Movements: Battles and Solidarity
INSTALLATION
(video projection, 6-channel audio, handmade screens. 6:50m; 2020)
INSTALLATION
(video projection, 6-channel audio, handmade screens. 6:50m; 2020)
A large-scale, three-channel video installation on handmade screens that explores the intersections of the Civil Rights movement in high fashion and the labor unrest in the garment industry during the long 70s in the global context of the Vietnam war. The work explores shared political and physical “movements” made manifest in the catwalk, the run, and the march.
Landless in Second Life
INSTALLATION
(video projection. 2010)
INSTALLATION
(video projection. 2010)
In a fantasy world, are there immigrants? What does it mean to be landless in a virtual environment? What wishes could we fulfill?
“Landless in Second Life” is an exploration of immigrants’ lives, starting with my mother’s. As a single parent of six, my mother never made more than $16,000 a year. In the early 1990s, my brothers and I started a retirement fund for her called the TranFund. She died a few years after the fund was established, cutting our goal of buying her a house with the TranFund short. In collaboration with my brothers, I’ve designed a home for our mother in the virtual world of Second Life, a house filled with avatars of her children next to an all-giving tree.
About Second Life:
Presidential candidates, Ivy League universities, corporations, and non-profits are among those who have their own islands here, hoping to reach the denizens of a virtual world known as Second Life. Created by Linden Lab of San Francisco and launched in 2003, Second Life has over a quarter of a million members worldwide who create many more avatars, their “digital representation”. Visual and media artists have also engaged Second Life as an exhibition venue, subject matter, and software tool. Using the same software engine that generate images in computer and online games, many artists have produced media art, called Machinima (a composite of machine and cinema), which pushes the parameters and concepts of games themselves as well as digital media.
‘Landless in Second Life” is housed at the USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy Second Life Island
Second Life programming by Bjorn Ziggy Littlefield-Palmer
Left image on screen:
“Landless in Second Life: Nostalgia: The All-giving Tree” (2010). Video Projection with Sound
Center image on screen:
“Landless in Second Life: Fantasy: Sugar’s House” (2010). Video Projection with Sound
Right image on screen:
“Landless in Second Life: Identity: You Are What You Do” (2010). Video Projection with Sound
Thank you:
Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Bjorn Ziggy Littlefield-Palmer for her skills, insights, and aesthetic contributions. Scripps College.
“Landless in Second Life” is an exploration of immigrants’ lives, starting with my mother’s. As a single parent of six, my mother never made more than $16,000 a year. In the early 1990s, my brothers and I started a retirement fund for her called the TranFund. She died a few years after the fund was established, cutting our goal of buying her a house with the TranFund short. In collaboration with my brothers, I’ve designed a home for our mother in the virtual world of Second Life, a house filled with avatars of her children next to an all-giving tree.
About Second Life:
Presidential candidates, Ivy League universities, corporations, and non-profits are among those who have their own islands here, hoping to reach the denizens of a virtual world known as Second Life. Created by Linden Lab of San Francisco and launched in 2003, Second Life has over a quarter of a million members worldwide who create many more avatars, their “digital representation”. Visual and media artists have also engaged Second Life as an exhibition venue, subject matter, and software tool. Using the same software engine that generate images in computer and online games, many artists have produced media art, called Machinima (a composite of machine and cinema), which pushes the parameters and concepts of games themselves as well as digital media.
‘Landless in Second Life” is housed at the USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy Second Life Island
Second Life programming by Bjorn Ziggy Littlefield-Palmer
Left image on screen:
“Landless in Second Life: Nostalgia: The All-giving Tree” (2010). Video Projection with Sound
Center image on screen:
“Landless in Second Life: Fantasy: Sugar’s House” (2010). Video Projection with Sound
Right image on screen:
“Landless in Second Life: Identity: You Are What You Do” (2010). Video Projection with Sound
Thank you:
Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Bjorn Ziggy Littlefield-Palmer for her skills, insights, and aesthetic contributions. Scripps College.
Locutores
INSTALLATION
(postcards. 2006)
INSTALLATION
(postcards. 2006)
Draw A Line and Follow It, was a project that invited LA-based artists to participate in an improvisational process based on the Fluxus practices of the 60s and 70s. This exhibition strategically focused on collaborative processes, real-time art production, and collective networking. For the show, I produced a series of postcards, titled Locutores, about the impact of Spanish-language DJ’s on turning out high numbers of protestors for the immigrants’ rights marches on May Day 2006. The postcards were distributed widely and mailed back to the exhibition gallery with comments on people’s experiences with the DJ’s or the march.
NSF Award #9119703
INSTALLATION
(pastics, metal, tap water, salt, watercolor, 2005)
INSTALLATION
(pastics, metal, tap water, salt, watercolor, 2005)
NSF Award #9119703: FIBR: Role of Perchlorate in Breast Milk as an Inoculation for Terror visualizes an unprecedented research project by Gene Genies Worldwide©™, funded by the National Science Foundation, to create an antidote to terror. Exploiting the pre-existing condition of perchlorate (a derivative of jet fuel) found in ground water and breast milk samples across the U.S., Gene Genies Worldwide©™ has developed a hybrid form of perchlorate to enhance its effects on human physiology. The display in this venue continues our efforts to bridge the sciences and arts while publicizing our activities in innovative ways.
Gene Genies Worldwide Ads
INSTALLATION
(video, 2m; 2004)
INSTALLATION
(video, 2m; 2004)
Exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts, and as part of the TEN exhibition produced by NewTown Pasadena, this elevator installation displayed three ads we created for Gene Genies Worldwide©™. The ads were originally commissioned by Frauke Sandig and Erik Black for a PBS-funded documentary they produced titled Frozen Angels, on the topic of reproductive technologies in Los Angeles. As a reaction to the ubiquity and penetration of the media, the installation emulates embedded TV’s in institutional elevators where there is a captive audience, and try as they might, viewers can never really ignore the messages being aired.
(C) 2021 TRAN, T. KIM-TRANG
MEDIA ARTIST LOS ANGELES, CA
MEDIA ARTIST LOS ANGELES, CA