Monday, February 20, 2006
Design and Art from Vietnam
I re-read my last post and realised that Vietnam got a bit of a thumping, and I didnt have very much good to say about it. But I really feel that we only got glimpses of the real thing. And the whole country is reallyin the middle of an upheaval, burdened with all the associated pain.
We met a lot of people, one of whom was an amazing Cyclo driver, one of the myriad of former South Vietnamese Army who were out of a job and essentially out of the picture for good after the liberation fo Saigon. Net result is that most of these guys and their families, the ones in particular who stayed, are seemingly the ones running street kitchens and cyclo drivers of the city. In two years time they will be reducing the number of cyclo drivers to just 50 registered drivers from the thousands now. Generally speaking the Cyclos represent the poorest of the poor in Vietnam, and the municipal government is wiping out the trades and main income for hundreds maybe thousands of Saigonese in one fell swoop. Not very much in Vietnam (or anywhere) is equitable. He doesn't know what he will do when it comes to it. He is lucky enough in that he picked up decent english in the army and can ply a decent trade among tourists. But not for much longer. He had friends in the States who asked him to leave with him, but hedidnton account of his family. To protect them from the regime accusing them of being a family of collaborators with a traitor son.
Speaking of the regime, we met a Party Member (I assume) in a restaurant in Hue, who was head of the districts' Education Board. We had an interesting enough conversation, but all he was really interested in was what budget we had for travelling. It was an annoying encounter but full of insight. I was telling him that I dont think China is a very good model for Vietnam, but that is the way Vietnam is heading. Primary School is free, but secondary is around $42 per month, and university is about $67 per month. The average wage is about $40 per month. For me from afar and particularly from my Irish perspective, education is the only way up for most people,and beyond that immigration. But it is still well beyond the means of most people.
Mai Loc is a budding photographer from Nha Trang. We bough a couple of his small prints. His stuff is really good. He has overcome many technical difficulties, and more practical difficulties. For example he prints B&W on colour paper (so the quality is grained) because B&W photographic paper is impossible to come by in Vietnam, and ordering it from abroad isn't worth the heartache in a country where customs and excise just love to open boxes that arrive from Europe. There are seemingly quite a few budding artists around nowadays in Vietnam. We met a few sculptors in Hoi An and Chau Doc on the Cambodian border. There was an absolutely fantastic painter whose work we saw in Hanoi - Tran Thanh. He was selling pieces for thousand, but I reckon they were abargain for what ele I have seen selling for thousands in Europe.
I feel perhaps that more than anything else there is a resurgence in self expression, particularly artistic in Vietnam. Although the plastic and painted arts have a long long way to go in terms of subject and invention (the oil paintings and sculptures are generally terrible, though there are some gems), the technique and ability really seems latent in Vietnamese culture, right through from the architecture to the street kitchens. Some of the expression is no doubt borrowed from french modernism and earlier, but the way they have subsequently developed it is quite interesting and they really have a sense of design and skill in crafts that is interactive. They know what a door is and the relationship between inside and out, how a cup should work and seem to think completely from the individual users/buyers/owners point of view. It is designed with people in mind, as opposed diametrically to the Chinese Urban Planning approach to design which is generally imbued with Confucian meaning, but so goddamned big you can only appreciate it from space.
It is quite common that new Chinese blocks will be planned with Feng Shui in mind, but also that their plan would be in the shape of a particular Chinese character, say for Fortune or Happiness. However, unless you flew to work each day by helicopter or plane there is no way in hell you could distinguish this appartment block as meaning anything other than more of the same. From the ground they just pound you down, dwarfing you.
Anyway, Mai Loc had made friends with a Norwegian couple 4 years previously who had returned to Vietnam numerous occassions after. They encouraged his work and this year he was invited to an international exhibition of photography in a town Norway. All expenses trip paid for a month. He is really delighted, but fairly pissed off at the amount of bureaucracy he had to go through to get a visa, even on the foot of an invitation from the Mayor of the city. His visa application weighed nearly half a kilo (450gms to be precise). It is hard to see how he will be able to develop his skills and artistry particularly if he cant study, or perhaps even more practically apprentice with other photographers. All the arts seem young again in Vietnam. Rude and round and unoriginal, like trying to repaint renaissance masterpieces all over again, to somehow garner back some of the glory from the past, but in the end only sullying the original by coat tailing its reputation rather than emulating its craft.
I hope that they put some better stress on education in Vietnam. In my mind they have a latent ability in creativity. At the moment they merely ape what is already there, not unlike the Japanese perhaps, a generation ago. But whereas the Chinese, Malay, Korean and Taiwanese have all to a greater or lesser degree copied (sorry bench-marked) the Japanese, the Vietnamese for me are the ones who seem that maybe they could lead SE asia creatively rather than industrially. Who's to know? A couple of design schools and exchanges could go a long way indeed down here.
Foreigners settled here do tend to bemoan the lack of initiative or creativity of the people though. They are not particularly reknowned for coming up with innovative or original ideas or solutions. However I hope that this is more a legacy of Communist indoctrination rather than inherent. It doenst strike me as such though....
hmmmmm.........
We met a lot of people, one of whom was an amazing Cyclo driver, one of the myriad of former South Vietnamese Army who were out of a job and essentially out of the picture for good after the liberation fo Saigon. Net result is that most of these guys and their families, the ones in particular who stayed, are seemingly the ones running street kitchens and cyclo drivers of the city. In two years time they will be reducing the number of cyclo drivers to just 50 registered drivers from the thousands now. Generally speaking the Cyclos represent the poorest of the poor in Vietnam, and the municipal government is wiping out the trades and main income for hundreds maybe thousands of Saigonese in one fell swoop. Not very much in Vietnam (or anywhere) is equitable. He doesn't know what he will do when it comes to it. He is lucky enough in that he picked up decent english in the army and can ply a decent trade among tourists. But not for much longer. He had friends in the States who asked him to leave with him, but hedidnton account of his family. To protect them from the regime accusing them of being a family of collaborators with a traitor son.
Speaking of the regime, we met a Party Member (I assume) in a restaurant in Hue, who was head of the districts' Education Board. We had an interesting enough conversation, but all he was really interested in was what budget we had for travelling. It was an annoying encounter but full of insight. I was telling him that I dont think China is a very good model for Vietnam, but that is the way Vietnam is heading. Primary School is free, but secondary is around $42 per month, and university is about $67 per month. The average wage is about $40 per month. For me from afar and particularly from my Irish perspective, education is the only way up for most people,and beyond that immigration. But it is still well beyond the means of most people.
Mai Loc is a budding photographer from Nha Trang. We bough a couple of his small prints. His stuff is really good. He has overcome many technical difficulties, and more practical difficulties. For example he prints B&W on colour paper (so the quality is grained) because B&W photographic paper is impossible to come by in Vietnam, and ordering it from abroad isn't worth the heartache in a country where customs and excise just love to open boxes that arrive from Europe. There are seemingly quite a few budding artists around nowadays in Vietnam. We met a few sculptors in Hoi An and Chau Doc on the Cambodian border. There was an absolutely fantastic painter whose work we saw in Hanoi - Tran Thanh. He was selling pieces for thousand, but I reckon they were abargain for what ele I have seen selling for thousands in Europe.
I feel perhaps that more than anything else there is a resurgence in self expression, particularly artistic in Vietnam. Although the plastic and painted arts have a long long way to go in terms of subject and invention (the oil paintings and sculptures are generally terrible, though there are some gems), the technique and ability really seems latent in Vietnamese culture, right through from the architecture to the street kitchens. Some of the expression is no doubt borrowed from french modernism and earlier, but the way they have subsequently developed it is quite interesting and they really have a sense of design and skill in crafts that is interactive. They know what a door is and the relationship between inside and out, how a cup should work and seem to think completely from the individual users/buyers/owners point of view. It is designed with people in mind, as opposed diametrically to the Chinese Urban Planning approach to design which is generally imbued with Confucian meaning, but so goddamned big you can only appreciate it from space.
It is quite common that new Chinese blocks will be planned with Feng Shui in mind, but also that their plan would be in the shape of a particular Chinese character, say for Fortune or Happiness. However, unless you flew to work each day by helicopter or plane there is no way in hell you could distinguish this appartment block as meaning anything other than more of the same. From the ground they just pound you down, dwarfing you.
Anyway, Mai Loc had made friends with a Norwegian couple 4 years previously who had returned to Vietnam numerous occassions after. They encouraged his work and this year he was invited to an international exhibition of photography in a town Norway. All expenses trip paid for a month. He is really delighted, but fairly pissed off at the amount of bureaucracy he had to go through to get a visa, even on the foot of an invitation from the Mayor of the city. His visa application weighed nearly half a kilo (450gms to be precise). It is hard to see how he will be able to develop his skills and artistry particularly if he cant study, or perhaps even more practically apprentice with other photographers. All the arts seem young again in Vietnam. Rude and round and unoriginal, like trying to repaint renaissance masterpieces all over again, to somehow garner back some of the glory from the past, but in the end only sullying the original by coat tailing its reputation rather than emulating its craft.
I hope that they put some better stress on education in Vietnam. In my mind they have a latent ability in creativity. At the moment they merely ape what is already there, not unlike the Japanese perhaps, a generation ago. But whereas the Chinese, Malay, Korean and Taiwanese have all to a greater or lesser degree copied (sorry bench-marked) the Japanese, the Vietnamese for me are the ones who seem that maybe they could lead SE asia creatively rather than industrially. Who's to know? A couple of design schools and exchanges could go a long way indeed down here.
Foreigners settled here do tend to bemoan the lack of initiative or creativity of the people though. They are not particularly reknowned for coming up with innovative or original ideas or solutions. However I hope that this is more a legacy of Communist indoctrination rather than inherent. It doenst strike me as such though....
hmmmmm.........
// posted by Dub @ Monday, February 20, 2006 
Comments:
<< Home
qihang0908,michael kors uk
coach factory outlet online
abercrombie fitch,abercrombie and kent,abercrombie & fitch,abercrombie outlet,abercrombie kids
celine luggage tote
cheap oakleys
longchamp soldes
polo bedding
fitflops sale
gucci handbags
fake watches
ralph lauren polo shirts
true religion outlet
louboutin
louis vuitton outlet
vans sneakers
louis vuitton
oakley sunglasses
louis vuitton outlet
polo ralph lauren
louis vuitton outlet
coach outlet
north face jackets
toms shoes
ray ban uk store
louis vuitton outlet online
prada outlet
coach factory outlet
polo outlet
air max
ray ban glasses
jeremy scott adidas
nike air max 90 trainers
michael kors handbags
coach outlet store online
q
Post a Comment
coach factory outlet online
abercrombie fitch,abercrombie and kent,abercrombie & fitch,abercrombie outlet,abercrombie kids
celine luggage tote
cheap oakleys
longchamp soldes
polo bedding
fitflops sale
gucci handbags
fake watches
ralph lauren polo shirts
true religion outlet
louboutin
louis vuitton outlet
vans sneakers
louis vuitton
oakley sunglasses
louis vuitton outlet
polo ralph lauren
louis vuitton outlet
coach outlet
north face jackets
toms shoes
ray ban uk store
louis vuitton outlet online
prada outlet
coach factory outlet
polo outlet
air max
ray ban glasses
jeremy scott adidas
nike air max 90 trainers
michael kors handbags
coach outlet store online
q
<< Home
