Zoe Butt: It is good to think about Mekong Mechanical again. I can see it initiating the importance of the Mekong for you; in addition to such recurring elements in your consequent works, such as the use of natural and artificial light and sound; the picturing of human labor as technologically or seasonally controlled; the role of testimony, anecdote and superstition in your chosen overlaying narration; the presence of monotony as a seeming innate and repetitive characteristic of both human and nonhuman worlds… What was the initial trigger for you to explore this critical waterway of South East Asia?

Thảo Nguyên Phan: What is the Mekong to me? As a child I was taught that the river was magical; a place with beautiful nature and endless natural resources, the rice basket of South East Asia, and the large fish tributary that did not only feed its people, but provided enough to export to the West. However, all I learnt from textbooks is fiction. I had started to learn more about the challenges that the region is facing when in 2011 I was invited by curators Trần Lương (based in Hanoi, Vietnam), and Iola Lenzi (based in Singapore) to contribute with a work to the exhibition platform “Riverscape in Flux”, which responded to the ongoing debate on the environmental challenges in the Mekong region, such as dam building, sand mining and sea level rising. Even though my work has not directly tackled these issues, it is an attempt to challenge my own education of seeing the river as a subject of exploitation and a line on the map and to transform it into an animated entity, the constantly in-flux variations of ‘wetness’.

ZB: The most recurring sequence in this work is the factory worker standing rather absent-mindedly behind a never-ending conveyor belt of fish fillets. She stands under fluorescent light, heavily donned in protective gear. You seem to focus on her ‘jolt’ back into reality from her reverie, her hands suddenly reaching out to the sea of neatly mechanized flesh, stretching and pulling their skinned bodies across the moving metal shelf. This semi-conscious state of the ‘reverie’ is also a recurring motif in much of your work. Can you share a little about your encounter with this woman and why this motif returns in your moving images?

TNP: Mekong Mechanical is my first attempt to break through paintings and follow my yearnings for filmmaking. The mechanical rhythm of the factory tempted me to capture it in moving images, probably a  classic topic that could be seen in the work of the Lumière brothers, who shot workers (many of them women) leaving the Lumière factory (1895); or the magnificent movements of the female workers in the cigarette factory scene in Man with a movie camera (1929). The invention of cinema goes hand-in-hand with capitalism and modernism, but how to embrace its magic while being critical of its limitations?

To enter the fish factory is not easy, as it is strictly guided. I used a small, amateur digital camera to capture these shots. I did not know this woman personally, but I was attracted by her absent minded yet graceful gesture of straightening the fillet. The small gesture of daydreaming is for me a quiet resistance to the repetitive, lonesome process of night-shift working. And this concept of the ‘reverie’ as evolution and resistance has continued in my work since then.

ZB: The contrast between the natural world of the Mekong and the livelihood of its citizens are of stark comparison in this piece—the metal mechanical control of the industry of fish farming an abrupt shift from the fragility of life lived floating on water. Your work highlights the poverty exacerbated by the State, life (both human and nonhuman) at the mercy of progress and its industrial thirst. Your most recent film-work, Becoming Alluvium (2019) seems to be a kind of sequel to Mekong Mechanical in deepening such contrast. What made you return to this particular subject now?

TNP: In Vietnam, the Pangasius fillet is a huge industry in the Mekong Delta that contributes to the economy just behind the importance of rice exports. The fillet is a form that does not apply to Vietnamese cuisine but rather to a Western idea of food. When you buy fish in most traditional markets in Vietnam, you buy them alive, and you have to do the act of killing yourself before enjoying the meal (or you could ask the favor from the fish seller to kill the fish for you and you would pay a bit more for it). To be qualified for export, fish must be of even size and quality, which does not occur naturally without the use of industrial food and antibiotics provided by large corporations. Subtle cultural differences in our perception of consumption makes me think of the mechanical and industrial process to bring food to our table; the worker and the fish fillet she is arranging appear to be the most elementary, yet most fragile, element of the food chain. I would not blame the state only for the environmental damages on the Mekong, but the collective force of the state and its citizenry constantly seeking a “brighter, better” future.

In 2019, I returned to my concern of the Mekong via my ongoing work Becoming Alluvium, which I consider a continuation of Mekong Mechanical. I guess this return is partially my response to the climate movement that is strongly mentioned in the media with the youths in the West. However, why is there such silence in the countries worse affected by climate change, as the so called third world, developing nations such as Vietnam and many countries in the Mekong region included? Is the right for resistance (including myself with my English training and art education) a privilege? I started to research more about folklore and oral literature from the region, because I'm from Vietnam, but I have no idea about the folk traditions of Laos or Cambodia for example—we are neighbors, but so far apart. Dominated by the cultures of other places, such as America and Europe. When I started this project, for me it was a rediscovery of cultures that are close yet very distant. It's a very strange feeling. Through rediscovering these cultures and folk tales, I also learnt about the locals' views of climate change, and the relationship between people and animals. Alternative solutions are somehow already embedded in tradition, but people forget, ignore, or erase them, because they want to have a more civilised, modern version.

ZB: You talk of ‘brightness’ in your moving images in reference to progress­—a story not only of technological invention, but also of the double-edged sword of knowledge and spiritual belief. Much of your moving images, including your paintings, continue what we find in Mekong Mechanical—which is the dilemma of light in what it reveals. For the people of the Mekong, what do you seek to ‘reveal’ on their behalf?

TNP: What is this brightness? A physical and spiritual brightness that uplifts us but also blinds us. As a student at the Fine Art University in Saigon, every year I volunteered to a program called “Green Summer”, which is considered a training platform for the communist youth to help people in remote areas—we did activities like teaching free summer classes and helped farmers with their jobs. I went to places in Vietnam where electricity had not yet been made available. That summer without any electricity was significant for me in terms of thinking about the artificial light provided by electricity, in comparison to the spiritual enlightenment of folklore culture—whose trace is slowly disappearing as the much-awaited brightness of electricity finally arrives. Again, none of these works of mine are to be nostalgic or anti-modern, but to suggest an alternative way of embracing technological invention that shows a respect to, as you mentioned, “the double-edged sword of knowledge and spiritual belief.”

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