Urgent Elements: Eco-Video from Southeast Asia

Screening and Conversation with artists Khvay Samnang and UuDam Tran Nguyen

This series of video screenings and artist conversations addresses environmental devastation in Cambodia and Vietnam. The artworks creatively document how this ecological destruction – from toxic mining and deforestation to sand extraction and animal poaching – coincides with social violence against some of the most vulnerable groups in the area, including the indigenous and poor. The series aims to bring together researchers, art practitioners, and students committed to investigating intersectional questions of climate justice.

Khvay Samnang is a founding member of Stiev Selapak, an art collective dedicated to experimental arts practice in Cambodia and an engagement with historical transformations and political violence wrought by regimes such as the Khmer Rouge. Through the expressive medium of dance, Khvay’s moving image work depicts the illegal extraction of sand from the country’s beaches and rivers for commercial land development in Singapore (Where is My Land? 2014, 14 min), as well as the threat of a hydro-electric project in southwestern Cambodia that could destroy the livelihood of the indigenous Chong people in that region ( Preah Kunlong, 2016-17, 19 min).

UuDam Tran Nguyen’s video work, Serpents’ Tails (2015, 15 min) charts air pollution in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) caused by motorbikes. As in Khvay’s work, Nguyen also employs dancers to interact with and enliven the landscape. In this case, however, it is the rapidly transforming urban environment of Vietnam. Building on mythologies such as the Greek Laocoön, the Vietnamese Thanh Giong, and the Hindu Churning of the Ocean of Milk, the video portrays a dramatic conflict between human motorcyclists and “serpents’ tails,” or the exhaust of motorbikes trapped within elongated, stitched-together plastic bags.

Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Visual Arts Complex, Art & Art History Building, Auditorium 1B20
1085 18th Street, Boulder, CO 80309

Event Type

Lecture/Presentation

Interests

Arts & Culture

Audience

Students, Faculty, Alumni, General Public, Staff

College, School & Unit

Arts & Sciences

Cost

Free & Open to the Public

Group
Art and Art History
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