Thursday, November 19, 2009

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 18 - Nov.19th

"Protection" by Tran Thi Toung
Emergency: The artist is showing the upside down umbrella to refer to the dangers coming from water from below (floods and tsunamis and rising ocean levels etc) and that this emergency has to be noticed by everyone.

"I Am Guilty" by Thierry Geoffroy
Emergency: The fallacy of using internet and social network websites as only means of maintaining contact with friends.


"Toys In Modern Times" by Vu Duc Trung
Emergency: The influx of violent toy design and craving in kids play. The artist has here made a collection of traditionally made harvest time toys, but only modeled them on the request of the children, instead of the usual models of animals. They all wanted weapons.


"Let's Look At Yourself Again" by Luu Chi Hieu
Emergency: The artist is commenting on the outward nature of the regular emergency reporting by the Emergency Room artist, and wants to underline that we all contain emergencies in our own life and lifestyle that we need to react upon.


"The Rich And The Poor" by Ngo Xuan Phu
Emergency: The deepening divide between people that has access to resources and education and basic securities.


"Behind The "Protection"" by Le Dung
Emergency: Child trafficking for sex trade or slavery.


"Buying Illegal Answers For Exams" by Le Dung
Emergency: The artist is pointing at the common trend among students to buy cheating sheets to bring to their exams.


Review effetc

Debate

Passage

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 17 - Nov.18th


"Two Faces" by Vu Duc Trung
Emergency: The use of of weapons as entertainment for kids. One side is painted pink to indicate its toy function, the other is painted black to point at the actual function of a hand gun, to shoot at people.


"Street Circus" by Na Son
Emergency: The disregard for safety in vietnamese traffic. The official figures is 50 people dead in traffic every day in Hanoi.


"Spider Man" by Na Son"
Emergency: The increasing amount of open air electricity wires in Hanoi/Vietnam is posing a growing threat to both electricity workers and people living or working near these clusters of cables.


"The Dance Of The Signs" by Ngo Xuan Phu
Emergency: The amount of commercial advertisement billboards on inner city house facades is now so high that many streets has changed their look into permanent squares of consumer pollution.


"The Music Band Of My College" by Yen The
Emergency: The lack of honest artists in popular culture. The artist has taken a regular pop concert poster, and replaced the faces with colleagues and students the that the artist consider to be truly interested in expressing art, not only making art (or music) to generate profit.

"Thirsty" by Hau Anh
Emergency: Deforestation is drying up the land in Vietnam. Without proper vegetation, all surface moist evaporates and does not return until artificial irrigation is initiated.


"Curiosity 1,2 and 3" by Na Son
Emergency: The artist is reacting to the human tendency to be curious without caring. Illustrated by three pictures documenting curiosity. The first showing a man overdosing on drugs in the street, people stop to look, but no-one help, the second showing bystanders to a traffic accident, being mostly interested in the number plate of the crashed vehicle (because every day there will be allotted a cash price in illegal lotteries based on number plates - this relates to vietnamese version of the superstition "one mans misfortune is another mans fortune"), the third shows a 400 year old turtle's head surfacing in on of the lakes in Hanoi, nobody seems to care for the condition of the lake, merely for the sight of the turtle (which traditionally means good luck).


Debate

Monday, November 16, 2009

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 16 - Nov.17th

"Clean Water" by Vu Duc Trung
Emergency: The vietnamese authorities has just raised the price on tap water with 70% without explanation whatsoever. The artist is pointing to the fact that the tap water is not clean at all, and is worried that this extra cost for the average family will mean that their purchase of real clean bottled water will decline on the cost of their health.


"Its Already Finished" by Luu Chi Hieu
Emergency: The artist is illustrating the idea that corruption is not corruption if you accept a gift to deliver a favor or service without touching it with your skin. I.e. the bribe is in an envelope, or "you're wearing gloves" when you take the money. The artist also describe that the title is deliberately misleading in order to bypass the art review boards scrutiny and their fear of that the artwork is being too offensive.


"Where To Play? What To Play? Who To Play With?" by Yen The
Emergency: The interaction between local citizens and the University of Fine Arts Hanoi (UFA) is practically non-existent. The artist is displaying a traditionally made dragon mask, half decorated in the traditional colors and ornaments, the other half decorated with modern symbols and esthetics. It represent the possibility to combine the local folklore with modern art, but when people in the street outside the university is asked where the UFA is located, close to none could say where it was.


Debate

Passage



Passage

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 15 - Nov.16th

"Why We Lack A Celebrity Museum" by Trau Han Yen The
Emergency: The tendency to focus on only one celebrity in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, is pushing all the other figures of vietnamese history out of the public memory.


"Beauty Care Center" by Ngo Xuan Phu
Emergency: The preservation and/or restoration of pagodas and other historical buildings in Vietnam tend to be dominated by the contractors hunt for big budgets more than respect for classic architecture and traditional decoration of the sites. They f.x. often add floors to the pagodas, even though the classic shape of the vietnamese pagodas is with one floor. The artist argue that this is done only to expand the material use and working hours in the projects.

"Masks" by Tran Thi Toung
Emergency: The current preference for cheap chinese masks as opposed to the traditional, handmade paper masks is at a rise. The artist takes this trend into Emergency Room to point at the abandonment of human handicraft and the implications therein for the national workforce. During the debate the artwork came to reveal that it reflect many aspects of modern life and consumer culture.

"Basic Life" by Viet Hung
Emergency: The displacement of indigenous tribes' lifestyle conditions in Vietnam.


Passage.

Friday, November 13, 2009

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 14 - Nov.13th


"Championship" by Luu Chi Hieu
Emergency: Illegal logging, deforestation in Vietnam.


"Poor Children Earn Their Living" by Le Dung
Emergency: Children living on the street, having to work to survive.


"We Sprayed But They Still Come" by Vu Duc Trung
Emergency: Hygiene in Hanoi´s restaurants.


"What Is This" by Tran Hoang Son
Emergency: The preservation of vietnamese culture is unable to leave its state of emergency.


"Last Night On The Streets" by Na Son
Emergency: The rising number of homeless people in Hanoi, and the lack of any shelter facilities for them.


Emergency: Garbage in the streets of Hanoi


"Sometimes" by Tran Hau Yen The
Emergency: The falsification of history by omissions.


"Kahn Cho Tuong Lai" by Viet Hung
Emergency: The artist har fear of no results or agreements coming out of the climate meeting COP15 in Copenhagen. The belief in solutions is religious.


"Advertisement In Taxis" by Thierry Geoffroy
Emergency: The artist points to the spreading and invading character of advertisement placing.


Thursday, November 12, 2009

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 13 - Nov.12th


"Anniversary Are Celebrate To Recreate/Transform History and Mask Reality" by Thierry Geoffroy
Emergency: The use of Top News space to focus on selective past events instead of current emergencies and issues. A method of distraction.


"No Information Day" by Hau Anh
Emergency: The young generations´dependency on the internet, and the amount of "non-information" on internet, TV and printed media.


"My Village In Hanoi City" by Yen Te
Emergency: The situation where Hanoi is structured and developed with the means and methods of a vietnamese village, not meeting the needs and demands of a mega city.


"Gold" by Vu Trung
Emergency: The extreme fluctuation of a commodity´s price is an indication of the false value we give it.


Debate

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

EMERGENCY ROOM DAY 12 - Nov.11th


"The Bottle Neck" by Mai Thu Van
Emergency: The artist shows firstly wants to point at the city planning faults, and the congested traffic in big cities in Vietnam, but also towards the blocking of processes in vietnamese official systems. The artist is pointing toward the inefficiency in the administration of foreign help aid, foreign investment and national funds supposed to be used to improve various aspects of Vietnam´s culture, production, business sector, infrastructure etc.


"Just Imagine" by Vu Trung
Emergency: The handmade and arbitrary sensor of vietnamese artworks pictured in imported art magazines.
The artist tried to investigate in several shops why the works had been blotted out with black markers, but could not get a proper answer anywhere.


"Brand Name" by Tran Thi Tuong
Emergency: Overpriced goods and an increasing focus on superficial attributes among youth in Vietnam. The debate also went into the exploitation of 3. world workers to produce clothes, shoes, effects etc. where the company profits are unreasonable compared to the salaries and conditions of most workers.


"Farmers Get Pension?" by Ngo Xuan Phu
Emergency: The lack of retirement protection for farm workers in Vietnam. The artist included an article covering how new chinese policy is aiming to secure a minimum pension for all farmers. During the debate another artist pointed to one case where a local government had made their own system of retirement support with success. The debate also covered the lack of media and governmental interest in the subject.


"The Silence Of Meat" by Yen The
Emergency: The lack of authority response to illegal practice. The artist is showing 2 texts of the words "Silence" and "Meat" (which sounds very similar in vietnamese) meant to be sung with melodies of well known local songs. The artist is pointing to the situation where the composer of the national hymn´s house is being used as an illegal butchery without intervention from authorities.



Debate

All pictures by
NGO XUAN PHU