The artist being targeted by protestors against VAALA’s F.O.B. II exhibit, is having his own solo exhibit at Cypress College. The OC Register’s Richard Chang had an in-depth look at Brian Doan and his work on a “Morning Read” column last Friday here.
Last night was the reception and opening lecture. The Bolsavik got there in the middle of the standing-room-only lecture, so did not stay to listen but went around looking at the photos.
Bog. 2002. Chromogenic print. 10″x20″.
Doan’s exhibition is actually two exhibits. One is called “Echoes of the Land” and consists of a series of panoramic shots of landscape that thoughtfully reflect Doan’s impression of how industrialization and urbanization have affected the land.
The other is the controversial one, called “The Vietnamese” and consists of a series of posed pictures of Vietnamese in Vietnam and in the U.S. Several of the pictures can be seen in the slide show on the Reg’s web site here. The photograph that was defaced by Ly Tong is part of this series.
Next to one of the entrances is a case holding the photograph as defaced (pictured right).
Above the photo is a reprint of Richard Chang’s Register story. At the bottom of the case is a sign that says “Some of the photographs in this exhibit contain nudity and other images may be politically controversial.”
Also in the case are copies of two books. One is the catalog for Touch: Contemporary Vietnamese photography – a 2000 exhibit co-curated by Doan and Jerry Burchfield that was one of the first in the United States that showed work by Vietnamese artists living both inside and outside of Vietnam.
The other is The Forgotten Ones published by VAALA in 2005, a book of photographs Brian Doan took of Vietnamese stateless refugees stranded in the Philippines.
Just as the lecture ended, the Bolsavik spotted Michael Burr, a Vietnam veteran and photographer who had had his photos from Vietnam in the late 60s exhibited at Michelle Phuong Thao‘s gallery. And he’s wearing a T-shirt in the colors of the current flag of communist Vietnam. He said he bought the shirt in Saigon in 2006.
. 
Burr, who proudly wears his Vietnam Service pin everywhere he goes, served in in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam. Among other things, his duties included teaching English to the Vietnamese air force as part of Nixon’s Vietnamization program.
He proclaims, “I’m an American citizen, I have the right to freely express myself.”
Anyway, back to The Forgotten Ones and Vietnamese stateless refugees in the Philippines.
One activist who’s been working tirelessly to get Western countries to admit these refugees is Hoi Trinh. USA Today once wrote up about Trinh here. In 2006, he successfully fought for the U.S. to admit a thousand of the refugees, earning accolades from Vietnamese world wide.
And then something happened: The Viet Weekly protests.
Trinh wrote an op-ed in support of Viet Weekly’s free speech rights. Protestors then turned on him. It didn’t help that Trinh was, at the time, married to the daughter of former RVN’s Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky, whom many (like this potty mouth) consider a turncoat.
So, let’s recount this:
Hoi Trinh the accused commie helped bring thousands of stranded Viet refugees to the United States.
The sale of The Forgotten Ones by Brian Doan the accused commie netted over $20,000 to help settle these refugees.
Does it seem like the people helping refugees are all accused commies?
.
“Our protests speak the truth for the world to see of the un-justice communist government of today and to give our people in the homelands the strength to stand up and fight.” So, what you are saying is that your protests are meant to encourage a violent uprising in a foreign country. That is sedition. Like it or not, the US is currently at peace with the country of Vietnam. We are a large trading partner with that country which is helping it develop at one of the highest grow rates in the world. You lost the Vietnamese Civil War of the 20th Century. You lost it because you could not possibly win it. You were the minority of the Vietnamese who supported colonialist France, who supported French imported Catholicism against indigenous Buddhism, who supported (and survived by accepting support from) the American misguided policy of using Vietnam as a battlefield purely for America’s own geoploitical reasons with complete disdain for the welfare of Vietnam, and who supported secession and division of Vietnam, rather than unification. You hate the Vietnamese who won the Civil War, and they won because they supported the opposite of all of the above. You suffered because you lost the Vietnamese Civil War. You hate the winners. Your desires for sedition are obviously alive still ever since 1975 and that is why you were imprisoned after the Civil War. This is what you need to take resonsibilty for.
Under the current freedom of expression controversy, the following story of the Village of Skokie, Illinois, may shed some light. In 1977 the American Nazis planned to march through the mostly Jewish (40,500 of 70,000 people) Village of Skokie, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in defiance of the Jewish refugees and survivors of concentration camps. Of course, the Jews were extremely angry and many Jews threatened violence against the Nazis. Four days before the scheduled march, The Village of Skokie brought a lawsuit to prevent it. Guess what? A Jewish attorney went to court to defend the rights of Nazis and he won! (However, the Nazis abandoned the march through Skokie and held its rally in Chicago) Who was that courageous attorney? Mr. Aryeh Neier , former Director of ACLU, who was born in Berlin in 1937 of Jewish parents and at two years old escaped with his parents and sister to England; most of the rest of his family was lost in the Holocaust. “By attempting to deny the Nazis the freedom to speak, Skokie itself served the Nazi cause!” – Aryeh Neier
Now if any of those Vietnamese lawyers who many of us has voted to represent us in this country would try to do anything like that to help our people in VN then . . . well, who am I kidding ???
Attention everyone ! ! !
KRISTY wants you all to stop every thing having to do with Vietnam, and wait for “him” the fight the communist.
* Stop send money to your family back home. Around 2 to 5 Billion annually.
* Stop going back to Vietnam to visit your family. Around 250,000.
* Stop allowing Vietnamese students and tourists coming here from Vietnam.
Around 20,000 and growing rapidly.
* Stop promoting humanitarian programs.
His purpose is “the more people dying in Vietnam, the better for his cause”
OH !
Might be, he should try harder to persuade the Bush administration which is doing very possible to discredit his anti-communist cause.
The Bush administration categorically stated that the present Vietnam is better than your KRISTY’ Vietnam.
By advocating total embargo, KRISTY helps communist regime in Vietnam..
Country First, stop twisting people’s comments around! THOSE ARE YOUR WORDS NOT HERS , Kristy didn’t say anything like that in her comment so if you need to READ IT AGAIN. And another thing, if you don’t like something about the Bush administration, you could write to him you know, express your feelings, let it out then you’d feel much better.
Kristy said, “I agree that the past is the past. However, the Vietnam war has not yet ended.” This notion is quite unrealistic. People should not be born in order to fight forever…
We will fight until the Communist government of VN gives their people the basic human rights and freedom that we all here take for granted!!
AbetterVN,
How do you intend to carry out this lofty goal?
Just wait and see…
sooner or later the communist of VN will fall…
AbetterVN, we can start educating the youths and ultimately drain the old communism ideology water.
Brian Doan is an inconsiderate S.O.B. To have a father who was imprisoned and put in re-education camp for 10 years by the communist and whose family had to suffer b/c of them, yet he still has the nerve to be disrespectful to his family and community by displaying such a controversial piece of “art.” Aren’t u the least bit humiliated and embarrassed? It doesn’t matter how much talent u have or how “artistic” u try to call yourself, don’t abuse the word “art” and use them to promote or criticize a way of life or a political view. When the picture you shot is not able to convey the real meaning you put in it; you fail as an artist. When the picture needs some explanation to make the viewers understand, you fail as an artist. To be honest, I don’t see anything appealing about your “artwork.” Your pictures are generic and boring, there’s nothing artistic about it. Perhaps that’s why you need to throw in such a controversial pic, so people can notice your work more? If that’s the case, you are sad and pathetic to even stoop down to that level. Maybe you need to reconsider your talent and change the way you think and work.
As for Michael Burr, you are foolish. Don’t try to add more to the fire. You play with fire, one day you will get burn. I’m sick and tired of you Americans calling everything “freedom of expression, freedom of speech.” Yes we have that right…just like you have that right to express yourself, we have the right to protest! Why would u even wear that shirt if you don’t support Communism? It’s like you’re saying you don’t like the Lakers, but you’re wearing their jersey to a Lakers-Celtics game. Does that not make sense to you? You’re totally contradicting yourself. Funny how you wear something and try to make a statement saying its your freedom and right when the shirt u wore symbolizes the total opposite. You’ve never lived with Communism before, you don’t know what it’s like. Don’t be so ignorant. Maybe you should go and live with the communist in VN and have them brainwash you, if you haven’t already. Until then, you should reconsider your actions and stop with the nonsense.
Well said VN ! ( I wonder how many times we need to do this before they’d get it ??? )
To David, Michael Burr, Brian Doan:
Let try your “Freedom of Speech” by display a picture that has the face of O.B. Ladin and behind are those New York twin towers collapsing…then see how we American would reponse to you!
Would you dare? I don’t think so…
How insensitive you are if you did that.
Good idea there Matthew…..Make sure you make that Osama Bin Cocoo dude picture with a smile and a tee shirt with that cool phrase : I Love New York:….right in front, see how civilized them New Yorkers do their protest.???.
America the beautiful….
And if you got too much objection? You can always bring that picture back to VAALA and display it as diptych art?…Alah bless you and will grant you 20 young Playboy virgins Matthew…Amen.
“To David, Michael Burr, Brian Doan:
Let try your “Freedom of Speech” by display a picture that has the face of O.B. Ladin and behind are those New York twin towers collapsing…then see how we American would reponse to you!”
Your analogy is meaningless, inappropriate and illogical as analogies most often are. It is a manipulative device designed to elicit support for your position with an emotional response. Even the attempt to contain this discussion within the “freedom of speech” issue is manipulative. What you doing is to avoid the primary issue which is that there never has been any democracy in Vietnam. There have been Chinese invaders, Vietnamese kings, emporers and mandarins, French colonial conquerors and their Vietnamese supportors, religious plutocrats, secret police forces, regional warlords, guerilla armies and partisan dictators. What there has never been is democracy or free speech. Certainly, there was never anything that could be described as a nation in the southern half of Vietnam. There was never such thing as the nation of “South Vietnam”. Don’t pretend there was. It was a self-declared secessationist movement, calling itself the Republic of Vietnam, not the Republic of South Vietnam. This temporary circumstance could be sustained only by force, and against the history, culture and will of the majority of Vietnamese who opposed colonialism, foreign domination and division of Vietnam. This half-nation had little or no indigenous support except what was provided by its own self-serving military-political forces which was paid for and depended almost entirely on French and American uninterrupted support for their very existence. When that support ended, RVN, the secessionist non-nation of South Vietnam went out of existence as it was inevitably destined to happen. Stop pretending otherwise.