Hoàn Kiếm

  • 2.9.2022 Friday 5 — 6.30 pm
  • 3.9.2022 Saturday 5 — 6.30 pm

Akademie der Künste

Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin

English and German
With: Duc Vu Manh and Marque Pham 

As people with direct and close connection to the Vietnamese diasporas of boat people and contract workers that had to leave their country in hopes of creating a better life, the art educator Duc Vu Manh and the artist Marque Pham will focus on the Vietnamese artists of the 12th Berlin Biennale featured at the Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg. The Vietnamese diaspora and the reality of their lives remain marginalized in terms of media visibility, political representation, social impact, and contributions to Western society. Under the guise of racial tactics and Eurocentric strategies, such as “model minority” or “model migrant” myth, they exist in a unique positionality where they are made to uphold problematic racially oppressive structures, while remaining disenfranchised and vulnerable to the same systemic abuses.

Duc Vu Manh lives and works in Berlin. During his BA in art education extracurricular at the University of Leipzig, he found his way into curation and developed his own artistic practice. He is currently pursuing his MA at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin in Practice Research in Social Work and Pedagogy. He views art as a form of practice. He says, art is a medium through which we can experience, express, share, educate, nurture, heal, or protest. It is the foundation of encounters that enables storytelling, in terms of community, empowerment, and recognition of diverse perspectives.

Marque Pham is a Vietnamese-American artist, performer, writer, and scholar based in Germany. They are the founder of MSG & Friends, a queer-led artist collective, dedicated to curating community spaces and professional showcases for the Asian artist diaspora in Europe. Currently, Marque Pham is researching the intersections of art, science, and technology in order to use its influence and power to support progressive movements of social-political change. Their writing has been internationally featured in magazines and publications such as Lodown Magazine, DADDY Magazine, and STATE Studio. They had the opportunity to work and perform with a wide variety of cultural institutions such as ARTE, English Theatre Berlin, Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, and Gessnerallee Zürich. They are a Goethe Goes Global scholar for their MA at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main in Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research.

Focus tours invite you to explore inside and outside the exhibition space and sharpen your seeing, listening, and thinking, based on specific themes. Focus tours are a mix between public tour and workshop. They are free of charge and are organized by the Berlin Biennale educational team.

The focus tour on Saturday, September 3, 2022 is exclusively for non-white individuals (BIPOC) who have experienced racism. Register via mediation@berlinbiennale.de with a sentence or two about your experience with racism. This is a requirement for participation.

The focus tour on Friday, September 2, 2022 is open to anyone interested. Please register via mediation@berlinbiennale.de. Participation is possible with a confirmation email.