04/13/2023
with .repost
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A key part of the new installation of Shifting Sands for the Berlin is a new VR piece I’ve made, “The Garden of No Return”. With VR maker / , and a team of colleagues with technical expertise, we’ve made a 10 and a half min immersive experience that takes the viewer to a site of sand mining-induced erosion on the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Using folk songs, lullabies and poetry, Vietnamese writer and poet Khai Don / Phạm Lan Phương narration takes us deep into the delta and sites of loss, lament and hope.
Phuong and I travelled together to the delta in 2017 and she would go on to do an MFA in Creative Writing on a Fulbright and write a book of poems about the changes that time and tide have brought to her home region of the Mekong Delta. I’m very grateful to her and especially Dan Archer, as well as Rosalie Yu , for collaborating on this crazy project on what resources we have. Dan bore the weight of making the piece with all its technical intricacies and rushed to make sure it all worked in time for the show. Thank you so much, Dan. Also thank you to , who has pitched in at the 11th hour time and time again to help us find resources to make all this work. Really appreciate your support from afar!
Early responses are very positive, with visitors lining up for the headsets, and curators chattering about the piece — the first VR installation at the Gropius Bau. Thank you to curators and for having faith in us and the product, and to the Gropius production team Anna Viehoff, Katharina Mirja Heise, Christopher Wierling and the gallery sitters who are keeping the piece running for the duration of the exhibition.
