“LONG MARCH ARCHIVE: HCMT DICTIONARY”

Time: 2019 May 25th to June 2nd

Location: 2F, Bldg.N39 Xiangshan Art Commune

From 2019 May 25th to June 2nd, Long March Project was invited to present “Long March Archive: HCMT Dictionary” (abbr. “HCMT Dictionary”) at Xiangshan Art Commune Hangzhou, by the “VENI, VIDI, WE YOUNG The First Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival”. “HCMT Dictionary” is the second biggest project after “A Working Redisplay” since last year, becomes a working site driven by discourse. “HCMT Dictionary” tries to review the discourse generated from “Long March Archive: HCMT Dictionary” between 2008 to 2010, and apply them in the 2019 context.

From 2008 to 2010, Long March Project launched and implemented the “HCMT Dictionary” project, conducting three stages of discussions, respectively referred to as: Residency (July 2009), Journey (June to July 2010), and Rehearsal – Theater (September 2010 to January 2011). During the three-year research, the Long March Project team, travelers, and participants from local art institutes in southeast Asia reviewed and retraced the complicated history and memories of Ho Chi Minh Trail, probed the relationships between art and politics, society and history; accumulated hundreds of thousands of written records in countless forums, dialogues, spontaneous discussions. These discourses are not only a collective reflection of the macro topic, but also a process of mobilizing, calling and refining the artist participants. During this process, “discourse” becomes both the object of production and the subject of acting, making the Long March Project an active agency.

The issues of nation-states, historical memory, Asian consciousness, post-colonialism and geopolitics that were repeatedly discussed in those years are still needed to be explored today. What is the possibility of a response to the question raised then? At that time, participants at home and abroad were engaged in intense debate, conflict, introspection and restart. What does this scene of mixed feelings leave us today? When the context is replaced, what kind of experience will they create in the new exhibition space?

The HCMT Dictionary hopes to reconstruct the relationship between the past and the present by review the discourse of the past, and to summarize and encode the text of the HCMT from the perspective and context of the present. We will extract key terms from the issues, concepts, and opinions touched upon in the literature, which in today’s context will trigger new ideas, generate new keywords, create new associations, and continue to build up an infinite network of term. Discourses are grouped under the term, and the past discourses generate new discourses corresponding to the new terms, forming an organically growing discourse index system. As to the working site of HCMT Dictionary, it will become a public discourse space, releasing the initiative of the index system.

HCMT Dictionary was open to the public during the day from May 25th to June 2nd, and will continue from June 3rd to June 10th. On May 27th and May 29th, the Long March Project team held evening talks sessions and screenings, and launched a series of activities on an irregular basis according to the density of daily infinite correlations and infinite feelings. This project is one of the special exhibitions of the 2019 VENI, VIDI, WE YOUNG The First Zhijiang International Youth Art Festival.