On the Ground
2025, 1-channel HD video installation, color and sound, 20 min
To contemplate the dual role of an artist—both as the one taking the photograph and as an active participant in an intimate relationship—this performative photograph reflects my concerns about the autonomy of the subject while also capturing my early realizations about stepping into the frame and becoming a subject of the gaze.
Situated in a welding and large-scale machining workshop that services freight equipment and container-truck components in Thủ Đức, the film traces a process of symbiosis between man and machine — an ongoing negotiation in which both touch, affect, and respond to each other. By adopting the perspective of the tools, the debris, and the labouring surface, the film positions the ground as the site where labour becomes legible, and its perception is intensified. This vantage also reveals the often risk-laden conditions of the workspace while foregrounding labourers’ active, tactile engagement with materiality. From this position, the film offers a glimpse of how labourers cooperate and work together within a harsh, physically demanding environment, while signalling the ethnographer’s own navigation — negotiating between his position and the camera’s placement as a mode of looking.
Note: For the full version of the film, please feel free to reach out to me — I will be happy to provide it.
2025, 1-channel HD video installation, color and sound, 20 min
To contemplate the dual role of an artist—both as the one taking the photograph and as an active participant in an intimate relationship—this performative photograph reflects my concerns about the autonomy of the subject while also capturing my early realizations about stepping into the frame and becoming a subject of the gaze.
Situated in a welding and large-scale machining workshop that services freight equipment and container-truck components in Thủ Đức, the film traces a process of symbiosis between man and machine — an ongoing negotiation in which both touch, affect, and respond to each other. By adopting the perspective of the tools, the debris, and the labouring surface, the film positions the ground as the site where labour becomes legible, and its perception is intensified. This vantage also reveals the often risk-laden conditions of the workspace while foregrounding labourers’ active, tactile engagement with materiality. From this position, the film offers a glimpse of how labourers cooperate and work together within a harsh, physically demanding environment, while signalling the ethnographer’s own navigation — negotiating between his position and the camera’s placement as a mode of looking.
Note: For the full version of the film, please feel free to reach out to me — I will be happy to provide it.