Abstract
I have seen vernacular cultures in South China slowly disappear since 1987. In France, meanwhile, I have witnessed an epistemic oppression towards the profession of my father, a Vietnamese diviner. Similar oppression has been denounced by South American thinkers (Anonymous. (2011). Épistémologies du Sud. Études Rurales, 187, 21–50). One of the French Theory thinkers, Jean-François Lyotard, wrote: “[...] knowledge and power are simply two sides of the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided?” (Lyotard 8–9, The post-modern condition, Manchester University Press, 1984) The argument in this study is that alternative epistemologies need alternative analytical frameworks. In addition to academic epistemic standards, the primacy of written language, and particularly the English language, erodes cultural and epistemological diversity. The question this study seeks to address is how hegemonic thought and language might be replaced by an alternative approach, such as that of visual art, not only as tool but as an object of reflection and archive. My proposal to “Sight as Site in the Digital Age” presents a selection of two artworks constituting my corpus, my statement and manifesto.
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De nos vies... quelques traits (Outlines of Our Lives) aims to highlight the traces of divinatory arts that bear the capacity to imagine future. The video (18’36, with English subtitles, available online) was shot in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) during the French Institute’s 2018 Villa Saigon residency programme.
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Élévation is a photographic series shot in the Yunnan Honghe Terrace fields (People’s Republic of China PRC) in 1995–1996. These photographs document the Hani ancestral ecosystem before the development of tourism. A “Villa Medicis Hors les Murs” grant made this work possible.
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Dao, M. (2023). Visual Art as Alternative Epistemological Approach. In: Tam, Kk. (eds) Sight as Site in the Digital Age . Digital Culture and Humanities, vol 5. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9209-4_12
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