Artist’s talk: Trinh T. Minh-ha
Dublin Core
Title
Artist’s talk: Trinh T. Minh-ha
Description
21 Feb 2014, Fri 7:30pm - 9:00pm
This talk will contextualise Trinh T. Minh-ha’s installation Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) within the larger picture of her own work and film practice.
Surname Viet Given Name Nam addresses notions of identity, popular memory and culture. While docusing on aspects of Vietnamese reality as seen through the lives and history of women's resistance in Vietnam and in the U.S., it raises questions on the politics of interviewing and documenting. A theoretically and formally complex work, Surname Viet Given Name Nam explores the difficulty of translation, and themes of dislocation and exile, critiquing both traditional society and life since the war. Jusxtaposing archival footage, proverbs, and poetry, voice-over narratives, and written text, the film festures interviews with five Vietnamese women. It becomes clear throughout the film that these interviews are restaged and the women portrayed are actually amatuer actresses living in the U.S. Taking a hybrid form, the film articulates the complex diversity of the lives and roles of Vietnamese women within culture, and confronts the essentialising Western paradigms. It challenges the traditions of documentary filmmaking through complex interconnections of sound and image, rejection of a single, omniscient voice and undermining of the authority of the camera itself.
A public programme of Paradise Lost.
This talk will contextualise Trinh T. Minh-ha’s installation Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) within the larger picture of her own work and film practice.
Surname Viet Given Name Nam addresses notions of identity, popular memory and culture. While docusing on aspects of Vietnamese reality as seen through the lives and history of women's resistance in Vietnam and in the U.S., it raises questions on the politics of interviewing and documenting. A theoretically and formally complex work, Surname Viet Given Name Nam explores the difficulty of translation, and themes of dislocation and exile, critiquing both traditional society and life since the war. Jusxtaposing archival footage, proverbs, and poetry, voice-over narratives, and written text, the film festures interviews with five Vietnamese women. It becomes clear throughout the film that these interviews are restaged and the women portrayed are actually amatuer actresses living in the U.S. Taking a hybrid form, the film articulates the complex diversity of the lives and roles of Vietnamese women within culture, and confronts the essentialising Western paradigms. It challenges the traditions of documentary filmmaking through complex interconnections of sound and image, rejection of a single, omniscient voice and undermining of the authority of the camera itself.
A public programme of Paradise Lost.
Date
2014-02-21
Contributor
Programme Item Type Metadata
Short Description
This talk will contextualise Trinh T. Minh-ha’s installation Surname Viet Given Name Nam within the larger picture of her own work and film practice.
Programme Type
Audience
General
Location
Onsite (CCA)
Collaboration
No
Commissioned Work
No
Education
No
Theme
Collection
Citation
“Artist’s talk: Trinh T. Minh-ha,” NTU CCA Singapore Digital Archive, accessed April 26, 2024, https://ntuccasingapore.omeka.net/items/show/2081.