THE SOUNDS OF VIETNAMESE CINEMA
Three Remixes by Lý Trang, Long Trần và Merv Espina
Online from 16.03 to 03.04
Collaging sounds from a plethora of Vietnamese cinematic works, the three remixes – each one different from another – brings out a new sense of cinematic sounds and the possibilities that come with them. An introspective emotive space from Lý Trang’s piece. A plunderphoniuc pop outlook bursting with unexpected shifts from Long Tran (Pilgrim Raid, Mona Evie). Moving beyond urban confines, Merv Espina creates a tropical forest ecology filled with sounds of birds, insects, streams and rivers.
RELEASE SCHEDULE
16.03: Long Trần
21.03: Lý Trang
26.03: Merv Espina
(Banner photo: still image from Hát Giữa Chiều Mưa)
PHANTOM LANDSCAPES (Merv Espina)
Phantom Landscapes imagines a post-cinematic reality from the perspective of the natural world, a mise-en-scène outside ideology and the machinations of civilization. The work is an assemblage of sounds sourced from the spaces between music and dialogue of Vietnam waòr films made before Đổi Mới in 1986. Entangling foley and field recordings, the fidelity and authenticity of these sounds and what they were supposed to represent are suspended to suggest a spectral semiotics: phantom landscapes that exist beyond time and film.
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With music, dialogues and sounds from the following films:
Đường Về Quê Mẹ (Bùi Đình Hạc, 1971)
Vùng Trời (Huy Thành, 1975)
Cô Gái Và Anh Lái Xe (Nông Ích Đạt, 1976)
Sao Tháng 8 (Trần Đắc, 1976)
Cuộc chiến đấu vẫn tiếp diễn (Nguyễn Khắc Lợi, 1969)
Cách sống của tôi (Nguyễn Đỗ Ngọc & Quốc Long, 1978)
Từ một cánh rừng (Đức Hoàn, 1978)
Khoảnh khắc yên lặng của chiến tranh (Vũ Phạm Từ, 1983)
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Merv Espina is an artist and researcher with a keen interest in spelunking through historical lapses and institutional oversights, often without a flashlight. His investigations have sometimes taken the shape of concept stores and perfumes, jungle karaoke and cassette tapes, pirate radios and comics, screening programs and archival advocacies. In between independent actions, some projects have strangely found themselves in the Jakarta Biennale 2015 and Yokohama Triennale 2020.
USELESS TIME STILL PASSES (Lý Trang)
https://soundcloud.com/user-223884402/thoi-gian-vo-dung-van-troi-qua-useless-time-still-passes-ly-trang
A tapestry of sounds from old Vietnamese films, dialogues of the past and the present colliding, intersections of silence and rippling melodies that form a cinematic narrative where the characters strive to exist within the echoes of memories. The sound collage opens with dense and vibrant timbres infused with the sound of trains, of children playing in the sunny courtyard and intermittent piano melodies, followed by an instance of sudden silence, opening up a conversation between a child and her father who has just returned from the battlefield. In the midst of intimate voices, scattered and evocative sounds, the listeners find themselves torn between nostalgia and the desire to escape.
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With music, dialogues and sounds from the following films:
Em Bé Hà Nội (Hải Ninh, 1974)
Ngõ Hẹp (Bạch Diệp, 1988)
Chuyến Xe Bão Táp (Trần Vũ, 1977)
Cách Sống Của Tôi (Nguyễn Đỗ Ngọc, 1978)
Đêm Hội Long Trì (Hải Ninh, 1989)
Hà Nội Mùa Chim Làm Tổ (Đức Hoàn, 1981)
Phóng Sự Điều Tra Trên Đường Phố(Trần Thế Dân, 1982)
Những Người Đã Gặp (Trần Vũ, 1979)
Tướng Về Hưu (Nguyễn Khắc Lợi, 1988)
Tiền Ơi! (Trần Vũ và Nguyễn Hữu Luyện, 1989)
Cô Gái Và Anh Lái Xe (Nông Ích Đạt, 1976)
Hát Giữa Chiều Mưa (Tất Bình và Trần Phương, 1990)
Gầm Cầu Mặt Nước (Nguyễn Sỹ Chung, 2004)
Sau Đêm Biểu Diễn (Vũ Trụ, 1982)
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Lý Trang is a Vietnamese composer and sound artist, whose work explores artistic versatility and alternative approaches to creativity. She creates sounds by taking advantage of technology – in tandem with instruments and field recordings of traditional musics and nature, which are rich in textures, progress and singularity. Wildly inventive and philosophically intuitive, Trang’s work opens a door to illusion of images and colors, originated from imaginary visualizations that she finds as cultural substratum. Trang has worked extensively with sound/visual artists and independent filmmakers in Vietnam and internationally. She took part in Red Balloon: Music For 20th-Century Vietnamese Animation, part of Like The Moon In A Night Sky 2020.
ALL RARE ANTIBIOTICS (Long Trần)
A reframing and layering of sonic elements from Vietnamese films through a decidedly plunderphonic approach. All manners of soundtrack and dialogues sliced, chopped, loop’d, slowed and reverb’d, sped up, pitch-altered, revealing aspects not highlighted in the films’ orginal contexts. Humourous dialogues of post-Đổi mới money-making craze accompanied by bright synth from 20 years later; late 1990s romantic pop transmitted through a warm shoegaze filter; calm piano interludes leading to frenetic brass-based interventions. The mood alters between nostalgia for a past never experienced, and the heightened hyperreality of modern Internet cultures.
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With music, dialogues and sounds from the following films:
(in order of appearance in Long Trần’s piece)
9X (Vũ Châu, 2006)
Tiền Ơi! (Trần Vũ & Nguyễn Hữu Luyện, 1989)
Chuyến Xe Bão Táp (Trần Vũ, 1977)
Tướng Về Hưu (Nguyễn Khắc Lợi, 1988)
Ngõ Hẹp (Bạch Diệp, 1988)
Chiến Dịch Trái Tim Bên Phải (Đào Duy Phúc, 2005)
Hát Giữa Chiều Mưa (Tất Bình & Trần Phương, 1990)
Em Bé Hà Nội (Hải Ninh, 1974)
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Long Trần is an emerging producer/artist from Hanoi, and is a co-founded/member of music projects Pilgrim Raid and Mona Evie. Inspired by the likes of Flying Lotus and The Avalanches, Long focuses on sonic techniques of modulation and collaging, as filtered through a DIY/home-recording spirit. Through his projects Long has experimented with hip-hop, pop, dance music, R&B, rock and neo-psychedelia. The latest records he’s participated in are Chó Ngồi Đáy Giếng (2022) by Mona Evie, and Anna Agenda (2021) by Pilgrim Raid (with Vương Thiện).