YouSaid · the spoken record

Danh Vo

lines on the record: 27
first: 2020-11-06
most recent: 2020-11-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“On which profound note we should end, I would say that Jean-Veau's exhibition, Chicksulub, is on at White Cube Bermansey until the 2nd of November. So people will still have a chance to see that up to the eve of the presidential election. Meanwhile, can I thank Shahida Barry, Roy Vickery and Margot Heller very much for taking part in this discussion, which has been profound and open-ended, as Jan Bo would expect, and we're all now off to walk the Kent coast, I think. Thank you all.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course I was doing, isn't it? Which is bringing those fleeting moments into the gallery and making us look at them in a different kind of way.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Roy, you've spent your life immersed in and looking at and studying nature. Art is supposed to offer a different way of seeing the world, sometimes subtly, sometimes almost without us being aware of it. Has this exhibition changed in any way your experience of the natural world, even for a fleeting second?”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, the idea of the artwork as a kind of votive offering or a contemporary shrine, we worship whatever our religions, we tend to go to museums and galleries. And whether we're conscious of it or not, it's some kind of act of veneration, isn't it?”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting you mentioned Naguchi because of course trees are many things but I mean early early sites of human worship but the notion of a tree or a family tree or lineage I mean lineage and human history and his own personal connectedness to different artists of the past and the way he's worked with them but also our own connectedness atavistically to our distant ancestors is always there the other aspect is exhibition of his is it's brought together and then either through natural cycles of destruction or willful destruction and the dispersal of the market i mean there are pieces in this exhibition that will be acquired by collectors and so the whole will never again be reconfigured and it becomes dispersed but also the pieces that are taken away and put in different collections in different museums will subtly shift meaning and context but also will form”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting that natural light is here and yet the tree is dead, dying before our eyes, whereas in the other room it's artificial light and plants are still surviving or thriving.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a room that we see as we walk through the gallery, but in some ways I went to it last of all. That was my narrative, which is the only room in the exhibition in the gallery with natural light, where there's a tree, an apple tree, I think, and there's a fragment of a body, a Christian body. Take us through this piece. How did you encounter this? How did you read this?”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Changes fundamentally the way you view the piece when you know that it is his partner's feet. In the same way that were it his, it would read in a slightly different way. Where is the self in his work, Margot? Elusively always there but never quite graspable.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's a sculpture called Beauty Queen, which is in the main space. I keep calling it the main space. There are many spaces, but the space with the plants, where there is the cast of feet, which initially reads, I did anyways, the feet of Christ. But then we find out, actually, it's Danbo's partner, it's his lover, and it hangs beneath a Greek or Roman torso. And then you start to see again, the comments you were making earlier, Margot, about guilt and illusion and maybe violation, but also love and how biography plays into it. I thought this was an incredibly powerful work, actually.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say that there are 1,700 plus versions of this. In other words, his father's copy this letter out this many times. And the Catholic saint actually, I mean, the story is very interesting, isn't it? Because he was in prison facing death, execution to be beheaded. And this letter is back to his father in France with some kind of humble acceptance of his fate. So there's the idea of faith, the relationship between father and son that of course Jean-Veau then picks up because it's his own father who copies the letter each time in this kind of additional, this gesture. I don't know whether that's a gesture of reclamation or of appropriation or none of those things or both of those things. But it's a very, very moving notion that every single letter has been painstakingly or lovingly copied. And I suppose that's the personal aspect of religion that he's adhering to or bringing up.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In JG Ballard, I was also reminded of an exhibition Ansam Keefer did at White Cube a long, long time ago with that Old Testament quote about under your city's grass will grow and the idea that every civilization in the end will return to dust and ashes and that nature will reclaim that land. And the fragments of the altarpiece that we just saw, it seems to somehow suggest that Christianity, like every other human movement or every other empire or civilization, has a finite period. It too will crumble. It's a complex relationship that he has with Christianity and Catholicism. Let's try and unpick that a little bit, Margot.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting how these things were mixed in that way. I rather liked the way the gallery had managed to keep them going so well. I have been to similar exhibitions. The plants look more than three quarters dead. I was particularly interested in nosturgions, some of which are not stirring too well. And to me, the nosturians rather symbolised the human race. Are we at the stage now where we are in decline where are the... Empire that's the whole of the world which has been so detrimental to so many species even though it's been good for other species are we in that state where we're losing it and on the way out and that's interesting because the image we're looking at was you turn back aside from the flag there is a beautifully classified or sort of perfect taxonomy of the fragments of an altarpiece”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Roy, let's move on to the grand revelation, if you like. I mean, he is choreographing us as an audience into the large room. We see the flag, which we've just seen of piles of wood. But there are betrines of plants, well, sometimes vitrines, but actually they're growing in all sorts of different receptacles. You're a botanist. I read this as a sort of wonderful generic landscape. Let's go to the specifics, though, of these plants. Does this evoke something very specific or is it actually generic, broadly speaking? I think the interesting thing to me about the plants was the variety of plants. He has some of them are by London standards quite exotic. Others are very ordinary things you'd see on your lawn or in your local common.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's also collaborative. I mean, you mentioned you need the technicians. There's a sense of collaborating with the past too. And the other thing, before we move on to the apocalyptic landscape or post-apocalyptic landscape of the plants in the large gallery, which is also collaborative, he's also very interested in public response and how different groups of people, particularly children, for example, interact with his work, which is obviously not going to be able to happen on the scale he'd want it in this exhibition. But it's something you work with him on, Margot. That's right, isn't it? He choreographs or collaborates with his audiences quite explicitly in some ways.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Didn't he want to take all the fragments of a bronze cast of the Statue of Liberty and then disperse them? So there's the kind of conceptual thing about taking things apart. But the idea that there is a coherent whole at the end is evident in that work. Whereas when he plays with the fragment in the lot of these pieces, it's almost as if it's trying to stop our natural desire to bring it all together into some meaningful whole.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look specifically at some of the pieces where they're in boxes, sometimes gilded, sometimes not. When one articulates that there is the fragment of putty sculpture in a beef eater dry box with a packet of cigarettes on the side, where does it get you? It's a kind of, you know, you could say the old surrealist game about the chance encounter of the sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table. Bring together two disparate realities and a third reality and you have some kind of poetic spark, as Laux Tremont said. I mean, this is well beyond that kind of post-surrealist game, but there's an element of it. But in a sense, he doesn't seem to want us to go in a particular way. We can go in any number of different ways. But is it too open to have any profound meaning?”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The axe is part of the process of taking down the tree from which the sculpture was carved and then the natural world still grows, still persists, still moves on.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before we just interrogate this literal framing as well as a metaphorical framing, Roy was very interested in your take on that statue of the Virgin Mary with, I think it's an assertion, but a flower around her, because obviously in a sense it's a literal representation of what you often see in medieval or Renaissance paintings, but it's also very contemporary rethinking of the found objects and how the natural world intrudes or survives and so on. How did you read that particular piece?”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It starts whole and moves towards the fragment, whereas so much else in the exhibition, Jehita, is fragmentary, isn't it? And we have to move towards putting it into some kind of collective narrative, I suppose. So there's a nice push-pull on this, I think.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's move on because each of the fires is fueled by logs. And there are piles of logs by each fire, but we discover moving down through the gallery to the largest gallery at WhiteCube at the end that actually the logs come from an American flag. And it's a very specific American flag, not the contemporary one. But perhaps you'd like to pick up on that, Margot.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The network of furnaces in a space without any artificial light. I mean, there is one gallery that has it. Should sound more sinister than we're in some ways making it seem. So it's the ambivalence there. I mean, I thought initially when I walked in of kind of death chambers, but then of course there is that kind of warmth and holiness too.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was rainy when I arrived, so I didn't really spend much time in the arbour. I went in to warm myself up and dry out. It's very elemental, isn't it, from the start, Roy. I mean, we have earth and plants outside, and obviously we'll come.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, homelessness and refuge is an interesting starting point. I mean, there is a journey that you can make round the exhibition, but whether there is a coherent narrative is something that we can interrogate as we go along. There's certainly all sorts of different ways that one can go. But literally, as you enter the gallery, the first thing you see down the corridor is a fire. Shaheeda, that hominess is interesting, isn't it? Uncanny maybe? I don't know.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hi, and Roy Vickery, member of the South London Battalion Institute and a legendary writer on plant folklore, and whose books are much admired by Jean Vaux. Hi, Roy. Hello. Margot, you did an exhibition with Jean Vaux, as I said, at the South London Gallery last year called Untitled. Actually, titling an identity for Jean Beau is critical, isn't it? I mean, he's Vietnamese born, he's Berlin-based, he's a Danish citizen. Let's just unpack a little of where he came from and how that impacts on the way we frame his exhibition.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Execution of Atohelpa, the last Inca Empire in 1533, to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 marking the end of the Japanese Empire. Many of the works from the exhibition touch on the themes of fallen empires, of decay and rebirth, and were brought right up to the present moment by an installation that's literally being dismantled and burned piece by piece as we draw closer to the November the 3rd, the day when Donald Trump may or may not be re-elected as President of the United States of America. Joining me to discuss this extraordinary exhibition and explore its themes and resonances are three visionary speakers. Margot Heller, who's Director of the South London Gallery, which stays at an exhibition by Jean Vaux in 2019. Hello. Hello, Margot. Shaheed Abari, academic author and philosopher at the University of the Arts in London. She's a frequent broadcaster on BBC Television and Radio.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Channel. We hope you enjoy the discussion, and now let's go to the episode. Hello, welcome everyone to a special event which WhiteCube are hosting in partnership with Intelligence Squared. Today we're talking about the work of the artist Jan Vo, whose exhibition Chikshulub is currently shown at the gallery. Jan's work, while deeply personal, is inspired by great sweeps of political and historical events and juxtaposes ready-made objects from very different contexts to challenge the way we think about them. The exhibition spans a vast time frame. The title, Chikshi Lub, is the main name given to the crater buried beneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, caused by the asteroid which struck the Earth 66 million years ago, and allegedly, or probably, wiped out the dinosaurs. The exhibition includes a timeline accessible on your phone via a QR code which charts the collapse of 22 empires from the fall of Persepolis at the hands of Alexander the Great in 330 BCE by the exit”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hello podcast listeners, it's Connor here. Our podcast today is a recording of a great conversation we last week for a video event in partnership with the YCU Gallery. Here in London, the event focused on an exhibition by leading artist Jan Vo, which closed just the day before the US presidential election earlier this week. Vo's work speaks to this moment in history very powerfully. His work focuses on the nature of the and the inter of life across Globe feels like a very pertinent conversation this week as we all seek to make sense of the election and the intensifying pandemic. And if you would like to see a visual representation of the works discussed in the podcast, you can watch a video version of today's podcast on the intelligence squared university.”
2020-11-06 · Intelligence Squared · Danh Vo: Traces of History and The End of Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source