Roundtable: Walking with Shifts

   A place keeps shifting — so should the ways we observe, listen to, remember and inhabit it shift along with it? Four practitioners sit down in Ba Đình to discuss the part that usually stays backstage: not the finished project, but the method — why it was chosen, how it was built, how it was tested, and how it changed as it travelled through different contexts.

   Space, landscape, people and the ecologies around us are always in motion, and art, architecture and cultural practice have shown they can sharpen how deeply we feel a place. What is still missing is public discussion of the methods themselves. This meeting opens that toolkit: walking, field research, artist residencies, community contact, experimental tool sets — each method examined from the moment it took shape to the moment it broke.

   Who is at the table
— Artist and curator Dinh Thao Linh (Đinh Thảo Linh) — born 1993, living between Hoà Bình and Hanoi; took part in documenta fifteen (Kassel, 2022) and received the Prince Claus Seed Award (2021)
— Local cultural activist Nguyen Vu Hai (Nguyễn Vũ Hải)
— Artist Dang Thuy Anh (Đặng Thùy Anh) — initiator of the “Transient Ecologies” project
— Moderated by curator Linh Lê

   The talk belongs to “Transient Ecologies”, a project Đặng Thùy Anh started after a Berlin residency under Ecological Futures — an initiative of the Goethe-Institut worldwide together with the architecture magazine ARCH+. The toolkit shaped there is now being tested and extended against Hanoi. The project is run by Á Space in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Hà Nội.

   If you work in art, architecture, research or community practice and you are stuck at the “where do I even start” stage with a place or a community, this is a chance to hear other people describe the messy part of the process. It also works if you are simply curious about a Hanoi that changes by the week — the venue sits in Ba Đình, a short ride west of the Old Quarter.

   The roundtable requires advance registration through the organisers' form.

   A good method is not found in a book — it gets sharpened while walking. Which one would you take home?