A landscape connecting Kassel and Tam Đảo
By Nguyễn-Quỳnh Chi

This essay was first published in CHECK-IN 2023, A&M’s third annual publication. Click here to read the digital copy in full, or to purchase a copy of the limited print edition.

“To forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

— Elie Wiesel, preface to Night (2006)

As if free-falling, the body plunged into darkness. Humid air dampened the skin, cooled the ground, and diffused an earthy scent. The wind’s symphonies sounded celestial from a distance, enchanting the listener into nocturnal woods. This ambience was characterised by âm, the form and expression of ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ (2022) by artist and filmmaker Nguyễn Trinh Thi. A homophone in the Vietnamese language, âm has different usages, some of which provide clues to understanding humanist concerns in this work.

In the Vietnamese language, the syllable âm denotes distinct meanings. As a Vietnamese observer, I realised an existing language barrier— artistically and linguistically—that poses a challenge in contextualising ‘And They Die a Natural Death’. By introducing the word âm, I attempt to illuminate foundational layers of Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s presence at documenta fifteen, which is arguably one of the most prominent global exhibitions.¹

QR code linked to Nguyễn Trinh Thi, ‘And They Die a Natural Death’, 2022.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi, ‘And They Die a Natural Death’, 2022, chilli pepper plants, wind, bamboo flutes, projection, monitor. Installation view, Rondell, Kassel. Image courtesy of the artist.

Âm 音: sonic, sound

A site-specific art installation, ‘AndThey Die a Natural Death’ was a public intervention reviving Rondell—Kassel’s long-standing defensive tower built in 1523 which was said to later house torture facilities in its underground vaults. As part of the installation, a high-tech system recreated and implanted the natural environment of Tam Đảo forest in Vietnam. Via this hidden automated design, the Tam Đảo wind was generated in Rondell’s interior, and composed rhythms with the bamboo flutes in the dome. In this absolutely dark cinematic space, sound became the main device to storytelling.

Recently, Nguyễn Trinh Thi began to incorporate new media in her work, including organic materials and natural forces, prioritising the art of listening over mere representation. She experimented with sound as the primary technical apparatus. An ethnographic research trip to the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 2021 touched the artist so significantly that she dedicated her film to the J’rai culture of listening.² ‘How to Improve the World’ (2021) is the documentary film that acts as a prelude to ‘AndThey Die a Natural Death’. By appropriating musician John Cage’s diary titled ‘How to Improve the World: You Will Only Make Matters Worse’ (1992), the filmmaker suggests that we should listen to the world around us to survive ecological crises together.³

Âm 荫: tree shade

The Tam Đảo wind not only created sounds inside Rondell, but also activated a lighting system to blow up silhouettes of bird’s eye chilli plants hidden underneath the platform. Enlarged shadows reached the highest parts of the dome, casting a luxuriant forest onto Rondell’s circular wall. Using small plants as main actors, the artist built an eco-theatre in which non-human agency played a crucial role in the retelling of death. Chilli pepper shadows inside Rondell formed a panoramic ink painting, and this visual quality could be said to reference East Asian traditional art. In feudal China, the landscape genre seeks to express harmony between Heaven and Earth and cosmic wholeness between humans and nature, and this is observed with the installation.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s use of shadow as a visual signifier is not unlike American artist Kara Walker’s signature strategy, which elicits the legacy of slavery through stereotypical—often grotesque—cut-paper silhouettes. Such technique aids the artists to walk the lines between pleasure and pain, visibility and invisibility, power and oppression.

Rondell (circular building on the left), exterior view, Kassel, 2006. Photo by Eva Kröcher. Wikimedia Commons. — Rondell (circular building on the left), exterior view, Kassel, 2006. Photo by Eva Kröcher. Wikimedia Commons.

Preparation of chilli pepper plants before being installed underneath the viewer's platform in the Rondell. Original caption: “She took care of everything - production, plants, people, and text. I’m deeply grateful.” Image courtesy of the artist.

Âm 喑: muteness
Like the other projects at documenta fifteen, Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s installation recalled a testimony denied by grand history. ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ was a mute cry for loss and brutality. The artist referenced a chapter in Bùi Ngọc Tấn’s memoir in prison, A Tale For 2000.⁴ In the labour camp, male prisoners longed for the spicy heat of chilli pepper. One day, the discovery of a vast pepper tree forest caused an uprising in the camp. Unable to control the mob, furious guards fired in the air and ended up shooting a prisoner.The mob went silent and returned to the camp; their hands still held on to the chilli peppers as if they represented fleeting freedom.

As a site-specific project, ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ connected to local history in Kassel. In the Nazi era, the city witnessed book burning, destruction of Jewish synagogue, concentration camps, and Adolf Hitler’s speech in the first Reich Warriors’ Convention. Within this context, the installation can be interpreted as a passive mourning. Its dim lights and eerie sounds gestured towards, in the words of philosopher Jacques Rancière, “the representation of the inhuman”.⁵ This rhetorical device employs micro-description of actions, which highlights the absence of humanity experienced in prisoner camps from Bùi Ngọc Tấn’s memoir and Kassel’s Nazi past.

Originally captioned “Thank you so much Đức for sending us your wind!!!” Image courtesy of the artist. — Originally captioned “Thank you so much Đức for sending us your wind!!!” Image courtesy of the artist.

Âm 陰: the underworld
Nguyễn Trinh Thi is neither the first nor the only artist to adapt a ruin’s history in a retelling of memory. However, her philosophy, deeply rooted in Taoism, fostered aesthetic qualities that were peculiar to East Asian and Vietnamese worldviews. In 1987, German artist Rebecca Horn also addressed history by staging a site-specific installation ‘Concert in Reverse’ in a Munster fortification, which was built around the same time as Rondell.⁶ While both artists intrigued their audiences with cinematic experiences and sounds from ordinary tools, for Nguyễn Trinh Thi, darkness was crucial to the mise-en-scène of death. Such an artistic strategy inserted the Vietnamese spiritual belief that the dead are not far gone, and that their souls stay in the underworld. With its 10-metre-thick wall, humid air, and absolute absence of light, Rondell became a vessel, displacing viewers to enter a space outside of time. The haunting yet meditative ambience enchanted listeners to feel a tender touch from the abyss.

A story about death is a reminder that nature’s flow waits for no one. However, by narrating death, both storyteller and listener resist this flow and encounter the deceased in a parallel reality.This temporal convergence offers a space for grief, and in some cases, the telling of death helps to make sense of loss.

“A story about death is a reminder that nature’s flow waits for no one.”

At documenta fifteen, Nguyễn Trinh Thi presented her ongoing investigation of anti-representation, nonhuman agency, and power. She conceived of “landscapes as quiet witnesses to history”.⁷ ‘And They Die a Natural Death’ was a live theatre in which nonhuman actors—wind and chilli pepper plants—took centre stage. In this nonverbal retelling of death, artistic strategies were utilised to engage the viewer’s multiple senses. By imagining a gate to the underworld, the artist staged a landscape that connected Kassel and the Tam Đảo forest where the prisoner died a natural death.

This essay was first published in CHECK-IN 2023, A&M’s third annual publication. Click here to read the digital copy in full, or to purchase a copy of the limited print edition.

¹The research project was funded by Miami University’s Office of Research for Undergraduates for the Undergraduate Summer Scholars programme in 2022. I am incredibly grateful to my mentor, Dr. Annie Dell’Aria, and fellow students at the Humanities Center for helping me with the project.
²From my interview with artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi.
³Ibid.
⁴Postwar Vietnam witnessed a process of decolonisation which denounced Western modernism and accused individualism in art and literature of being disloyal. The novelist Bùi Ngọc Tấn was one of few hundreds “anti-socialist” intellectuals and was sent to a re-education camp. His memoir ‘A Tale For 2000’ was immediately revoked and destroyed upon its publication.
⁵Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2019), 123.
⁶Visual artist Rebecca Horn realised ‘Concert in Reversed’ for the ‘Skulptur Projekte’ in Münster 1987. She conceived of the ruin as a witness to history, tracing back events since the ruin was constructed between 1528 and 1536 as part of Munster’s fortifications. Her audiovisual installation consisted of fragmented scenes, including candles, hammers, water drop system, and a pair of snakes, which was later replaced by two kinetic steel arms.
⁷Izabella Scott, “Nguyễn Trinh Thi – interview: ‘I want to unpick the way we look at things” (Studio International, 18 February 2019).