HA NOI — Project 35, an international exhibition of video works selected by 35 curators around the world, will be launched by Independent Curators International (ICI) tomorrow and is expected to attract audiences in Ha Noi, Hue and HCM City.
Each of the curators were invited to choose one work from an artist they think is important for audiences from around the world to experience. The resulting video selections are divided into four parts that will play over the period of one year.
The selections will also be presented simultaneously in an increasing number of venues world wide. The project, which was initiated by ICI in New York, has made its way to Viet Nam thanks to San Art, the country's most active independent art space.
Project 35 celebrates ICI's 35-year life span as an organisation that connects emerging and established curators, artists and institutions, and fosters the building of international networks.
The exhibition opens with videos focusing on wide-ranging and controversial subject matter, including the uprisings and protests in post-colonial South Africa, the urban roads of modern-day HCM City, and the crime-filled streets of Bogota, Colombia.
Screenings are free and the first four screenings will take place simultaneously in Ha Noi's Goethe Institute, HCM City's Cafe Cao Minh and Hue's New Arts Space beginning at 6.30pm tomorrow.
The first session offers nine works, including the works of Vietnamse artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Ha Thuc Phu Nam, both of whom currently live and work in HCM City. The two artists were selected by HCM City-based curator and San Art director Zoe Butt.
Other artists were selected by the director of Objectif Exhibitions, Mai Abu El Dahab; the chief curator of the Mori Art Musuem in Tokyo, Mami Kataoka; an adjunct curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive, Constance Lewallen; the artistic director of Philagrafika 2010, Jose Roca and senior lecturer and head of the Fine Arts Studio Practice in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Kathryn Smith.
The selected works will demonstrate the diversity of content and style that the single-channel video can captures, including You Tube-style narrative to documentary format to clay-mation to digital animation. The videos show a variety of approaches from creating performance installations to reformatting a Walt Disney classic.
The project has already been screened in Albania, Mexico, Sweden and the US among others, and will continue to expand as more venues and chapters in the video series emerge. The project is expected to screen in 19 countries over the course of 2010 and 2011. — VNS
