Vietnam Art Archive by Heritage Space
By Dan N. Tran

This article is a preview of the content that will be published in Check-In 2022. If you would like to support the making of this publication, you can make a contribution here.

Publicly launched in April 2022, Vietnam Art Archive is an online archival site for Vietnamese contemporary art. This first-of-its-kind initiative by Heritage Space systematically documents contemporary practices in the geography of Vietnam and in authorship by Vietnamese artists since 1990. In this conversation, we ask Heritage Space’s artistic director Nguyen Anh-Tuan about the internal operations and intricacies of building an archive.

Vietnam Art Archive logo. Image courtesy of Vietnam Art Archive.

What were the circumstances that prompted you to pursue this project?

Before working at Heritage Space, I used to work at Vietnam Institute of Art (Viện Mỹ thuật). My post there, which lasted for 15 years since 2002, showed me the reality that archival and research work on contemporary art is heavily neglected, as even the national research agency specialising in fine arts could neither develop a comprehensive archival system nor follow some theoretical frameworks undergirding contemporary art.

After leaving the government for Heritage Space, I still harboured thoughts about archiving. Our annual programme, the Month of Art Practice, is a hotbed of ideas, from which valuable forms of knowledge have emerged many times. But without a proper, accessible archive, the fruits of such intellectual labour would disappear or be out of the public’s reach.

I also often get asked by international friends, colleagues and students for directions in Vietnamese contemporary art. I would introduce them to many sources, but my sharing is often very time-consuming and might not fully illustrate the big picture.

In the domestic context, I believe that students and art lovers should be able to access contemporary art easily just like any other cultural disciplines such as literature and photography. It appears that contemporary art still stands behind a wall that mystifies and obfuscates.

Your last point suggests that the website aims to be accessible to the general audience. What are the ways in which the website is designed to achieve this goal?

From a macro perspective, the website is akin to a dictionary. When users enter the site, they can navigate within it using the provided alphabetical and topical indexes. In each entry, they can easily look up unfamiliar terms using hyperlinks. These embedded links bring readers to other pages with relevant historical information or explanation of specialised terminologies and topics to help with understanding an artwork. Of course, being dual-language and fully online also contribute to the site’s accessibility as well.

Trần Trọng Vũ, ‘The 18 Proposals of the Impossible’, 2011, mixed media (acrylic, plastic sheet), variable dimensions. Image courtesy of Vietnam Art Archive.

Could you tell us what a typical round of data collection and processing looks like?

We first make a list of artists based on both our own knowledge in the field and other written sources. We then consult with our advisory board to decide who our site should include, according to our established set of archival criteria. For the chosen artists, we carry out the same process for their artworks. Afterwards, we approach the artist for the necessary data for archiving, which we subsequently process and upload to our site.

This entire procedure repeats every six months. I anticipate that it will take approximately three years for the archive to become something significant and reach a relatively comprehensive coverage of Vietnamese contemporary art—a goal that we set out to attain.

You mentioned that the team works around an established set of archival criteria, which is inherently selective. Yet you aspire towards providing a complete picture of Vietnamese contemporary art. Would that be contradictory?

When we first started off, we intended for ViAA to be all-inclusive. But after consulting with experts and partners, we received the feedback that we should have our own set of selection criteria. This would firstly ensure that the archival work is manageable for an independent art organisation with limited human and financial resources. Secondly, the gradation in the quality of artistic practices needs filtering. Even renowned practitioners have artistic gestures that are experimental in nature and do not necessarily constitute a complete work; selection then ensures that the data on the archival site is meaningful for the general audience.

Another way to look at completeness here is to locate it in the rich information provided together with each artwork. The site supplies links to other pages for cross-referencing, as well as images and secondary data that would help readers gain a thorough understanding of artworks and artists.

“When we first started off, we intended for ViAA to be all-inclusive. But after consulting with experts and partners, we received the feedback that we should have our own set of selection criteria. This would firstly ensure that the archival work is manageable for an independent art organisation with limited human and financial resources. Secondly, the gradation in the quality of artistic practices needs filtering. Even renowned practitioners have artistic gestures that are experimental in nature and do not necessarily constitute a complete work; selection then ensures that the data on the archival site is meaningful for the general audience.”

Do you think the selection process might give rise to a biassed narrative rather than a truthful reflection of Vietnamese contemporary art?

Our small team’s selective approach to archiving does impose certain limitations on the comprehensiveness and objectivity of our site. But even art historians have to rely on their own aesthetic sense to approach and interpret information when constructing a narrative of art history.
Ultimately, we do not intend the site to be a single, authoritarian source of truth. I believe that Vietnam should have a few different archives and collections that mutually support one another in constructing systems of knowledge. I do know of some groups that have been independently building up their own archive, such as hay là, which specialises in performance art, or Matca for photography. Such archival pluralism is key to having a more multifaceted and complete understanding of contemporary art.

Lê Vũ, ‘Inheritance’, 2004, durational performance with his father in LIMDIM, curated and organised by Trần Lương. Image courtesy of Vietnam Art Archive.

Recently I came across a piece of writing by Nora Taylor that talks about historiography of artworks born outside official art institutions. These works are often poorly documented and their existence rests on precarious grounds such as oral history. Here, I suppose that the role of an archive would be critical; it could provide a firm foundation for the public existence of lesser-known artworks to lay on. Is this something that your team considers when building Vietnam Art Archive?

At first, our team planned to target works that have been introduced to the public via conventional channels such as exhibitions and public events. But we soon realised that a lot of artworks were made underground and still contribute to the development of the art scene. We have a strong desire to showcase these works that are known by very few people, and our archival criteria give us a way to achieve that. As long as the work fulfils the criteria upon discussion with experts, it can then be archived and introduced to the public.

An example of such efforts by our team is the entry on performance art piece ‘Inheritance’ by Lê Vũ. The work first appeared in the LIMDIM - Hanoi International Performance festival (2004), and later on as part of the Saigon Open City project (2006-2008). In 2004, the project reached an unsuccessful end, and the public completely have no knowledge of it.

A reality about independent organisations is that many have to close their doors after running for some time. An archive creates a possibility of extending their existence beyond their physical life, as seen in the case of Salon Natasha on Asia Art Archive. But this in turn hinges upon the very existence of the archive. What are some directions that you have for Vietnam Art Archive to ensure that it will continue to exist to serve its archival functions?

Vietnam Art Archive is a long-term project, and our direction for it is towards becoming a public archive. This means that it is not Heritage Space’s own property. We are simply the organisation that initiated the project and is currently running it. Maybe five years from now a more capable team would step up and want to take over; we would gladly transfer the resources over for them to continue the operation. The archive could also receive support from the community in the form of crowdfunding to pay for the domain name and server fees. That is our ultimate goal.

This article is a preview of the content that will be published in Check-In 2022. If you would like to support the making of this publication, you can make a contribution here.

About the Writer

A computer programmer by day and a writer by night, Dan N. Tran takes a keen interest in the visual cultures circulating in the region. His writings have appeared on SGIFF, Matca, SINdie, among others.