December 2006

In this lounge, Dr. Ashley Carruthers explored representations of the city of Saigon in overseas Vietnamese music video productions such as Paris by Night and Asia and speculated whether the recent shift from nostalgia towards a celebration of beauty and modernity might represent a shift in overseas Vietnamese identity politics.

A lecturer in cultural anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Dr. Ashley Carruthers’ main research interest is in the Vietnamese diaspora. He is currently completing a book entitled Transnational Vietnam: The Extensions of Vietnamese Social Space. In his spare time he dabbles in art writing.

Focussing on eleven Asia-Canadian artists, this talk explored some of the interactions of place, social history and identity found in their work.

Calgary-based artist Kim Huynh was born and raised in Saigon, and immigrated to Canada in 1980. She has exhibited widely and her works are held in many public collections including Shanghai Art Museum, the University of Jaipur, and the Graphic Art Museum in Poland.

Pontus Kyander was co-curator of Seoul: Until Now! (in collaboration with Jiyoon Lee), held in 2005 at Charlottenborg Exhibition Space, Copenhagen. Seoul: Until Now! was the most extensive survey of the art scene of the Korean capital made so far outside of Korea, bringing together 26 artists and groups currently active in the city.  Included were some of Korea's leading artists such as YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Oh Inhwan, Kim Sora, Kim Beom, Jung Yeondoo, Gimhongsok, flyingCity, Choi Jeong-Hwa and Cho Duck Hyun.

Pontus Kyander is an art critic, curator and documentary film-maker based in Malmo, Sweden. Curated exhibitions include: Nature of Man (1998), Waterfront (2000), sur face (2001), Dagr (2002), Ernesto Neto (2002), Overlap (2002), From Dust to Dusk (2003), Parallel Realities (2004), Seoul: Until Now! (2005), Gustav Metzger, work (2006). He has published a prolific amount of reviews, essays, catalogues and books. For Swedish Television (SVT), he also produced approximately 80 short documentaries on contemporary artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Ernesto Neto, Yayoi Kusama and Lee Bul.

With visits by Tobias Berger, curator of Parasite, Hong Kong and Pontus Kyander, curator of Seoul: Until Now! to a little blah blah this month, our reading room for December featured for Hong Kong & Korea – two hot-spots of funky art in Asia. On view were new catalogues from Korean artspaces like Szamzie, Loop and Pool, the Busan and Gwangju Biennales, as well as the work of Korean artists such as Hague Yang, Dong Koo Yun,  Kim Soo-Ja and Lee Bul and a huge collection of catalogues from Parasite, Hong Kong! We were very pleased that this month’s reading room had electricity, in contrast to last month, where our visitors had to read by candle light!

November 2006

This talk was held in situ at Galerie Quynh, where a little blah blah is presenting Yuk King Tan’s solo exhibition, SHELTER. Surrounded by the mixed-media drawings, photographic and video works in SHELTER, a group of students and young artists was guided through past works by the artist, tracing the process of development of ideas and practices whereby she arrived at the works in SHELTER.

Free New Zealand Art, curated by Tobias Berger (ex-director, Artspace, Auckland & currently Curator, Para/Site, Hong Kong) was a one-night free-for-all frenzy. 500 copies each of twelve posters by New Zealand’s top emerging and established contemporary artists were laid out for audiences to take home and enjoy for ever. Artists: Mark Adams / Billy Apple / et al / Andrew McLeod / Dane Mitchell / Lisa Reihana / John Reynolds / Peter Robinson / Yuk King Tan / Yvonne Todd / Francis Upritchard / Gordon Walters. Many thanks to New Zealand Consulate General Ho Chi Minh City / Xcream / Tran Duc Group for their generous support with this project.

The Pearl River Delta, a construct of different administrative zones, is a sprawling part of southern China encompassing Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and Shenzhen. Economically and architecturally this is one of the most exciting regions of the world and its fast-paced development is reflected in the innovative work of its artists and independent art organizations. Curated by Tobias Berger, of Para/Site, Hong Kong, this screening of videos presented recent works by: Cao Fei / Erkka Nissinen / Hu Xian Qian / Huang Jianbo / Jiang Zhi / Mai Yongxi / Xu Shuxian / Ye Jianhui / Yuk King Tan / Zhou Tao.

Yuk King Tan is one of New Zealand’s best-known emerging contemporary artists. In SHELTER she explores perennial human needs and desires in the context of the urgent economic development of industrial cities, through video, photography and a series of 'drawings' - multi-layered works on paper that combine prints from photographs that have been smoked with candles to create a dark cloudy background. This smoky surface—which appears like an inversion of the tonality of Chinese ‘mountains and mist’ painting or an upset to the cosmology—is then etched back, and exquisite images of human figures, bridges or factories are drawn or painted on. With titles such as Boomtown and Ghosts of Tent City, the work creates a poignant portrayal of humankind’s desire to forge ahead economically, but at the same time questions the human and environmental costs of this desire. The resulting images are like the “dramas of a master-city builder who by day plans the future of a city and by night has hallucinations about its past and present.”

Tan was born in Australia in 1971 and raised in New Zealand, graduating in 1993 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland. She has been included in high profile exhibitions like Toi Toi Toi, Art from New Zealand (Museum Fridercianum Kassel) and Flight Patterns (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles).

SHELTER was exhibited at Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City.

During a day-long power-cut, albb launched the newest addition to its program, albb READING ROOM this month.

a little blah blah’s collection of over 800 catalogues, books and art ephemera from around the world is the largest archive of contemporary art materials in Ho Chi Minh City. This collection is an open resource for artists, art students, curators and researchers to see and read about what is going on in contemporary art in the region and globally.

albb READING ROOM is held on the first Saturday of every month. We welcome you to drop by at any time between 10am and 7pm to browse and enjoy in a comfortable and relaxing lounge atmosphere (with electricity). Each month we will make a special presentation of new materials with a particular focus, such as a country, region, medium or practice. Bilingual staff will be on hand to assist visitors who have questions about English texts.

This month’s feature was Singapore – as a celebration of the inaugural Singapore Biennale which opened in September this year. Singapore has a vibrant arts scene, with many contemporary spaces and artists’ initiatives. Come and view our collection of materials from The Artist’s Village, Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore Biennale, Seni Singapore, plastic kinetic worms, the magazines vehicle and focas and various artists based in Singapore.

October 2006

This bi-lingual talk presented a wide selection of works from three recent biennales in the Asia-Pacific Region: Sydney Biennale: Zones of Contact, Gwangju Biennale: Fever Variations, and the inaugural Singapore Biennale: Belief. Members of MOGAS station, a Saigon-based artists’ group, also discussed the work that they presented in Singapore Biennale.

Broadsheet is a quarterly magazine on contemporary visual art & culture, published by the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA) and distributed across the region ( Australia, Southeast Asia and New Zealand). The magazine takes an analytical, critical focus on art practices in Australia and Asia. This albb lounge focussed on the history, vision and philosophy of the magazine, and the direction that Alan has developed it over the past three years.

Guests to this lounge included arts writers and others involved in publishing in Vietnam.

Alan Cruickshank, editor of broadsheet and director of CACSA, is currently undertaking an Arts Administration Asialink residency in association with the Singapore Biennale. Prior to this Alan was Exhibitions Manager 1998 Sydney Biennale and curator of numerous artist-run spaces and independent exhibitions. He has undertaken various residencies in Australia and SE Asia, and has been active as an artist, writer, curator and publisher since 1980.

Sue Hajdu visited the Singapore Biennale and participated in the conference and workshops for Comparative Contemporaries organized by the Substation and Singapore Section, International Association of Art Critics. Comparative Contemporaries is working towards producing a website anthology of arts writing from Southeast Asia. The conference also allowed Sue to catch up with many of the writers and curators whom a little blah blah has gotten to know over the past two years.

September 2006

Sue Hajdu completed her ten-week residency with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre / Artspace, Sydney, and her project, Amateur History Lessons, co-curated with Nick Tsoutas. The exhibition, a multimedia installation, forms a part of Sue Hajdu's long-term curatorial work with her father's photographs. The exhibition was opened by former Australian Prime Minister, the Hon. Gough Whitlam AC QC. This project was generously supported by the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Liverpool Regional Museum, Liverpool Council, University of Western Sydney & College of Fine Arts UNSW.

Motoko Uda attended the second IAN workshop, New Ways of Engaging Asia - Artists' Mobility and Artist-in-Residencies, held in Seoul and Gwangju, Korea and also visited the GwangJu Biennale.

Two photomedia works by Sue Hajdu - To Chou Chou from Texas and Miss Peacock - were exhibited in the 13th International Noorderlicht Photo Festival. albb is very pleased that several of the artists we informed about the photofestival opportunity were also selected, including Bui The Trung Nam and Bui Huu Phuoc.

Sue Hajdu also made a contribution to the Noorderlicht catalogue with her essay, Seeing Double: towards a wider vision of photographic culture in Vietnam.

Held at VJCC, this talk introduced The Dream Collector project and the notion of public art projects to Vietnamese and Japanese audiences in two separate sessions. Ayumi Matsuzaka went on to address audience questions about the nature of public art and the concept of the public within art practice. Motoko Uda contributed her views on this topic and also talked about some of the practicalities of arts management in Vietnam.

August 2006

Public art is typically associated with either sculpture in public spaces, an extension of activist practices happening in a public space, or perhaps even propaganda posters. This talk introduced A+A Public Art Unit's notion of public art to an audience of students generally unfamiliar with this practice by presenting several past projects including Soap Project (Taiwan, 2005), Growing Beans Project ( Germany, 2004) and Borse Rosse Per Venezia (Italy, 2003). On the following day, many RMIT students came to assist the installation of Dream Collector and to experience their first taste of public art in Vietnam.

albb co-director, Motoko Uda, was invited by the RMIT Design Club to give a presentation about albb's activities. She also introduced our open-access collection of books and catalogues and shared stories behind the production of albb's video piece, Ahhhhh... focusing on the importance of spending time on research when creating an artwork. The video was also screened.

The final component of The Dream Collector, an installation of the bedsheets produced in the project, was held at the Labour Cultural Center, Ho Chi Minh City.

During their two-month residency with a little blah blah, A+A Public Art Unit, Alba Navas Salmeron and Ayumi Matsuzaka worked with 41 residents of Ho Chi Minh City working with bed-sheets as a communication tool between artists and project participants. Using fabric purchased in bulk, the artists visited project participants in their homes to cut a bed sheet to an exact fit of their beds. One week later, they met the participants again in order to hear about the dreams they had while sleeping on these sheets. Using pen and paper, the participants illustrated their experiences using different images, codes and symbols. The bed sheets were returned to the artists at this point and were then embroidered using the particular images that were created during the communication process between artist and participant. The sheets were exhibited at the conclusion of the project.

July 2006

Alba Navas Salmeron arrived in Saigon to join Ayumi Matsuzaka and launch their two month residency and project, The Dream Collector. In mid-July, albb held a welcoming party to introduce the artists to members of the local art community, many of whom participated in the project.

Vu Nhat Tan graduated from the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music, at which he later taught, and in 2000 received a DAAD scholarship to study contemporary and computer music at the Staatliche Hochschule Fuer Musik Koeln in Cologne, Germany. While his core practice is as a composer of orchestral and symphonic music has taken him to many parts of the world, he is best known inside of Vietnam for his work with experimentation, improvisation and computer-based sound and music.

A distinctive feature of Tan's compositional style is his fusion of traditional Vietnamese instruments or techniques with the non-traditional. Strongly influenced by his father's involvement with traditional musical genres of Northern Vietnam, Tan's interests extend to musicology - an area which has yet to receive academic attention in Vietnam. In 1992, he founded the group, Ca Tru Thai Ha. Ca Tru is an esoteric musical art that is said to have originated in the tenth century and flourished among the literati in the late nineteenth century. After a period of government ban between 1945 and 1986, Ca Tru has slowly re-appeared in Hanoi. This musical form is currently being proposed for recognition by UNESCO.

Later in the evening, Vu Nhat Tan was joined by sound artist, electricfrith (who participated with Tan in Trans-Splash 2006) and members of electricfrith's band, killywell. The sound artists and musicians jammed on the rooftop while other people who participated in Trans-Splash partied into the night.

June 2006

Trans-Splash 2006: Jouissance explored the synergy that is created when contemporary art, corporate sponsorship, and an emerging social dynamic are brought together for a one-night-only art event. This is a new concept for Ho Chi Minh City and taps into a creative and experiential desire that charges this city like an electric current. Positioned on the edge of these unarticulated boundaries, Trans-Splash was designed to tease expectations and conventions – what constitutes art, what is an art audience, where do art space and social space merge, how does an art event mess with the concept of an exhibition, how do things change if the artists are having fun and everyone is up for a party?

Trans-Splash also sought to inject some humor into the local art scene, which can be terribly serious. Six visual and sound artists/groups were invited by albb to have fun with the theme of Jouissance at Xu, one of Saigon's most lavishly designed night spots.

Our DJ, Mark Jolly, spun some of the wickedest tunes that have been heard in Saigon. Ever.



Participating artists:

electricfrith
Vu Nhat Tan
Ngo Dinh Truc
Sandrine Llouquet & Bertrand Peret
a little blah blah (Sue Hajdu & Motoko Uda)
The Propeller Group (Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Ha Thuc Phu Nam & Jason Huang)

A catalog was also produced by albb with introductions to the event and theme by Sue Hajdu.

Many thanks to Tanqueray
our fabulous print designer, FLeditions,
& to Xu, April, LG, RMIT, and all the individuals who helped make Trans-Splash 2006 a success.

Ahhhhh… draws its aesthetic approach to jouissance from a loose interpretation of 18th Century French and Venetian cultures of pleasure. In a hyper-saturated faux-Rococo talk-show setting, the artists interview eight guests about their favorite physical pleasures. Dressed in full costume, masked, and under the influence of alcohol, participants hover between an inevitable nervousness and the safety of anonymity, as they reveal secret habits, intimacies, or personal philosophies. Meanwhile, Lupo the butler serves drinks and delicacies, and from time to time slips in to the frame to spray the speakers in a perfumed mist.

The absurd, indulgent sensuousness of the video was extended on the night of Trans-Splash 2006, with perfumed performances by Lupo and a sculptural, scented installation of some 3500 roses and juniper berries in the VIP room at Xu.

Many thanks to Loic Bertrand and Hayden Lowry for technical assistance with this project and special thanks to Dang Son Lam for his amazing dedication to this project.

Dr. Ryutaro Inamoto opened the discussion on the theme of "The Mastery of Artists in Art Projects". "Mastery" here is to be interpreted not as "skilled" but as a kind of "dominating power". The mastery of artists in making artwork is usually regarded as self-evident. However, upon experiencing work in process / collaboration or intervention with practitioners who exist outside of the establishment, or who are part of sub-cultures, this issue comes into question. Inamoto discussed his views on this topic while presenting images from several art projects he has been involved with in Japan including Akiyoshidai International Art Village, Yamaguchi, Japan, where he was assistant curator from 2001-2003.

The second half of this talk moved on to a discussion of Hannah Arendt's theories of power. Inamoto majored in philosophy and aesthetics and wrote his doctoral thesis was on The Concept of Art by Hannah Arendt. The presentation led on to a very lively discussion across the floor about power and its abuses in the local context.

Sue Hajdu participated in the conference, Public Art In(ter)vention, in Chiang Mai in February 2005, which was a part of Navin Rawanchaikul’s Fly With Me to Another World project. Sue Hajdu and fellow artist/curator, Varsha Nair, who is based in Bangkok, co-authored an article entitled ON MULTI-LOCATING and MULTI-TASKING for the book, which was launched on June 3 in Bangkok.

May 2006

Sue Hajdu’s exhibition, MAGMA, which commenced in late April and ran for twelve nights over a long weekend of public holidays and celebrations, attracted thousands of people who drove up on their motorbikes or bicycles to view this unwitting piece of public art. There was a wonderful mood of social engagement in front of the Galerie Quynh windows each night, often well into the wee hours, with people asking questions about the work or sharing their interpretations. This, together with preparing the sleepers for each night’s performance, kept albb busy for the duration of the show, and consequently we did not schedule our usual talks this month.

Exactly one month after MAGMA opened, albb held a lounge event – a rooftop party to thank all the sleepers and the many other people who contributed to making this such a memorable show. The party was also an opportunity for albb to introduce Vu Nhat Tan to members of the art community here. Tan is a sound artist and composer from Hanoi who is working with us on the up-coming Trans-Splash project.

albb visited Hanoi this month in order to curate for our up-coming project, Trans-Splash 2006. We also did a little catching up with members of the local art community, and checked out the new residency space in Hanoi, Campus.

April 2006

Sue Hajdu’s solo show as held at Galerie Quynh, Ho Chi Minh City. The show was a night view installation with performances by different sleepers each night, and a nightly live webcast.

For further images, video and reflections on MAGMA | we’re not counting sheep, please see the Galerie Quynh website: www.galeriequynh.com [please note: the latest version of Flash player is needed to view the website]

many apologies to all albb guests who were awaiting this month's talk, which was cancelled due to sudden health problems by the speaker! :-( more coming later.

March 2006

albb presented the long-awaited physical show of this project, for which Sue Hajdu was the (independent) Saigon-based curator in 2005, and which was presented in Saigon as a slide show in a small party for the artists back in June 2005.

True to the curatorial standpoint of 600 Images, the physical show was held in an alternative space – The Hideaway – which was filled from almost floor to ceiling with 600 black and white photographs. Some 350 guests viewed the work on the night of 28th March, in a context more suggestive of an art event, rather than an exhibition opening. The work stayed on the walls for the next few days, and albb hosted visits by art students from the British International School, giving curators and artists talks. Many thanks to our sponsor, Tanqueray.

600 Images was curated by:

Varsha Nair, Bangkok
Karla Sachse, Berlin
Sara Haq, London
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza, Los Angeles
Judy Freya Sibayan, Manila
Sue Hajdu, Saigon

Participating artists in Saigon were:

Nguyen Nhu Huy, Rich Streitmatter-Tran, Motoko Uda, Ngo Dinh Truc, Bui The Trung Nam, David Hodkinson, Hoang Duong Cam, Fabrice Lecouffe, Phuong M. Do, Ryuzo Fukuhara

A funky boxed catalogue consisting of a triptych of three posters & booklet was also produced.

In albb's newly-initiated series of portfolio talks, artists present a broad overview of their work.

This month, Rich Streitmatter-Tran spoke about his work, and its relationships with media, information, the body and contemporary art. He also introduced his current research project, Mediating the Mekong, which is funded by the Asia Art Archive and Martell the Contemporary Asian Art Research Grant.

For the artist's impressions on this talk, please see: http://www.diacritic.org/blog/archives/ 2006/03/talk_talk_talk.htm

Sue Hajdu took part in The Multifaceted Curator, a one-week curatorial workshop program co-organized by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) and Goethe-Institut Jakarta. Jakarta & Bandung, Indonesia. For further info see: www.goethe.de/curator

Motoko Uda completed the final phase of albb's research and networking program, Asian Bridges, at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She was joined in the last few days of her visit by Sue Hajdu after the end of The Multi- Faceted Curator workshop in Jakarta.

Asian Bridges was initiatiated in 2005 and took albb co- directors to Indonesia, Japan and Hong Kong, to meet with alternative art spaces and local artists, curators, arts managers and critics. The aim of the project was to develop albb networks in the Asian region and to research the management of art spaces and artists' initiatives. Many thanks to all the people in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Yogyakarta who assisted albb with their research. We are looking forward to future projects and collaborations that are evolving from Asian Bridges. Our thanks to Arts Network Asia for supporting this project.

albb made a lot of friends in Jogyakarta and we were very disturbed to hear about the recent earthquake there. Our condolences to all those affected.

Sue Hajdu gave a presentation, entitled Vitamin P? YES PLEASE!, on problems frequently encountered in the cross-cultural context in arts projects in Vietnam at Vitamin P: Culture360: The Asia-Europe Cultural Portal as a vital supplement for healthy cultural growth, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, Singapore History Museum

February 2006

Lucy Forwood is author of Morale from the Ministry, a recent publication of Vietnamese propaganda art. Morale from the Ministry, published by Dogma Publishing, is her most recent offering to literature pertaining to Vietnam. She has lived and worked in Vietnam since 1992, sporadically returning to her native Britain. To date she has a guide book and cookbook to her name as well as numerous magazine and newspaper articles.

Zines are non-commercial, non-professional publications that are distributed in small quantities. This private collection of 100 zines from Australia contains many works by young visual artists. Over the course of the weekend, albb had 50-60 guests come and relax for a few hours, reading the zines in a casual lounge atmosphere (the cat also enjoyed himself too). Some zines were also on loan from Atelier Wonderful.

Zines have become a part of the cultural landscape in countries like USA and Australia over the past two decades, but have their historical roots earlier in the 20th century, with the magazines and manifestoes of Dada, the surrealists, the situationists and other avante garde art movements; and fanzines (fan magazines) for science fiction and fantasy literature in the 1930s. Other independent publishing influences are the Beat writers and poets of the 1940s and 1950s and the punk rock movement of the 1970s, which benefited from the cheap photocopying technology that became available at that time.

January 2006

Video Art Party, featuring selected works from Kiss my... after effects (KMAE) 2004 and 2005, Festival of Experimental Video Art, Melbourne Fringe Festival. Co-curated by Roland Smith & Alan Melbourne/KMAE and Sue Hajdu & Motoko Uda/albb. This one night only event was held in one of Saigon's hippest night clubs, and attracted an audience of 340 guests. Many thanks to our sponsor, Tanqeray.

Ten short video works were presented by the following artists: Jean-gabriel Périot / Marian Tubbs / Tess Milne / Linda Good / Johanna Eustice / Victor Holder / Lisa Broomhead / HC Gilje

Sue Hajdu worked as assistant curator to Yamano Shingo on the 2005 Yokohama Triennale and also visited Anyang and Guangzhou later in the year. In this talk she presented the works of approximately 100 contemporary artists from these events.

Sue Hajdu participated as Jury member on the 2006 Young Artist Arts Grants Programme Ho Chi Minh City, organized by Michelle Ely, City of Melbourne.