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54 Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection
Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection 55
Dinh Q Lê
/ Vietnam b.1968
/ Tuan Andrew Nguyen
/ Collaborating artist
/ Vietnam b.1976
/ Phu Nam Thuc Ha
/ Collaborating artist
/ Vietnam b.unknown
/
The farmers and
the helicopters
(stills) 2006
/ Three-channel video installation: HD video transferred to MiniDV, colour, stereo, 15 minutes
/ Acc. 2007.005
/ Purchased 2007. The Queensland
Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund
Dinh Q Lê
The farmers and the helicopters
2006
In
The farmers and the helicopters
, Dinh Q Lê weaves together
the accounts of Vietnam–US War survivors with sequences
from documentaries and films that have dramatised the war,
specifically the depiction of United States military helicopters.
Their recollections underline the real fear of ordinary farmers,
at once awed and terrified by helicopters raining down bullets,
bombs and chemical agents.
It is estimated that, from 1961 to 1971, US forces sprayed
between 14 and 19 million gallons of herbicides across 6 million
acres of land in Vietnam. The devastating effects of these
herbicides, which included Agent Orange, still permeate the
landscape and have resulted in a high rate of birth defects.
Lê’s interviews also highlight a generational shift: older farmers
remember the trauma of what they witnessed, while many
younger Vietnamese, like Tr n Qu c H i, were spared this.
A self-taught engineer and farmer, Tr n recounts his childhood
fascination with helicopters and the seven years he spent
designing and building a functioning helicopter. His aspiration to
fly the aircraft inverts the trauma of the war, reflecting a young
generation’s desire for modernity, previously thought not to exist
in postwar Vietnam.