A Relation to Infinity : Screening & Talk: Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi & Simon Starling

On 17 November 2021 Art Hub invites you to a double feature screening of Harun Farocki’s ‘The Inextinguishable Fire’ (1969) and Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi’s ‘The In/Extinguishable Fire’ (2019).

Following the film screening, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi will be in conversation with Simon Starling. Starling and Nguyen-Chi will travel back in time and revisit ‘ổn định động’ (2013), a collaborative project and mobile tent structure which migrated from Hà Nội—Hội An—Sài Gòn—Berlin to Frankfurt. In light of the films and a text written by Starling in relation to ‘ổn định động’, they will contemplate spatial and temporal, poetic and political dimensions which “open up the possibility of engaging with infinity within the very finiteness”* of a de/constructed tent and film space.

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Participation is free, but requires sign up via Billetto.

The event will be in English.

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With special thanks to Simon Starling Antje Ehmann and the Harun Farocki Institut for their generous support.

*quote: Foster, Gwendolyn, and Trinh T. Minh-Ha, “A Tale of Love”: A Dialogue with Trinh T Minh-Ha, “Film Criticism 21, no. 3 (1997): 97 https://www.jstor.org/stable/44018888.

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ABOUT THE WORKS

The Inextinguishable Fire (1969), 22:07min

The Inextinguishable Fire adheres to a short experimental documentary format and an essayistic style combining text, narration, and images collected from the mass communications industry. The film is a critique of the American War in Vietnam and the role of industry in the production of chemical weapons. It begins with the following narration: "When we show you pictures of napalm victims, you'll shut your eyes. You'll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you'll close them to the memory. And then you'll close your eyes to the facts." In analyzing the production, dissemination, and consumption of images, he revealed the inextricable links

between media culture, politics, technology, and violence.

The In/Extinguishable Fire (2019), 31:36min

A father and daughter explore their relationship by contemplating the aerodynamics of flying objects and recounting fragmented microhistories of the Cold War period in Germany—birthplace of the daughter—and Vietnam—birthplace of the father.

ABOUT SIMON STARLING

Simon Starling was born in Epsom, England, in 1967. He graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, and was professor of fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt from 2003 to 2013. His practice spans a wide variety of media, including film, installation and photography. Starling won the Turner Prize in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004. He represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and has had solo exhibitions at Frac Ile-de-France, Le Plateau in Paris (2019), Musée régional d’art contemporain in Sérignan (2017), Japan Society in New York (2016), Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2014), Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne (2013), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany (2013), Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan (2011), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (2008), Power Plant in Toronto (2008), Musée d’art

contemporain du Val-de-Marne in Vitry-sur-Seine (2009), Tate Britain in London (2013, 2009) and Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2009). Starling lives in Copenhagen.

ABOUT THUY-HAN NGUYEN-CHI

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi is a Berlin- and London-based artist whose practice mutates in and out of sculpture, installation, moving image, and interdisciplinary research. Her work explores imaginations of freedom at the intersection of film-making and film theory, critical refugee studies and postcolonial studies, personal/prosthetic memory and individual/collective histories. Nguyen-Chi studied Fine Arts at Städelschule and Film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently pursuing PhD research in Film at the University of Westminster. Her work has been exhibited and screened at Art Hub Copenhagen, Copenhagen; Atletika, Vilnius; Centro di Musica Contemporanea di Milano, Milan; NAM, Florence; Haus, Vienna; Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nürnberg; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt;

Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; Portikus, Frankfurt; Sàn Art, Saigon; Site Galleries, Chicago; Whitechapel Gallery, London (forthcoming), among other venues.