Remembering yesterday - the dilemma of titles

16 April. How do we move forward each day if we cannot remember what occurred the day before? How do we understand what we want for the future if we cannot articulate how the present can be re-modeled, re-fashioned, re-imagined? What is the social body in Vietnam? By social body, I mean an understanding of how the individual contributes to a whole. What is the responsibility of art and culture to the lived memory of society? These are just a few questions that have been constantly rolling around in various conversations on this visit to Vietnam. Traveling with Lu Jie has offered great insight to how much lived experience provides a kind of validation of perspective. People take pause in their answers, the sharing of personal stories giving weight to engagement. Makes me realize the intertextuality of life as a lived memory holds so much power - knowledge production is a multi-faceted and complex process - talking, feeling, debating, remembering are so important to ideas of progress. Thanks to Tran Luong and all invited, we had a very interesting evening with Hanoi-based artists at Nha San House. Showing 'A Walking Visual Display' (the first undertaking of Long March Project) conversation spiraled off into the political and social repercussions of calling the project the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail'. Truong Tan was great in moving conversation beyond ideas of censorship and political control towards thinking further on how artists can better examine what it means to engage with history, with what it means to be a Vietnamese artist. Tran Luong highlighted the history of naming as always being a problematic occurence in Vietnam (a product of its fractured colonial history). Lu Jie and I were quietly persistent in the need to use the words 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' as the title for the project for it is essential to confront the problematic issues it arises rather than to step around it gingerly. The memory of this trail is particular to the person speaking. One of the artists attending spoke of his mother who endures the daily nightmare of landmines in rural Vietnam. Another artist spoke of how he is watched and followed (his father was a pilot in the army). Tran Luong speaks of electricity being deliberately turned off at times to hinder public events). These lived conditions are all a product of a certain cultural mindset that we hope to unravel, ease, find alternative solutions. Thanks to Tran Luong, Do Tuong Linh, Nguyen Trinh Thi, Truong Tan, Nguyen Quang Huy, Nguyen Xuan Son, Nguyen Van Phuc, Phung Tien Son, Lai Thanh Tin, Le Anh Quynh, Vu Duc Toan, Duong Pham Ngoc, Tuan Mami, Nam Tran, Yen Tran Hau The, Nguyen The Son for coming!