A state of absence... Words out there
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January 30, 2022
December 17, 2021
Trương Công Tùng
We are here, right in the presence of things being seen, being heard, being known, and right in your imagination...
A state of absence... Words out there. This can be interpreted as transfiguration of a land, a river, a forest, as a change in the scenery, a portrait, and as a metamorphosis of an insect, an animal, or a community. The concept of ‘absence’ propounded here concatenates various states of ‘non-appearance’ of the natural world connecting with how it became non-present in the human mindset and the social behaviours of everyday life.
This work is a collaboration between living beings, natural substances like: plants, insects, earth, water, the souls.. and the elements commonly labelled man-made, such as: engines, motors, the camera, electric lights.. Throughout this whole process, the human involvement is merely an intermediary role, serving as a link or a conveyor, that assists the probabilities of operation for both natural and artificial elements.
By this installation, the artist, once again goes through that passage, just like many times before - the passage between life and death, between waking and dreaming, between sanity and madness, reality and illusion, between insect and human, between the earth and skin and flesh, between forest canopies and bare hills, between the lost lands and perished states, between nameless places and unknown destinations,...In a move to have a grasp of the subject matter, to create a depiction, to reiterate the words which could not be precisely heard, wholly sensed and fully comprehended just by passing only once; after all, there will be another chance for us to listen, to look into their words, tune in to their thoughts, their souls and their sadness. Words out there, a harmony between machine, nature and human beings, or rather a confession of the conversion and rebirth of beings which were not, are not, and would not become human at all.