The information below comes from CONFERENCE OF BIRDS GALLERY:
TRAN T. KIM-TRANG: THE COMPLETE BLINDNESS SERIES1992 - 2006, 8 Videos
Opening Party: Saturday 26 April 7pm
Dates: 26/4/08 - 15/5/08
CONFERENCE OF BIRDS
131/18 Thanon Pun
Silom, Bangrak, Bangkok 10500
conference@conferenceofbirds.comhttp://www.conferenceofbirds.com/Phone: 0849281152
GALLERY HOURS: EVERY DAY 12PM - 8PM
"A rare video artist who is equally comfortable talking about Freud
and the Khmer Rouge." Steve Anderson, The Independent
Fourteen years after beginning The Blindness Series, Tran T. Kim-Trang
completedEpilogue: The Palpable Invisibility of Life (2006, 14 min.)
-- inspired by the exhibitionMemoirs of the Blind, curated by Jacques
Derrida for the Louvre Museum. Vastly different in style, the eight
videos of the series investigate blindness and its metaphors. In
addition to the Los Angeles premiere of Epilogue, the screening
tonight includesamaurosis (2002, 28 min.), a portrait of blind
guitarist Nguyen Duc Dat; alexia (2000, 10 min.), about "word
blindness"; ekleipsis (1998, 22 min.), which explores hysterical
blindness among Cambodian women refugees; ocularis (1997, 21 min.), a
piece on surveillance technology; kore (1994, 17 min.), an examination
of the relationship between vision and sexuality; operculum (1993, 14
min.), which focuses on cosmetic eyelid surgery; and aletheia (1992,
16 min.), the introduction to the series.
Detailed program
1.Epilogue: The Palpable Invisibility of Life (DV; 14 min.; 2006)
--When Derrida died in 2004, Epilogue shifted focus from his work on mourning
to ruminate on 1) the visible and invisible traces one leaves behind:
a font made from Derrida's infamous handwriting, my mother's dying
words, etc.; 2) the cycle of life and death: my son's birth on the
same day, date, and time as my mother's death six years prior; and 3)
imaging technologies that allowed me to see my unborn son, leading to
fantasies about what technologies it would take to "image" my
incorporeal mother, and discovering that ancient medicine brings me
closer to my dead mother.
2.amaurosis (DV; 28 min; 2002)
--A portrait of Nguyen Duc Dat, a blind guitarist who is a "triple outcast": disabled, Amerasian, and an orphan. Dat went from a life on the streets of Saigon selling lottery
tickets to winning guitar championships in the state of California,
where he now resides. The video unfolds in layers of conversation with
Dat about his experiences as a new immigrant and young adult inAmerica.
3.alexia (DV; 10 min; 2000)
--Word-blindness (alexia) is a condition that afflicts people who have suffered a stroke, causing them to lose the visual recognition of individual letters but perceive the entire word,
or vice versa. Metaphors are here discussed in their function to reveal and obscure perception. Divided into five short sections, the tape draws a pattern with several motifs--the finger (pointing as one of the earliest forms of language), the moon (contrasting Buddhist and Wittgensteinian philosophies about metaphors and the visible)—to ruminate on language and blindness. Giambattista Vico's theory on the origin of language is also addressed.
4.ekleipsis (Betacam; 22 min; 1998)
--An experimental documentary about Cambodian women in Long Beach, California, known as the largest group of hysterically blind people in the world. Hysterical blindness is a
psychological condition where one is not able to see despite the absence of physical problems. ekleipsis traces two histories: the Cambodian Civil War and hysteria, to speak about pathology and agency. To transcend what has been described as the 'eye-searing' horrors of war, these women cried themselves into blindness.
5.ocularis (Betacam; 21 min; 1997)
--Through a 1-800 (toll free) phone number publicized nationally, recorded messages of fears and fantasies about video surveillance were collected from callers: If you were
caught on videotape, what would be the worst thing you could be caught
doing? If you could watch someone, what would you want to see? This
experimental video highlights several narratives to raise issues of
surveillance: the construction of our society's desire to watch
surveillance materials and its insatiable voyeurism, as well as what
it would mean to have an alter-electronic ego or to be biologically
tagged without the recourse to 'pass' for survival's sake.
6.kore (Betacam; 17 min; 1994)
--This project investigates theconjunction of sexuality with
1) the eye as purveyor of desire;
2) the sexual fear and fantasy of blindness and the blindfold;
And 3) women and AIDS.
Can the blindfold embody a touch-based pleasure associated
with female sexuality, in contrast with a vision-based pleasure
assigned to male sexuality? Could the choice to not-see facilitate
ecstasy for the subject? How does fear and fantasy contrast with the
reality of vision loss in advance stages of AIDS?
7.operculum (3/4"; 14 min; 1993)
--This experimental documentaryjuxtaposes footage from visits with seven cosmetic surgeons
specializing in blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery) within the Beverly
Hills/West Hollywood area with text describing a 1950s lobotomy
procedure to treat psychological patients. This juxtaposition comments
on cosmetic surgery as a 'desperate cure'. Cosmetic surgery of the
eyelids on Asian women is regarded as a self-effacing fantasy of
attaining the standard of beauty, a standard which demands conformity
to the norm of being average. The artist poses as a potential patient.
8.aletheia (3/4"; 16min.; 1992)
--An introduction to the series, that provides an index of topics on different aspects of physical blindness and its metaphors. Multiple modes of discourse are employed:
journalistic, anecdotal, fictive, and theoretical to bring out various
perspectives on the issues addressed. aletheia experiments with
non-linear structure to spur associative viewing amongst the seemingly
disparate ideas; this structure is also a formal reflection of our
perceptual process.
Artist's notes
In 1991, I conceived of The Blindness Series as an eight-tape project
to investigate physical blindness and its metaphors. Three reasons
motivated me: 1) a personal fear of vision loss; 2) blindness has been
a historical concern for many visual artists; and 3) I wanted to
explore the perceptual to conceptual process, which informs all that
we do.
The Blindness Series has in many ways galvanized my working methods
and thinking about experimental media. As the tapes are stylistically
different from each other, I weave in multiple layers of text, image,
and sound. I want to re-present the way we are awash in information
coming from various sources: journalism, fiction, our dreams, etc.
Working experimentally has enabled me to incorporate multiple
practices and realize new approaches, it also mirrors the way my mind
works. I aim to create formally progressive artworks that foster
progressive ideas and social change. Because video is such a potent
and accessible medium, it demands a responsibility that I find lacking
in mainstream corporate media. Part of this responsibility is the
commitment to accurately portray the underrepresented. I do believe
that video can be a tool for social change, foremost by the power of
representation to affect and influence people's beliefs and thinking.
I strive for continual experimentation in trying to find ways to
represent and understand both my subjects and the medium itself.
Tran T. Kim-Trang
About the filmmaker
Tran T. Kim-Trang was born in Viet Nam and emigrated to the U.S. in
1975. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts
and has been producing experimental videos since the early 1990s. Her
work has been exhibited internationally. In 1999 Tran presented her
Blindness Series in a solo screening at the Museum of Modern Art. In
2000, two of her videos were included in the Biennial exhibition at
the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Blindness Series was
featured at the 46th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Tran has been
nominated for a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts and was named a 2001
Rockefeller Film/Video/Multimedia Fellow. The fellowship has enabled
her to develop an experimental narrative feature titled Call Me Sugar,
based on the life of her mother.
Tran also collaborates with Karl Mihail on a project known as Gene
Genies Worldwide(c)? (
genegenies.com). Their conceptual and public
artworks on genetic engineering have exhibited at the Ars Electronica
Festival in Austria, Exit Art, the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and
in many other venues in the US.
Tran is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Scripps College.
