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Thursday in Residence with Tam Nguyen
Writing Against Mastery

Thursday 7 March 2024, 19:00
Thursday in Residence with Tam Nguyen

© Fondation Jan Michalski, Tonatiuh Ambrosetti

Event completed

Language

Event in English, translated into French

Entrance

Free, under reservation

Every first Thursday of each month, from 7 to 8 pm, a writer in residence opens a window on his or her work, universe and motives, in a free form of intervention. An hour of carte blanche to share, followed by a drink.

Tam Nguyen’s preoccupation with art historical methods gave rise to his/their desire to explore narratives outside of discourses in Vietnamese arts that center around wartime trauma and postcolonial politics. The first chapter of their multidisciplinary project Prosaic Trānsquīlus is what he/they considers a “parasitic publication” in an academic journal, for it was constructed like a research article of art history but does not contain any argument or serve any academic purposes. In this Thursday in residence, Tam will talk about the possibilities of “useless scholarship,” in which academic writings are subject to intentional misusages, and how his/their practice as a whole refuses to settle among the myriad of masterful conventions in the creative world. An invitation to think about the relationship between artmaking and text-making, as well as the different ways to expand creative spaces through experimental practices at large.

Biography

Tam Nguyen (he/they, b. 2000) is an emerging writer, curator, researcher, and overall art practitioner. Tam’s creative practice favors radical forms of knowledge embodiment by negating the gaps between text-making, artmaking, and scholarship. He/they is the recipient of the Emerging Writers’ Fellowship (Southeast of Now, 2023), and an artist-in-residence at the NPAK international residency program where he participated in the 3rd NPAK Annual Festival of Installation Art: Flow, and organized his open studio An Equal Among Equals (NPAK-ACCEA, 2023). Tam’s writings have appeared in numerous publications, including diaCRITICS, Heavy Feather Review, MAYDAY, sin cesar, Softblow, Queer Southeast Asia, and Southeast of Now.

In residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation
From 6 March to 2 May 2024