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Wednesday, November
1
Admission: $5, $10 minimum
Showtime: 8pm
reservations
are recommended
Curator and artist Trong G. Nguyen will be video screening his
collaborative performance with the Icelandic band Seabear
from the recent Sequences: Real Time Festival
in Reykjavik.
Stolnar Stundir (2006) involved Nguyen burying a
work titled TIME CAPSULE OF APPROPRIATED OBJECTS (TO BE
OPENED AT TIME'S END) at an undisclosed location in Iceland.
Upon the artist's demise, the work’s GPS coordinates are
to be passed on to a lone inheritor, who promises to continue
the tradition perpetually. It is literally the passing on of Time.
The burial was videotaped and broadcasted live at Safn
Foundation, where the band Seabear (hidden
behind two draperies) played an improvised score to accompany
Nguyen's mission. As the tricky title indicates, every item inside
this time capsule was stolen– both materially and experientially,
as in a "stolen moment," literally translated from stolnar
stundir, the playful epigram referencing kitschy Icelandic
romance novels.
The small wooden container itself was an (legally) appropriated
box that originally housed a series of Vito Acconci etchings from
1985. Thwarting the notion of what a time capsule is suppose to
be, the object does not reward patience or posterity, but rather,
finds satisfaction in loss, lament, and dismissal. It is the resigned
fate of Kronos devouring his children.
ABOUT TRONG G. NGUYEN
Nguyen has exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo
and group exhibitions, including the 2006 Havana Biennial,
the Float Biennial at Socrates Sculpture Park,
and most recently Humanitarians Not Heroes, a
one person exhibition at Tenri Cultural Institute. He has received
grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Puffin Foundation,
and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Nguyen also curates regularly
at New General Catalog, an experimental gallery he established
last year in the Greenpoint neighborhood. He would like to thank
Digital Society, Safn Foundation, and Reykjavik's
finest Sindri, Örn Ingi,
Guggy', and Birta!
Trong
G. Nguyen
Safn
Foundation
Seabear
Sequences
New
General Catalog
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