Intergrade Hole
Sound sculpture, 12:25min (loop), 2015

"I have often wondered, when I looked at the tiny oscillations and pulsations that compose us, where, then, are our thoughts, Johor? Where, what we feel? For it is not possible that these are not matter, just as we are. In a universe that is all gradations of matter, from gross to fine to finer, so that we end up with everything we are composed of in a lattice, a grid, a mesh, a mist, where particles or movements so small we cannot observe them are held in a strict and accurate web, that is nevertheless nonexistent to the eyes we use for ordinary living — in this system of fine and finer, where then is the substance of a thought?"
— Doris Lessing, 'The Making Of The Representative For Planet 8'

Accompanied by voices from different spaces and times, Intergrade Hole by Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi and the composer Gaile Griciute takes the listener on a journey through "a deserted landscape sizzling with change". The listener is invited to enter a hole, an empty space filled with multiple temporal realities and gravitational forces. As these realities collide with each other, the boundaries between individual/collective, facts/fictions, past/present/future, are being questioned.

Nguyen-Chi travelled to Antwerp to record Otobong Nganka's recollections of her journey through the ecologically exploited landscape of Namibia, a memory of the past. These fragments are interwoven with text excerpts by Doris Lessing's space fiction novel Canopus in Argos: Archives, a memory of the future, and field recordings from Frankfurt and Vilnius resulting in an intricately layered cinematic libretto.

Installation view: contemporaryartdaily.com/2015/09/otobong-nkanga-at-portikus/
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Credits
Concept and composition: Gaile Griciute, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Libretto: Gaile Griciute, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Text material: Doris Lessing, Otobong Nkanga
Voices: Gaile Griciute, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Otobong Nkanga
Sound material: Field recordings in Antwerp, Frankfurt and Vilnius
Sound recording: Gaile Griciute, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Sound engineering: Tom Forsythe

Special thanks to Arturas Bumsteinas, Claudia Famulok, Clare Molloy, Otobong Nkanga, Philippe Pirotte, Fabian Schöneich, Portikus Frankfurt am Main.

Intergrade Hole

This is the soundscape of 

Linger On Your Pale Blue Eyes, 2016
HD Video, 17:31min (loop)

'Linger On Your Pale Blue Eyes' explores a scientist's quest for freedom through observing the unfolding of her stream of consciousness. Feeling psychologically suffocated from living in a suppressive political system, she escapes from her society. In order to reach the other shore, she swims through the Black Sea in darkness and navigates with the aid of the Polar Star and the continuously changing starry sky.

You are invited to enter the dynamic mindscape of an escaping persona, a mental laboratory experimenting with multiple layers of reality. In diverse states of darkness/brightness an unknown mind/body oscillates between various dimensions of dis/orientation, while navigating through a space of poetic and political imagination.
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This work is loosely based on a document written by a scientist, in which he describes his escape from East to West Germany in 1969. It was developed in collaboration with a dancer/choreographer from the Forsythe Company/Frankfurt, a composer from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre/Vilnius, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics/Heidelberg and The Institute for Quantum Optics and Information/Vienna.

Credits
Director: Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Director's assistant: Johannes Lehnen
Script: Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Text Material: Text by an Anonymous Author; 'What Is The Contemporary?' by Giorgio Agamben; 'Worstward Ho' by Samuel Beckett; 'Agua Viva' by Clarice Lispector
Choreography/Performance: Frances Chiaverini
Voice: Frances Chiaverini, Son Doan Hoang
Cinematography: Arri Amira / Son Doan Hoang; GoPro / Frances Chiaverini, Son Doan Hoang, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi; Mobile phone camera / Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Camera assistants: Jeremy Bourgois, Alexandre Cabanne
Found footage: Hussein Chalayan - Spring/Summer Collection 2007
Sonic composition: Gaile Griciute
Sound recording: Gaile Griciute, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Sound engineering: Gabriele Griciute
Editing: Leo Lochmann, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
Colour grading: Loup Brenta

Special thanks to Mehrshad Atashi, Arturas Bumsteinas, Clementine Coupau, Nico Czyz, Peter Fischli, Anna Goetz, Patrick Keaveney, Ian Purnell, Jörg Redeker, Mahsa Saloor, Simon Starling, Hoa Thuyen, Nour Tourmeh, Institute for Quantum Optics and Information - Vienna / Manuel Erhard, Mehul Malik, Mariusz Semzu, Amir Tavalla, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy - Heidelberg / Tri Laksmana Astraatmadja, Klaus Jäger, The German National Academic Foundation / Julia Apitzsch, Jana Lisicki, Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology / Amir Moqanaki.

Linger On Your Pale Blue Eyes

Stars Are Not Hereditary, 2017
Live performance with prepared piano, tape recorders, circuit bend synthesizers, 16:16min

A collaboration between Technologies Of Non/Self + Weld Mignon.

'Stars Are Not Hereditary' is based on a preliminary sonic composition for the moving image 'Linger On Your Pale Blue Eyes' and has been transformed into a new piece through a live performance by Weld Mignon in Vilnius/Lithuania.

Stars Are Not Hereditary

Technologies Of Non/Self is an open collective operating in the interstices between contemporary art and sonic composition.  Co-created by Gaile Griciute and Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi in 2013.

Technologies Of Non/Self

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