AAA mobile library – Books set sail: Tammy Nguyen & Thomas Maresca

Presented as part of ‘Books set sail’, Tammy and Thomas will discuss the inspiration and process behind their collaborative edit of the book “A History of Art in 20th Century China” by Lü Peng. Their multimedia presentation will include a participatory book-making project.

On the 10th February, 2011, Tammy Nguyen and Thomas Maresca held ‘Liberation Party’ at Vascos in Ho Chi Minh City, as part of ‘Books set sail’ in ‘Open Edit’.

For this public event, Tammy and Tom took their chosen book apart. ‘Chinese Art in the 20th Century’ by Lu Peng (a renown Chinese art historian) was ‘liberated’ from its binding and the order of history was re-arranged on the ceiling and the walls of Vascos.

The artists were partially inspired to create this event from the informal public exhibitions that occurred across China in the late 70s/ early 80s (In September 1979, they succeeded in showing their work on the street outside Beijing’s National Art Gallery).

After the event at Vascos, the book was re-bound according to the artists’ own playful re-categorization of Chinese visual history.