Memorial Project 'Nha Trang, Vietnam ' (2001)

Week 8 - 'Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam- 'Towards the Complex-For the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards', (2001) is a video project by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.


Research this project to identify the ideas behind the work. Can you connect some of the concepts and ideas from the renaissance, Enlightenment or Modernism with the work. Discuss your answer.


'Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex—For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards' (2001). Single-channel video projection. Image courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York and Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo.

** Filmed underwater, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s 13-minute video installation at the Asia Society portrays the simultaneously mundane but epic struggle of six Vietnamese fishermen pulling cyclos (rickshaws) along the sea floor. Filmed in 2001 off the coast of Southeast Vietnam, Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex—For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards submerges the viewer in the silence and bizarre urgency of the task.

Meant to signify the harsh, challenging conditions of everyday life for many Vietnamese people, the arduous job of dragging the cyclos through the ocean speaks to the difficult burden of the past in the face of modernization. Memorial Project Nha Trang does not employ actors, using actual fishermen instead, for the grueling task. The film’s sense of absurdity is heightened by the fact that the physical struggles are real; from the splashing and stumbling trek from beach to sea-floor, to the maneuvering around boulders and beds of coral. Each time a man seeks traction in the sand with his toes or pushes to the surface to breathe, he does so out of the necessity to overcome the tangible barriers he faces.

Reference: http://www.nyartbeat.com/nyablog/2008/07/for-the-courageous-the-curious-and-the-cowards/

** I believe that some aspects of this art project relate to the artistic concept of modernism (or modernity) and is evident by the use of the rickshaws. Though this was traditionally the way of transport in Vietnam, as modernity took over, the world advanced and the creation of cars and trucks etc phased out the simple contraption.


Discuss how do you think the title of the work reflects
the artists' intentions?

** I feel that Hatsushiba intended the work to reflect on society and in particular, the advancement of Vietnam as a third world country, trying to keep up with the more economically developed parts of the world. Stills taken from the video suggest ideas of Vietnam still being a very oppressed place to live in and portrays a sense of everyday struggle, especially with showing this action under water. I think that the artists messages are quite broad because they offer the audience the freedom to draw their own conclusions and personal opinions to the work, and I find this aspect about the work especially appeasing.