Anna-Catharina Gebbers: The images and sounds of the work are almost a scan or map of Vietnam: what are its locations?

Sung Tieu: No Gods, No Masters interweaves two distinct narratives and sites. One is connected to the past of America and Vietnam: the occurrence of a psychological weapon related to the US Operation Wandering Soul during America’s war in Vietnam. The other is linked to my own migratory history. For the shots along the Mekong river in the South region of Vietnam, I travelled to the locations where “Ghost Tape No. 10” was supposedly broadcast to the landscape: on top of the Black Virgin Mountain Northwest of Ho Chi Minh City and Mỏ Cày, a rural area along the Mekong Delta. This imagery is then juxtaposed with footage shot in my family home in Hải Dương, a town located halfway between Hanoi and Hải Phòng, in the North of the country. What unites these various sites is their deeply rooted belief in a spiritual existence of supernatural origin.

ACG: The pictures from your home’s environment interweave the supply route of the Vietcong with your birthplace: what is the area where your family is based? Can you tell us about this region and your family's connection to it?

ST: My family is from the industrial province of Hải Dương, a rather insignificant town located in the Red River Delta. The area has been known for its agricultural and industrial production. In fact, my grandmother’s family were farmers and owners of arable land in Hải Phòng, who then were dispossessed following the land reform in North Vietnam in the 1950s. The programme resulted in the execution of thousands of “landlords” and led to the redistribution of land and establishment of collective farms, which later on were abandoned. After that, my grandmother became a seller of salt and met my grandfather, a bus driver, during her regular commutes to Hải Dương for work. Although these narratives are not explicitly addressed in the film, I was curious to indirectly juxtapose Vietnam’s rural land with my family’s agricultural past.

ACG: The division of Vietnam into a Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic of South Vietnam, later its reunification as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, has parallels with the division of Germany into the German Democratic and Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War. The Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, (the first museum, where your work No Gods, No Masters is shown in Germany) stands not only in the formerly divided city of Berlin, but also in the border area between these two parts. Your father first came to Germany when it was still divided. When you and your mother joined in 1992, Germany was already formally united, but the rift was still noticeable. These Cold War histories of a divided and then reuniting country both in Vietnam and Germany are connected in your biography.

ST: My father emigrated to East Germany in 1987, the year I was born. He came as a contract worker following the Agreement between the GDR and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on the Importation of Contract Labour in 1980. The first place he lived in was suburban Freital, a village outside Dresden, where he worked in the nearby factory while studying. My mother and I arrived in the country five years later, in 1992, just after the fall of the wall. I am amazed how these histories still live on and effect our collective psyche today. I often call myself a post-Cold War child and I am part of a fragmented diaspora community here in Berlin, where former North Vietnamese contract worker families and South Vietnamese refugees come together. It is uncanny how these divisions still live on and define our perception of self.

ACG: You regularly visit your family in Vietnam, who celebrate a ritual every time you return. What are the hopes and wishes your family has for these ceremonies? What values are negotiated, exchanged and passed on?

ST: Every time I return to Vietnam, my family prepares a lavish ceremony to call the gods and ancestral ghosts to speak to me. The hours-long ritual attempts to convey a higher truth, one infused with wisdom. It might sound really mundane, but the goals my family—or the gods and ghosts so to speak—have for me are very traditional: financial stability, marriage and children. It’s a conservative and heteronormative life model but it is also one they believe will bring me most happiness. I tend to forget that my family lived through one of the most violent wars and through poverty. It is in many ways only understandable that these are the intentions the “gods” have for me even though they don’t necessary align with my own life goals.

ACG: Different levels of historiography, counter-narratives and biographical aspects merge into your sound and image inventions. Can you tell us something about the images? The colours of the images are inverted except for a few coloured pictures. We see moving images merge into photographic images, which reminds us, as Roland Barthes noted, that photographies always show a moment that has already passed at the moment of the shot/taking the picture: What artistic decisions are behind the choice of media, effects, and image composition?

ST: Throughout the entire process, my artistic decisions were led by an attempt to capture a spectre, whether that is the one of the ghost tape or the one my family evokes. Inverting the images were a consequence of that thought: that there is no accuracy in the footage when in truth I am in search of a layer underneath. Equally, I think there is something about past memories and their activation that is revealed when still photographs are placed next to moving images, and when at times a still picture becomes a moving one; the captured image becomes fleeting, like an appearance that becomes shadow.

ACG: In addition to the alienation effects on the image level and the electronic distortions on the sound level, you accompany your sound-video works with newspapers, which introduce a further distancing aspect: besides the abstraction created by the image and sound collages, you collage your research results into printed newspapers and work together with an author. Why did you request him to collaborate with you?

ST: Prior to the making of this work, I have done research on psychological warfare and its effect on human psychology. Subsequently, for my exhibition “Remote Viewing” at Nha San Collective in Hanoi in 2017, I wanted to show parts of this research and artistic process. While No Gods, No Masters addresses the subject matter in a more sensorial way, attempting to dive into a subconscious layer of the Vietnamese-American psyche, the exhibited newspaper articles revealed the investigative engagement of the project, but done in a subjective manner, from the perspective of a fictional “American journalist”. What interested me at the time was that there is no “objective” research that can be done about America’s war in Vietnam. All sides are tainted, whether that is the reportage from Western media outlets or from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In order to communicate that layer of subjectivity, I worked with American journalist Vincent Bevins on writing the three newspaper articles for the exhibition. I also wanted to be explicit that my views aren’t the “accurate” or “objective” ones, but rather that they are foreign views as well. I have been living in Germany most of my life and I didn’t want to return to Vietnam and make an exhibition that proclaimed I knew something more or better than the local community. Rather, I wanted to point towards a lesser known part of the war and uncover my reflections and research via this peculiar and haunting psychological operation.