SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2007
10 a.m. – 12 p.m., San Francisco Art Institute, Lecture hall and
classrooms
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Achilles Mbembe asks what comes after colonization:
“Is everything really called into
question, is everything suspended, does everything truly begin all over
again . . .?
This is a false question, but one that raises questions not only about
the specific
nature of the present period, but also about the very possibility of
changing time.”
Situated in the present, Unidentified Vietnam, a mixed media installation,
and
Unidentified Vietnam No. 18, a 16mm film, are studies of the past. Lin
+ Lam regard
their projects as a dialogue with time, with history, and the viewer.
We will discuss
the unique capacity for film to demonstrate time, emphasizing the direct
communal
experience of cinematic viewing in contrast to mediation of a prior
situation. We
propose that potential liberation could reside in the possibilities
of activating different temporal registers. Constructing a moment of
suspension may offer the post-colonial or post-war subject a means to
emerge from what Mbembe calls “the time of entanglement,”
to find a language for speaking between the time of one’s own
and that of an other’s.
Participant Bios:
For the past six years, the artist team “Lin
+ Lam” has produced research-based projects
that examine the ramifications of the past on the current socio-political
moment. Lin +
Lam’s individual practices intersect along several lines of interrogation
that expand
the conception of information, history, evidence and subjectivity. Paying
close
attention to materiality, site, and the specificities of different medium,
their collaboration is a productive integration of their individual
strengths and backgrounds. Trained in architecture, H. Lan Thao Lam
uses photography, sculpture, and installation to address social memories
of time, place and politics. Informed by documentary and experimental
film, Lana Lin’s work interprets different cultural contexts and
examines the processes of identification. Their work has been exhibited
at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Whitney Museum
of American Art, NY; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, LA; Museo
de Arte Contemporaneo, Merida, Mexico; Taiwan International Documentary
Film Festival, Taipei and others.
Lam received her MFA from CalArts and was Assistant
Professor at Middle State Tennessee University and Goddard College,
MFA program. Lin received her MFA from Bard College and was Assistant
Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and the City College of New
York. They both currently teach at the Vermont College of Fine Arts,
MFA program. They have been honored with awards from the Fulbright Foundation,
the Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York
State Council on the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Civitella
Ranieri Foundation, among others.