Tran T. Kim-Trang
Tran T. Kim-Trang was born in Viet Nam and emigrated to the United States in 1975. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and has been producing experimental videos since the 1990's. In 1999, Tran presented her Blindness Series in a solo screening at the Museum of Modern Art. A year later, two of her videos were included in the Biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Blindness Series was featured at the 46th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. Tran has been nominated for a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts and was named a 2001 Rockefeller Film/Video/Multimedia Fellow.
Tran also collaborates with Karl Mihail on a project known as Gene Genies Worldwide© (genegenies.com). Their conceptual and public artworks on genetic engineering have exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria, Exit Art, the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and elsewhere in the United States. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Scripps College
AVAILABLE FROM TWN
aletheiaTran T. Kim-Trang
1992, 16 min., Color, US
An introduction to Kim-Trang's video series on metaphorical and physical blindness, ALETHEIA explores the interconnected issues of cosmetic surgical alteration of the eyelids, technology, language, race and gender. This video is a highly graphic examination of dominant notions of normalcy, beauty an...
alexiaTran T. Kim-Trang
2002, 10 min., Color, US
Alexia is an experimental video about word blindness and metaphor. Word-blindness is a condition that usually afflicts people who have suffered a stroke, causing them to lose the visual recognition of individual letters but perceive the entire word, or vice versa. Metaphor is discussed in its functi...
amaurosisTran T. Kim-Trang
2002, 28 min., Color, US
Amaurosis is an experimental documentary about Nguyen Duc Dat, a blind, American Asian guitarist living in Little Saigon, California. Dat was a 'triple outcast': blind, Amerasian and an impoverished orphan. Beyond their disabilities, this community of Vietnamese-Americans is oppressed on many levels...
The Blindness SeriesTran T. Kim-Trang
US
Tran T. Kim-Trang's Blindness Series consists of eight experimental videos which consider blindness as metaphor. Titles include: EPILOGUE, ALETHEIA, OPERCULUM, KORE, OCULARIS, EKLEIPSIS, AMAUROSIS, and ALEXIA....
ekleipsisTran T. Kim-Trang
1998, 23 min., Color, US
"I came across a New York Times article about a group of hysterically blind Cambodian women in Long Beach, California, the largest group of such people known in the world. Hysterical blindness is sight loss brought about by traumatic stress with little or no physical cause." This tape delves into tw...
Epilogue: The Palpable Invisibility of LifeTran T. Kim-Trang
2006, Color, US
How can we make visible the invisible? How can we "see" our lost loved ones? In EPILOGUE, Vietnamese-American filmmaker Tran T. Kim Trang looks for answers to these questions in the audio recordings of her dead mother, the handwritinng of the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida and the ultrasou...
koreTran T. Kim-Trang
1994, 17 min., Color, US
The third installment in the series opens with two women who are blindfolded and making love. This visually lush and erotic exploration of blindness investigates questions of desire and power, empowerment and sexuality and AIDS/HIV as symbolized by the sense of sight....
ocularis: eye surrogatesTran T. Kim-Trang
1997, 21 min., Color, US
The latest tape in Kim-Trang's eight tape series on metaphorical and physical blindness Ocularis: Eye Surrogates addressing issues of surveillance and technology that allow us to see what we normally can not. Through a 1-800 number publicized nationally, recorded messages were collected of the calle...
operculumTran T. Kim-Trang
1993, 14 min., Color, US
A visit with seven cosmetic surgeons specializing in eylid alteration, this piece juxtaposes text with consultation footage. OPERCULUM is revelatory of both the medicalization of race and the authority with which it continues to assert its ideology....
