Still fra Into The Violet Belly (2022) av Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Harstad Kino, sal 2
I boken Women, Native, Other foreslår Trinh T. Minh-ha å skrive på en måte som ikke lenger reduserer det til et verktøy for å uttrykke en virkelighet eller sende ut et budskap. Hun foreslår speilskriving, en form for skriving som er sammensmeltet med uendelig refleksjon, som kontinuerlig refererer til annen skriving og til selve skriveprosessen.
Filmprogrammet Forpliktelser til speilskriving er inspirert av dette konseptet og inneholder verk av Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Trinh T. Minh-ha og Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Disse filmene utforsker språk og andre former for uttrykk som dypt knyttet til postkoloniale prosesser med forflytning, desentraliserte virkeligheter og kulturell hybridisering. Speilet er ikke her en metafor for selvransakelse eller en toveis dialog mellom "jeg og jeg." Snarere er det et knust speil—hvor flere lag med refleksjon og brytning møtes. Dette knuste speilet blir et symbol på et mer oppstykket språk, som representerer flere, fragmenterte identiteter.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chis film Into The Violet Belly beveger seg frem og tilbake mellom ulike stemmer, visuelle registre og tidsskalaer og skaper et bilde av mangfold. Theresa Hak Kyung Chas Mouth to Mouth er en videomeditasjon over hvordan språk kan uttrykke nyanserte følelser av forflytning. Trinh T. Minh-has Surname Viet Given Name Nam er en rik lagvis collage av erfaringene til flere generasjoner kvinner. Denne strømmen av stemmer nekter å velge en enkelt, dominerende fortelling, men binder dem sammen gjennom ulike kulturelle kjennetegn.
Forpliktelser til speilskriving er derfor strukturert som en samtale mellom de tre feministiske filmskaperne, gjennom filmene deres. Etter visningen vil kunstneren Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi og kuratoren Abirami Logendran fortsette samtalen i salen, og også lese dikt og utdrag fra Trinh T. Minh-has og Theresa Hak Kyung Chas forfatterskap. Samtalen vil foregå på engelsk.
Filmene:
Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989)
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Mouth to Mouth (1975)*
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Into The Violet Belly (2022)
*Collection of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Gift of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation. Copyright: Regents of the University of California. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.
Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952, Hanoi, Vietnam) is an filmmaker, writer, composer and visual artist who lives and works in California, USA, where she teaches at the University of California, Berkeley’s Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and of Rhetoric. Her practice explores cultural politics, post-coloniality, contemporary critical theory and feminism. Her genre-crossing films have been variously described as ethnographic or political documentaries, essay films and allegorical feature films. She investigates themes of post-and-neo-colonialism, identity and filmmaking, emphasising process and ambiguity over direct message. The recipient of numerous awards and grants, her work has been exhibited and published widely around the world.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (b. 1951, Pusan, South Korea) was a multi-disciplinary artist. From the mid-1970s until her death at age 31 in 1982, she created a rich body of conceptual art that explored displacement and loss. Cha’s works included artist’s books, mail art, performance, audio, video, film, and installation. Although grounded in French psychoanalytic film theory, her art is also informed by far-ranging cultural and symbolic references, from shamanism to Confucianism and Catholicism. Her collage-like book Dictée, published posthumously in 1982, is recognized as an influential investigation of identity in the context of history, ethnicity, and gender.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi (b. 1988, Reutlingen, Germany) is a Milky Way-based artist whose practice mutates in and out of film, sculpture, installation, performance, and interdisciplinary research. Collaborating with characters in search of consciousness, language, and freedom, her recent body of work explores the aesthetic, political, epistemological possibilities of image and sound. Having studied Fine Arts at the Städelschule and Film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is currently a PhD researcher at the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media, the University of Westminster and a fellow at the Junge Akademie, the Academy of Arts.
Abirami Logendran (b. 1992, Oslo, Norway) is an artist, critic and curator. She has master's degrees in screen culture from the University of Oslo and in visual arts from the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts. She is a film curator at Kunstnernes hus, film critic in Klassekampen and the editor of Norwegian Art Yearbook.