Artist talk by Lananh Chu

   Sound, moving image and poetry are the three materials Lananh Chu works with, and at Á Space she will lay her practice out in front of a small Hanoi audience. The talk is framed as an introduction: the artist presents herself to the art community here, and wants to learn from it in return. If you have ever wondered how a work grows out of the noise of soil and trees, this evening is worth the trip across the river.

   Her pieces start from ordinary things: soil, trees, animals and objects. She is drawn to the entanglements between humans and everything non-human around them; she was trained in Media Studies and says the field still shapes what she does. Another strand of her practice is a long trail of experiments with sound and listening, which she follows as a researcher and as a poet at once.

   The essentials:

• — sound and moving image are the artist's main material
• — poetry is another form her practice takes
• — recurring themes: soil, trees, animals, objects and human ties with the non-human
• — the format is an intimate conversation, not a lecture from a podium

   The evening suits anyone working with sound art, field recording, video or media research, and anyone simply curious about how an artist puts her practice into words. Á Space is an independent art space deep in a lane in Long Biên, on the far side of the Red River. It is genuinely hard to find the first time: at the end of the lane turn right and walk about 500 metres.

   The conversation is held in Vietnamese and no translation has been announced. The organiser has said nothing about booking a seat or about an entrance fee, and the announcement itself went up only a couple of days before the event, so check the details with the space in advance. Allow more travel time than the map suggests and bring your questions: in a format like this, they are the better half of the evening.