EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) in Vietnam and Manzi Art Space are delighted to announce the three most ingenious winning proposals of our joint OPEN CALL for Into Thin Air edition 3 - An art for public project in Hanoi.
Inspired by the transformation of his own birthplace - Hàng Bè market (a very old market in Hanoi which was demolished in 2010) and Gia Ngu street, Hà Đăng Tùng will create a sound installation to reflect his reconciliation with 'Change' - an inevitable part of life. The work which combines recorded sounds at the site with random ambient elements, will be a journey from the old Hang Be market to the Gia Ngu street of today.
Tùng has been and is member of the underground rockband Phác Họa Xanh in Hanoi. Tùng is interested in softer and more experimental textures. In a looping state of mind, the weaving together of elements gradually makes manifest a rich and dreamy soundscape of piano, guitar, electronics and beats, with a seemingly boundless sense of spontaneity and freedom.
Tùng has been working in collaboration with a young composer of Hanoi on a new soundtrack for a Vietnamese animation film in which the majority of action unfold above the clouds.
Intrigued by an incident in November 2016 - the main house of Tĩnh Lâu pagoda caught fire and was destroyed, Trang Lý uses real footage of this ancient building combined with augmented reality visual elements and music to create a multi-dimensional artwork: "The demolition and transformation of an ancient relic as time passed and what could be retrieved from the remains presents an echo of something thought to be lost yet not completely disappeared."
Lý Trang is sound designer and composer, Her works explore artistic versatility and alternative approaches to creativity. She creates sounds by taking advantage of technology. She makes use of both instrumental and field recordings, of traditional music and nature. She produces sound which is rich in textures, progress and singularity. Wildly inventive and philosophically intuitive, Trang’s work opens a door to illusion of images and colours, originating from imaginary visualizations that she finds as cultural substratum. Trang has worked extensively with sound/visual artists and independent filmmakers in Vietnam and internationally.
Using vocals, electronic music mixed with real physical sounds of the environment, the soundwalk recreates artists’ personal memories of the chosen place. The audience will be invited to interact by walking into the zones marked in the map wearing headphones.
Nhung Nguyễn is an emerging Vietnamese sound artist based in Hanoi, experimenting across a range of left-field aesthetics and expressions – ambient drone, electro acoustic, noise music, musique concrete, amongst others.
Since 2014 Nhung has been making works under the moniker Sound Awakener – and under her real name, for the more cinematic, piano-driven projects. She has worked with international labels such as Time Released Sound (US), Unknown Tones Records (US), Soft (France), Flaming Pines (UK), Fluid Audio (UK), Syrphe (Germany).
In addition to her solo work, Nhung has collaborated with artists from various other disciplines, often adding audio elements to visual experiences. Nhung’s music and sounds have appeared in exhibitions such as Le Giang’s D'eau et de verdure (2020, Hanoi), Vo Tran Chau’s 'Leaf Picking in the Ancient Forest' (HCMC, 2020), Phan Thao Nguyen’s Poetic Amnesia (HCMC and Hanoi, 2017), the public-art initiatives Into Thin Air (2016) and Into Thin Air 2 (2018) – both in Hanoi, Richard Streimatter-Tran’s Departures (Hong Kong, 2017), amongst others. As a composer for moving image, Nhung has also worked on music compositions for short films (e.g. Sala – dir. Funk Brothers, Long Departure – dir. David Ellis, Lucidity – dir. Jeff Zorrilla).
Hồ Trâm Anh is a Hanoi-based independent singer-songwriter, pianist, and composer with various projects under her belt. She performs solo as herself, and under her other aliases MonA and Anaiis. She was previously active as the bassist/vocalist of the shoegaze/ dreampop band The Veranda (now on hiatus). Tram Anh has also collaborated with various other artists in dark ambient/experimental projects, most notably with the sound artist/ sound designer Nhung Nguyen (Sound Awakener) as a duo titled Oblivia. Her works explore a range of acoustic and electronic music, including lyrically oriented piano pieces with dark, pensive themes as a result of her classical training background, and elements of spatial, dreamy drones, synthesizers and field recordings. Tram Anh’s works have been featured in releases by Rusted Tone Recordings, a UK independent label specialized in experimental and ambient music. Her notable works are collaborations with sound artists Gallery Six, Sound Awakener and James Armstrong in the LP “These Cyan Fantasies”, and singles “Anomaly” and “Into the White Walls”. Tram Anh has also recently played in experimental live shows, notably the live show “Mutant Onions” organized and curated by The Onion Cellar and Mutant Lounge and supported by the Goethe-Institut in June 2020.
