OCEAN NETWORK EXPRESS, 2022
OCEAN NETWORK EXPRESS is a multimedia installation created for the exhibition Stranger Intimacy I & II on view at the ONE Archives and USC Pacific Asia Museum from March 3rd - May 27th, 2022.
Stranger Intimacy I & II are part of the Archival Intimacies: Queering South/East Asian Diasporas, a multi-site project curated by Aziz Sohail and Alexis Bard Johnson.The work of Los Angeles-based artists Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (in collaboration with Bitter Party) and Vinhay Keo are on view at ONE (Stranger Intimacy II) and USC Pacific Asia Museum (Stranger Intimacy I). (Please note that this exhibition at PAM will close on May 8.) Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai and Keo’s work investigates the remnants of embodied history, migration, exile, and queerness. These artists draw from family narratives and stories of immigration from Thailand and Cambodia respectively, creating works that navigate and question these lineages. Both artists aim to challenge and extend ideas around borders and boundaries, notions of queerness, transnationalism, and diaspora. Borrowing from Nayan Shah’s text Stranger Intimacy (2011) and building on this concept, this project places art and stories produced by those who may be seen as otherwise strangers alongside one another to investigate the connections and anxieties that may emerge from the intimacy of bringing them together. Taken together, this exhibition interrogates what it means to explore one’s past from the present and how to balance the promises and the limitations of the archive. Full text: https://one.usc.edu/exhibition/archival-intimacies-queering-southeast-asian-diasporas |
Stranger Intimacy I, USC Pacific Asia Museum
Clockwise, left to right:
Installation view: Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, 2020, video on monitor, archival materials and books from Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii in vitrine, Blue Transferware I-VII, 2022 Blue Transferware I-VII, 2022. Seven 10" plates with ceramic decals, arranged by Dominique Go The seven plates commemorate each vessel taken by my great grand-uncle, Pridi Banomyong in his escape from Thailand between 1947 and 1949. The final plate, dated 1986, marked his final return to Thailand after his death in France, in 1983 as his ashes were scattered from a navy boat into the Gulf of Thailand. Detail of Blue Transferware I, 2022 Detail of archival materials and books from Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii See also: Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii |
Stranger Intimacy II, ONE Archives at USC
Ocean Network Express (for ONE), 2022. 4' x 10' vinyl banner
Clockwise, left to right:
Installation view: Appendix A: ocean gazing, 2022, video projection, "The ocean. He must have got away in a boat." and The Decay of the Angel, Yukio Mishima, 1975 Edition, 2022 "The ocean. He must have got away in a boat.", 2022. Artist's copies of Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima and Ma Vie Mouvementée et Mes 21 ans d’Exil en Chine Populaire by Pridi Banomyong Yukio Mishima's Decay of the Angel, 1975 Edition, 2022. Copy of The Decay of the Angel by Yukio Mishima from the ONE Archives, magnifying glass See also: Appendix A: ocean gazing |
Disarming the Bunker, 2022
in collaboration with Bitter Party four-channel sound installation, 21 min, loop, laser-etched didactic, visual materials See also: Bitter Party |
In collaboration with local queer and trans ghost pop band Bitter Party, we also created a four-channel sound installation that traces the history and speculates the future of San Pedro through blending sounds both familiar and unfamiliar. The band produces field recordings inside a military bunker at White Point, imprinting their own diasporic presence in relation to the remnants of an oppressive structure
|
Excerpt from "Hum", one of the four-channel sound installation