Talking talking: better today, our sources of local wisdom: again translation diffused Hui's Project Art Marathon display at the Art Cafe, but we got a decent survey of the clash of poetics 'n' politics from Choang Dai's studies on 20th century Vietnamese lit crit (false dualities of party/literati; reappropriation of Marxist language in defence of counter-revo aestheticism; whose Doi Moi anyway), plus a stilted dialogue with the thoroughly badass samizdat publisher Ly Doi of Open Mouth, who together with Bui Chat, Khuc Duy and Nguyen Quan rebel against Writers' Union stanzas of "enchantment" by issuing texts like “The Cunt Has Left and Other Cursing Poems”; oh yeah, that's what I wanna hear.
Also got to meet Nguyen Trinh Tih, filmmaker, who screens her documentary "Love Man Love Woman" about the dong co, the gay transvestite shamans: they dance for Dau Mao, the Buddhic native Vietnamese goddess who was cast into heaven as punishment for strangling curious imperial scholars when disguised as a pretty street hawker, her one mercy being the promise of human entertainment hence the divine dancers; and these are urban priestesses, mind you: they dial their boyfriends on cellphone and webcam and clinicalise homosexuality as a phenomenon/disease/destiny, for only in genderlessness are they deific. Should interview her for Fridae.com.
Now, on to Superintense!
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