Stack V_Circuits — Vietnam Media Show: Transitional Images

Vietnam Media Lab, invited by Stack V_Circuits, proudly presents a selection of newly emerged and emerging expanded cinema works from Việt Nam. The artists and screenings are curated and structured as a spectrum of the “transitional period” (“thời kỳ quá độ”¹) spanning from the post-war to the post-digital.

On one side of the spectrum are artists such as Ngọc Nâu and Arlette Quynh Anh Tran, whose practices emerged from the country’s perestroika-era reforms (“Đổi Mới”) of the 1980s. Their works are deeply shaped by the legacies of both physical and ideological wars that preceded their births. These influences appear in the ways their moving images engage with themes long present in Vietnamese contemporary art: collective historical memory, architecture, recurring wartime motifs, and national imaginaries shaped by conflict.

On the other side are artists like Trần Uy Đức, who are pushing beyond these familiar framings of Vietnamese art. Their works reveal a growing interest in the post-digital condition: a reality in which digital technologies and the screen — the very apparatus that once defined cinema — are now invisibly embedded within everyday life. These new and emerging media artists are actively shaping new narratives and images of Việt Nam: no longer solely a land defined by sorrow and war, but one looking toward multiple individual futures while remaining connected to its cultural roots and legacies.

Together, this spectrum of artists is united by the medium of the computer and the aesthetic possibilities it has brought to their practices and artistic visions. Is Vietnamese moving image culture truly post-digital? Perhaps not yet, as we are still living within the “thời kỳ quá độ.”

¹“Quá độ lên chủ nghĩa xã hội ở nước ta là quá trình lâu dài, trải qua nhiều chặng đường” [The transition to socialism in our country is a long-term process, passing through many stages]. Communist Party of Vietnam (1991), Cương lĩnh xây dựng đất nước trong thời kỳ quá độ lên chủ nghĩa xã hội, adopted at the 7th National Congress. Quoted in: Hội đồng Lý luận Trung ương (2021), ‘Nhận thức của Đảng ta về thời kỳ quá độ lên chủ nghĩa xã hội ở Việt Nam’, Lý Luận Chính Trị Journal.