TRINH T. MINH-HA

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2001

Main Room   
March 7 – April 22, 2001
 
Production and Setup of the Films - Jean-Paul Bourdier
Exhibition Design - Adolf Krischanitz  
 
 

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Naked Spaces, 135 Mins. Color Film Copyright: Trinh T. Minh-ha
 
 
The films and theoretical works by Trinh T. Minh-Ha blend different forms of writing and narrating; the mutual challenge of the theoretical and the poetical, discursive and "non-discursive" languages tell of Trinh T. Minh-Ha's resistance against categorizations and limitations, which is carried out right across ethnicities and cultures. She shows five films at the Secession and gives an insight into her publications from recent years.
 


Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


"I always work from the borderlines of multiple shifting categories. I expand the borders of things, learn about my own limitations and how to change them," as Trinh T. Minh-Ha described her methods in a conversation. This way of thinking can also be followed in her theoretical texts, which sublimely ignore the predominant demarcations of discourse: her first book Un Art sans Oeuvre (1981) contains a chapter that relates the works of Jacques Derrida and Antonin Artaud to texts of Zen Buddhism. In place of an interdisciplinarity that usually leaves the boundaries of the fields intact and goes no further than merely adding them together, she sets openly defined fields with randomly or strategically drawn borders that are always flexible. And in the place of a language that produces unambiguous identities through categorizations, she sets a way of speaking, both in her texts and in her films, that "reflects on itself and can come very close to a subject without taking it over; a way of speaking that, as soon as it is finished, only indicates moments of a transition, which in turn enable other possible moments of transition."
 


Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


In the interviews for Surname Viet, Given Name Nam, it only gradually becomes evident that some of the conversations are not authentic in the conventional sense, but rather were taken from a book and then posed. What is irritating is not only how Trinh T. Minh-Ha arranges her films, but also what she shows: Reassemblage and Naked Spaces - Living is Round were created in Senegal and West Africa. Trinh T. Minh-Ha is aware that one would tend to expect films from a native Vietnamese woman about her land of origin, and this is one of the themes treated in the film.
 


Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


Trinh T. Minh-Ha is not concerned with denying or blurring the boundaries, neither in her films nor in her theoretical works: "For me, the question of hybridity or cultural difference has never been a question of canceled borders. We are permanently inventing borders, but these borders, which can be political, strategic or tactical - depending on the respective demands of the circumstances, and different circumstances always create a different kind of border each time - should not be taken as an end in themselves. The idea of the nomadic self, which has been given a new impetus in our times, is quite relevant here. The dislocated self or the being-created self is taken today to explain the changes and cracks in the construction and destruction of identities, and for this, specific but mobile borders are needed. For example, when do I call myself a feminist, when do I not refer to myself as a feminist, when do I consider myself part of the east, when do I say that the west is also in me? When I talk about the west, I am not talking about some reality that is outside myself. It is not a matter of blurring or revealing borders. It is about shifting them as soon as they start to become limitations (...)."
 
 

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


PUBLICATIONS

	TRINH T. MINH-HA Buch 64 pages, 10 colored illustrations, 8 b/w illustrations authors: Marina Grizinic, Matthias Herrmann, Adolf Krischanitz, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Trinh T. Minh-ha Secession 2001, ISBN 3-901926-37-2 ___________________ Available in the shop
	TRINH T. MINH-HA TEXTS 20 pages, 3 b/w illustrations authors: Trinh T. Minh-ha, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Homi Bhabha, Gwendolyn Foster Secession 2001 ___________________ Available in the shop

 

Adolf Krischanitz has developed an architectonic concept for the presentation of Trinh T. Minh-Ha's films, which makes it possible to view all five films by Trinh T. Minh-Ha together for the first time.
 
 

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


BIOGRAPHY
Trinh T. Minh-ha, film maker, author and musician. Born in Vietnam, emigrated to America in 1970. Lived and taught in Paris from 1974 to 1975, in Dakar (Senegal) from 1977 to 1980. Studied music and composition and French literature and musical ethnology in Vietnam, the Philippines, France and in the USA. Numerous publications, including: "Woman, Native, Other" (Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism) 1989, "When the Moon Waxes Red" (Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics) 1991, "Framer Framed" (Filmscripts and Interviews) and co-editor of "Out There: Marginalisation in Contemporary Culture", 1990. Trinh T. Minh-ha teaches Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and film at San Francisco State University.
 


Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


We would like to thank the following companies for their support: Joh. Backhausen & Söhne GesmbH, Gerriets Handel GmbH, Franz Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten GesmbH and Filzfabrik Fulda Vertriebs-GesmbH.
 
 

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Secession 2001, Photo Pez Hejduk


EXHIBITION DISCUSSION
In conjunction with the Trinh T. Minh-Ha exhibition, there will be an exhibition discussion with Marina Grzinic and the artist on Wednesday, March 7, 2001 at 7:00 p.m.

Marina Grzinic, born 1958, lives and works in Vienna; philosopher, media artist, freelance media theorist, art critic and curator; current publications Fiction Reconstructed. Eastern Europe, Post-Socialism and the Retro-Avant-Garde, Edition selene and Springerin, Vienna 2000.
 

 

AXEL STOCKBURGER    THE EXPERIMENT 1

EXHIBITION PROGRAM 2001

 
 
 
For further information and photographic material please contact:
 
Urte Schmitt-Ulms
Secession, Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-5875307-21, Fax: +43-1-5875307-34
presse@secession.at