Salemink

In colonial Indochina, the Tây Nguyên region was formally connected with Việt Nam (Annam) in 1904; around 1938 the last indigenous revolts were suppressed, and from 1945 until 1979 it was a highly contested arena of war with France, the US and Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge).

With Đổi Mới (Reform), the region became rapidly and indelibly integrated – militarily, politically, economically, demographically and culturally – into Vietnam’s sovereign territory. In the process, forests were converted to coffee, rubber, tea plantations, mostly owned and worked by millions of relative newcomers from the lowlands. This transformation changed beyond recognition the environmental and cultural lifeworlds of the Highlanders, who largely abandoned their traditional livelihoods and religious practices. Simultaneously, there is a nostalgia for that lost world among Kinh intellectuals, who seek to preserve what has been lost as ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (e.g. Space of Gong Culture). This paradox will be addressed in the seminar.

The Last ride – Nguyễn Phương Linh

”The last ride” concludes Phương Linh’s yearlong research on Vietnamese history during the French colonial period and its consequences on the present-day Central Highlands. Using the elephant – a significant symbol of power and holy spirits in the ethnic culture of the region – as a point of departure, the artist explores the process during which the animal, as well as the people and their culture and land, have been tamed, controlled and exploited throughout time.

Oscar Salemink is Professor in the Anthropology of Asia at the University of Copenhagen and Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Religion, Politics and Society of the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne). Between 2001 and 2011 he worked at VU University in Amsterdam, from 2005 as Professor of Social Anthropology. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Amsterdam, based on research on Vietnam’s Central Highlands. From 1996 through 2001 he was responsible for Ford Foundation grant portfolios in Thailand and Vietnam. He is project leader of Global Europe: Constituting Europe from the outside in through artefacts (research project in Europe, Japan, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research, 2015 – 2018) and HERILIGION: The heritagization of religion and the sacralization of heritage in contemporary Europe(research project with partners from the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the U.K.)

Some book-length publications include Colonial Subjects (1999); Vietnam’s Cultural Diversity (2001); The Ethnography of Vietnam’s Central Highlanders (2003); The Development of Religion, the Religion of Development (2004); A World of Insecurity: Anthropological perspectives on human security (2010); the Routledge Handbook on Religions in Asia (2014); and Scholarship and Engagement in Mainland Southeast Asia (2015); and of thematic issues of History and Anthropology (1994), Focaal – European Journal of Anthropology (2006 and 2016) and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (2007).

Born in 1985, Nguyễn Phương Linh is a Hà Nội-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans video, sculpture and installation. Her choice of materials (including salt, dust and rubber fragments) and research interests deal with the transformation of geopolitical landscapes, human manipulation of nature, and alternative historical perspectives of modern Việt Nam.

As the co-founder and co-director of Nhà Sàn Collective, Phương Linh is regarded as an emerging talent among Việt Nam’s contemporary art-makers. She has participated in various international exhibitions and art projects in Asia, Europe and the US. 2016 is a breakout year for Phương Linh with her latest work featured at the Kuandu Biennale, the Singapore Biennale and Shanghai Biennale.

Seminar 2. Conversation between Kirsten W. Endres and Lêna Bùi
The seminar will be held in English and Vietnamese
Moderator: Bill Nguyễn
Free entry

Dressing up, Dressing Down – Kirsten W.Endres

Around the globe and throughout history, clothing has played a profound role in the social construction of gender. An important marker of rural/urban differentiation and class position, clothing is also an indication of how individuals perceive their place in society and negotiate status boundaries. In this presentation, I explore the role of female clothing in the Vietnamese marketplace from an anthropological perspective. In particular, I look at the clothing styles of women vendors in three different localities: the bustling streets of Hanoi, a peri-urban village in the Red River Delta, and an enclosed public market at the Vietnam-China border. From these ethnographic examples, I argue that street vendors and market women do not base their dress decisions on practical and aesthetic considerations alone. Their clothing choices also provide a powerful means through which female traders negotiate and perform their gender and class identities in creative, tactical ways.

Borderless – Lêna Bùi

“Borderless” takes its inspiration from “đồ bộ”, a pyjama-like outfit most Vietnamese women own and wear daily, and its ability to transform private into public, interior into exterior. Taking this typical form of clothing as its vantage point, the project examines space, class and local people’s resourcefulness in the usage of space.

Kirsten W. Endres is Head of the Research Group “Traders, Markets and the State in Vietnam” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany. She has conducted research in Northern Vietnam since 1996, focusing on social-cultural transformation processes that arise from the dynamic interplay between state, society and market. Her publications include Performing the Divine. Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam (NIAS Press, 2011) and the volume, co-edited with Andrea Lauser, Engaging the Spirit World. Popular Beliefs and Practices in Modern Southeast Asia (Berghahn Books, 2011).

Born in 1985 in Đà Nẵng, Lêna Bùi now lives and works in Hồ Chí Minh City. With a B.A in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University (USA) and training in woodcuts and ink painting, she has expanded her practice to include video and installation. Her works are at times amusing anecdotes and at others in-depth articulations of gender stereotypes, humans’ relationship with nature and how intangible aspects of life, such as faith, death and dreams, influence our behaviour and perception.

Her work has been featured in exhibitions including Residual: Disrupted Choreographies (Carré d’Art Museum, Nimes, France 2014), Foreign Bodies (Wellcome Collection, London, UK, 2013), Voracious Embrace (Hồ Chí Minh City Fine Arts Museum, HCMC, Việt Nam 2012), Let Momo eat cake (Mino Washi Museum, Japan, 2011) etc. Since participating in the 2012 Wellcome Trust initiative Art in Global Health, Lêna has gone on to work on projects with the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Việt Nam and Nepal.

Skylines with flying people 3 expands the artistic territory to the field of social sciences and humanities. Organized within the scope of SWFP 3, Knowledge exchange seminars aim to increase awareness of a contemporary Vietnam and to promote dialogues and collaborations amongst different fields and communities, so as to generate new knowledge as well as diverse and creative initiatives.

Each seminar follows subject matters that are relevant to the 12 sub-projects within Skylines with flying people 3, with discussions conducted by an artist and an expert in another discipline such as history, archeology, sociology, etc. Knowledge exchange seminars will be held from March 2016 to December 2016 at different venues in Hanoi.

For more information about “Skylines with flying people 3”:
http://swfp3.org
https://www.facebook.com/SkylinesWithFlyingPeople3/

Related posts:
Exhibition 3 – “Skylines with Flying People 3”
The Fourth Exhibition of Art Project “Skylines with Flying People 3”
Seminar “Umbrella Movement – Aestheticization of Protest” in seminar series “Skylines with flying people 3″
Knowledge Exchange Seminar – “Skylines with Flying People 3”: A Dialogue between Liam Kelley and Appendix Group

Communication partner: Hanoi Grapevine

Nhà Sàn COLLECTIVE is not a museum, a gallery or an international culture institute where completed work are presented by established artists. Just like Nhà Sàn Studio before, it is a working studio to nurture where artists can create, collaborate, be given advice, critiques, and have chances to meet with international artists, curators. Works that are presented at open studio every month could be finished or not, but the process of developing idea and working to improve the quality of the art work for local artists is what Nhà Sàn COLLECTIVE focuses on.

If you are interested and curious about experimental art, and want to have conversation with the working artists, please visit

Nha San COLLECTIVE 15th floor, Hanoi Creative City Building, 01 Luong Yen, Hanoi Website: http://nhasan.org/ Email: [email protected]