The Dawn of Day (2020) is a collaborative work produced in the context of the exhibition GOREGEOUS at the Confort Moderne, Poitiers. The video depicts scanned, zoomed-in details of pictures portraying the atrocities of war and its ensuing devastation. In an attempt to reach a heightened sense of closeness and intimacy with the picture, the scanner, regardless of its technical prowess, delivers a deadened, flattened vision. 

In the Vietnamese-American artist’s work, lo-fi science experiments enact a perpetual transfiguration of matter, catalyzing entropy with the elemental forces of gravity, smoke, water and fire. Emerging from the close-up world of her photographs, her newest video opens up the angle, embarking on a journey through the sprawling spaces of Ho Chi Minh City.

What’s the red thread between the 1989 Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, the extras’ rebellion at the Cinecittà Studios in the ’50s, a Black Friday event, and social ­distancing measures? In his latest cycle of works, the German artist and filmmaker examines the power structures in group dynamics, social behavior, surveillance and mass manipulation.