Current Exhibition

The film is about listening, and it reflects on the differences in how memory is discerned through cultures of the eye and that of the ear, while observing the loss of land, forests and the way of life of the indigenous people in this part of the world. ‘Do you trust sounds or images better?’ Nguyễn off screen asks her daughter, who replies ‘images, mum.’

Of the cultural dominance of images and looking over other sensory modes, Nguyễn has said: ‘As our globalised and westernised cultures have come to be dominated by visual media, I feel the need and responsibility as a filmmaker to resist this narrative power of the visual imagery, and look for a more balanced and sensitive approach in perceiving the world by paying more attention to aural landscapes, in line with my interests in the unknown, the invisible, the inaccessible and in potentialities.’

Nguyễn studied journalism, photography and ethnographic film in the United States before returning to Vietnam in 2007 to become a filmmaker. Previous films by Nguyễn incorporate a blend of material; news photography, postcards, scenes from popular and art house cinema, archival footage, excerpts from books and film scripts, fictional writings and musical and environmental recordings. Some of these films were partly made in response to specific political and environmental issues in Vietnam, such as a proposed nuclear power scheme in Letters from Panduranga (2015), and a toxic waste spill and titanium mining in Fifth Cinema (2018). Nguyễn allowed these composite films to take incremental, branching paths and dwell across multiple, overlooked stories - the narratives shifting and becoming multi-voiced.

How to Improve the World relies less on found material, and instead Nguyễn focuses on the aural; on the immediate sound textures of the Gia Lai environment, on the singing, music and ceremonies of the Jarai people living there and the experiences and recollections shared by the musician Ksor Sep. The film partially documents how different waves of colonisation have affected the region and its peoples, from French colonisation beginning in the 17th century with Christian missionaries, and more recent, ongoing internal colonisation from the Kinh, a predominant ethnic group in Vietnam. Colour and black and white footage is interspersed as the film’s visual and aural threads unfold, at times winding around each other and at others diverging - all the while carrying impressions of what is seen or unseen, what exists within sound and silence.

Since making How to Improve the World, Nguyễn has begun developing films and installations that incorporate musical instruments, organic materials and elemental forces; releasing the authorship of her works to the rhythms of the wind and the movement of bodies of water, such as the Mekong River Delta. She has also returned to collecting material from cinematic sources, lifting ‘background’ images and audio of the natural world from other films and recombining them to make fictional, immersive environmental soundscapes.

How to Improve the World holds multiple aural registers. The film seeks to decentre the artificial hierarchies of sight and sound that are commonly relied on - refocusing our attention instead on the complex sonic imprints left by the environment around us, and embodied, though perhaps hidden, in our memories.

How to Improve the World was made with the presence of Ksor Sep, Ro Cham Tih and An Nguyễn Maxtone-Graham. Cinematography is by Jamie Maxtone-Graham and Tạ Minh Đức.

Kā mihi to Asia New Zealand Foundation Te Whītau Tūhono for their support with the emerging curator’s tour last year which made meeting Nguyễn possible.