The love that connects everyone is what interests the artist, filmmaker and author Hai Anh Trieu. “Every generation does what it can. The next generation, which is better off, can then achieve something different,” she says in an interview at the Max Ophüls Prize film festival, to which she was invited with her short film “I loved you first”.
Pregnant with her first child, the self-taught filmmaker developed a film about the traumas of Vietnamese contract workers, a search for blurred parts of her own biography, which is often shaped by the stories of others (and their omissions).
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Hai Anh Trieu’s parents fled from Czechoslovakia through the Bavarian Forest to Germany shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Anh’s mother was pregnant with her, which was considered a breach of contract and would have meant deportation.
With the preparation for the film and the imminent arrival of the “Third Generation”, a very open conversation between Hai Anh Trieu and her mother became possible for the first time, which changed their relationship forever.
Talking about trauma from different experience horizons is a prerequisite for healing, which is so important to Hai Anh Trieu – and the topic of the event series “On(going) Trauma”, in which she participates as co-curator and moderator. ipa
1 Healing the “On(going) Trauma”
© Pham Minh Duc
The exchange of connectedness and solidarity is particularly important to me in my practice, especially in times of increased right-wing (everyday) presence. Together with my colleague Elisa Müller, we are inviting people to an open discourse space in the Fourth World under the motto to exchange ideas about artistic strategies as a resistant practice.
The series “On(going) Trauma” brings artists together in a dialogue once a month in six issues until December. This time, Pham Minh Duc is a guest in the episode “Backlashes: increased, right-wing everyday presence” with his work “A Bouquet of Stories”.
Each arrangement of his art project tells a different story: of family relationships, of the first memory of a flower, of saying goodbye to loved ones, of a chance encounter on the street, but always of flowers as a sign of mutual care, of personal and collective joy and of appreciation.
2 Love Deluxe
© Promo
Since the birth of my first child, everything I do has been about healing and enjoyment, especially as a racialized body. After a turbulent week between child and work, I absolutely need good food to reward myself.
We start with a long lunch at Love Deluxe in Neukölln. The BIPoC-run restaurant serves wholesome soul food and has become my culinary go-to place in Berlin because of its profound taste and warm hosts.
© promo
3 Barack Obamas Buch-Highlight
© Ullstein Publishing
My playground reading: The fear of losing touch with her Korean culture due to her mother’s death led Michelle Zauner to study Korean cuisine intensively. Every new dish she learned not only brought the singer of the music project Japanese Breakfast closer to her deceased mother, but also taught her something about herself.
With “Crying in H Mart” (the original title) she has written a paean to care work and tells what it means to do grief work between two countries and cultures.
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4 Sound Bath im Open Studios
© Dominique Borm/Dennis Obanla
As soon as I lie down on the mat for the sound bath in the Open Studios, I feel completely relaxed. Unlike with meditation, I don’t have to worry about my thoughts going on a rollercoaster ride; instead, the pleasant vibration and hum of the singing bowls does the work.
When my friend Thain takes the whole room on a sound journey, these sounds have touched me so deeply that a tear of relief has rolled down my cheeks more than once.
5 Short film evening at Sinema Transtopia
© Marvin Girbig
Every time I leave Sinema Transtopia, I go home with a sense of solidarity and community. This cinema celebrates film as a cultural practice and cinema as a space for social discourse.
The Rawy Films collective is showing a film series here under the title “Nowhere to run”. Films from Southwest Asia and North Africa are shown that address the terrifying reality of people trapped in hopeless situations.