Song Vui - Lebensfreude

The question of my background has always preoccupied me since I left my homeland Vietnam as a twelve year old. In August 2005, I visited the birthplace of my parents for the first time for over 13 years. My experiences there, and the encounters with my roots, touched me more than I ever could have imagined.

A most intense experience was the visit of my great-uncle Nguyen Huu Son in a small village called Phu Hoa is near the capital Hanoi. The visit with him was short but marked by strong emotions. He gave me a farewell, a booklet with handwritten poems in which he reflect his view of life and way of thinking.

From this issue my art book project started in black and white. It is reproduced in facsimile eight poems. In addition are the translations into German, as well as the phonetic spelling translations of both languages ​​in order to make the reader the experience of betweenness felt. For the Vietnamese text I - developed a Vietnamese phonetics - in collaboration with faculty of the Institute for Vietnamistik at the University of Hamburg. So you can, even without any prior knowledge, Read the language aloud.

The lyrics are a special literary genre of Vietnamese poetry. It's about landscape descriptions , in particular the Vietnamese flora is treated. The described plants get human traits to express the mind thoughts and feelings of the author.

It is striking that the poems always carry a positive message in itself, though not leave the living conditions of the people living there, including my great uncle, so setting suspect. In "Song Vui - joy of life" I have transferred this way of thinking through my text and image montages in a new context.