history as hypnosis
Installation views, MIT List Visual Arts Center. history as hypnosis, 2023, three-channel video, color, stereo sound, 7’ x 4’x 1/8” aluminum panels, metal seating, colored light, 25 minute loop. Photo Credit: Dario Lasagni
FILM STILLS
A speculative road film that unfolds through cultural memory of the US war in Vietnam, the work follows three women, recently reprogrammed by an artificial intelligence that has wiped all traces of their previous lives, as they journey through an uncanny desert landscape to a nearby metropolis. In Nguyen’s hands, these figures without memory or history become a cinematic use case for themes of alienation, assimilation, and refusal. Freely combining genre, fact, and fiction, the film draws on its Southern California locations’ postmodern glass facades, mimetic architecture, and roadside infrastructure—markers of car culture’s entanglement with American expansionism and cinema history alike—to uncover the more ineffable links between collective consciousness and the Cold War military-industrial complex.
Nguyen’s first major live-action project (in which she also appears) underlines recurring themes in her work, which spans film, new media, installation, sculpture, printmaking, and writing. For the artist, embodied performance bridges research and lived experience, and is also a means to engage with emergent technologies.
- Sophie Cavoulacos, Associate Curator. Dept of Film, MoMA
Produced with generous support from New York Foundation for the Arts’ 2021 Artist Fellowship in Film/Video, NYSCA’s Wave Farm MAAF Grant, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and film production company, Rug & Vase.
FILM CREDITS
DIRECTOR: ALISON NGUYEN
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: RUG AND VASE
WRITER: ALISON NGUYEN
CO-PRODUCER & CO-WRITER: ZANS BRADY KROHN
CINEMATOGRAPHER: SEBASTIAN MYLNARSKI
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: HEATHER YANCEY
SCORE: SCOTT KIERNAN
SOUND DESIGN: JON FLORES
A: ALISON NGUYEN
B: ANDREA CLINTON
C: MORIAH SITTNER
FIELD PRODUCERS: NABIL ELBEHRI (NY), BREN HARAGAN (LA)
HMU: CAROLINE MILLS (NY), JEONG-HWA FONKALSRUD (LA)
GAFFER: VINCE JEFFERDS (NY)
SOUND MIXER: AMELIA PALMER (NY), ADRIAN ALIELO (LA)
VOCAL SOUND DESIGN: ALANA DEVITO
ADDITIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY: MUSTAFA RONY ZENO
WARDROBE ASSISTANTS: SOHA SABHOURI, ANNA COFFEY
PRODUCTION STILLS: MUSTAFA RONY ZENO, SCOTT KIERNAN, RACHAEL GUMA, GABRIEL GUMA
Special thanks: New York Foundation for the Arts, MIT List Arts, Rug and Vase, Matthew Nguyen, Justine Kurland, Sable Elyse-Smith, Adelia Shiffraw, Conor Dowdle, Anna Ting Moller
SCULPTURE
Left: Alison Nguyen, history as hypnosis V.02, 2023, three-channel video, color, stereo sound, 30 minute loop; 42” monitors, monitor stand, metal seating. Right: Alison Nguyen, history as hauntology V.01, 2023, severed Seville, casters, dirt, electronic parts, LED lights, 109”1 x 61”w x 65”h.
Alison Nguyen, history as hauntology, 2023, severed Seville, casters, dirt, electronic parts, LED lights, 109”1 x 61”w x 65”h
Left: Alison Nguyen, history as hypnosis V.02, 2023, three-channel video, color, stereo sound, 30 minute loop; 42” monitors, monitor stand, metal seating. Right: Alison Nguyen, history as hauntology V.01, 2023, severed Seville, casters, dirt, electronic parts, LED lights, 109”1 x 61”w x 65”h.
Alison Nguyen, Untitled, 2022, Single-channel HD video, color, stereo sound, 3 minute loop; 3 white fabric panels - 6’x3’, 6 clear acrylic rods