"6th"

Video installation (2017)

Video one-minute loop, color,  sound. 

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A hypothesis short film based on a (seemingly) true event:

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I am a sleepless person. I don't suffer from insomnia, I just never sleep. Or perhaps i am a gold fish who is sleeping with eyes wide open. Tik-tok of the clock, babbling brook of the lake, i could listen to them but could never count how many tik-tok has gone by. Night vales an endless number.

My apartment is on a 6th floor of a walk-up old building. My everyday job is to observe the crowd of people hustling down the bus stop, counting fork entering and exiting the buses. I obviously can't count them all. They rush. They thrust. They jostle. They shout.

I am a sleepless person. I don't suffer from insomnia, I just never sleep. When there is no one down there, no more disorder crowds of people, i will contemplate myself in the mirror. I sit very still for hours. I laugh sarcastically. I act madly. I rush. I thrust. I jostle. I shout.

But i do not have a consciousness, doing things emotionlessly. Or perhaps, i am sleeping.

I ask a dozen questions. Who are they? where to? what to do? I answer them myself as well. They are a girl, a boy, an old man, an old woman, a motorbike taxi driver, a street hawker, a fairy, a buddha, a superman, a thief, a fake monk, a predator disguised as gentleman, a prostitute disguised as a virgin, an undies fetish, public masturbator...

i would sob for a million hours, if once in a billion times, i guessed it correctly.

I can feel my miseries. I decide not to swim in the tik-tok sound of the night, but to chase after the current. This is the case of one in a trillion times.

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Written by Xuan Ha

Translated by Tra Bich Nguyen

​Curated by Tra Bich Nguyen

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© 2017 Nguyen Vu Xuan Ha

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