Crepuscular Dreams of (Dis-) Alienation

by Chooc Ly Tan

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the fundraiser print is taken from the video exhibited during Feb 2020.

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read the great Art Monthly review here

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Chooc Ly Tan is a French-born Afro/Vietnamese/Cambodian artist and DJ who works across video and sound to find an experimental cadence within the personal histories, found footage, and political undertows that inform and inflect the Afro-Asian diaspora, in the face of on-going colonialism(s).

 

Crepuscular Dreams of (Dis-) Alienation is a collage of found and homemade audio and visual material, drawn from the artist's multiple camera devices (Gopro, DSLR, BPCC, iphone) and youtube videos, intermingling trips to visit family in Cambodia with personal material from her own unreleased music production.  The audio-visual collage presents interviews from women and non-binary people of colour that include friends and family, as well as the artists’ sister.  Tracing a diaspora across Paris, Algeria, Reykjavik, the Congo, Cambodia and Dublin, they critically reflect on present day considerations from the position of those who’s parents and grandparents directly experienced the colonial exploits of various European imperialisms.

 

The video was developed for the Southern Summer School, a collective project initiated by artists Dorine van Meel and Nelmarie du Preez, that brings together art practitioners and cultural workers based in South Africa, the Netherlands, and the UK.  The project takes as it’s starting point an acknowledgment that the colonial involvement of the Dutch and British empire in South Africa is not only a historical fact that may be consigned to the past, but that colonialism continues to operate in the power relations very much of the present.