Seven Up Three Down: Special Screening

Free RSVP

Following the exhibition Seven Up Three Down at Hessel Museum, Canal Projects presents a special screening of two video works exploring memory, identity, and power through speculative and poetic lenses.

In The Curator’s Ghost, Arlette Quỳnh Anh Trần imagines a time-traveling narrative where agents are sent back to 1960s–70s Vietnam to recover a mysterious artifact linked to the nation’s origins. Along the way, they encounter Vietnam’s first curator and confront questions of history, resistance, and the curatorial role in shaping national identity.

In Silicon Islands and War, Daphné Nan Le Sergent offers a lyrical video essay tracing the global semiconductor race amid rising geopolitical tension. Focusing on Taiwan’s pivotal role in AI development, the film juxtaposes the material reality of digital production with embodied, oral, and poetic memory across Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

The screening will be followed by a remarks from Daphné Nan Le Sergent and conversation between Arlette Quỳnh Anh Trần and the curator Đỗ Tường Linh.

Silicon Islands and War, video, essay, 37 min, 2025
Musical composition: Vincent Guiot
With musicians NEL-K, Seung-Hwan Diego Bae, Echo, Vincent Guiot

This work benefited from a creation and research grant from the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), support from CARMA, an art and research center in French Guiana, and from the Direction Jeunesse, Culture et Sports de Guyane. This work was also supported by the European Month of Photography, Café Crème asbl Luxembourg and the Cultures space at the University of Luxembourg, by the Arts des Images AIAC laboratory at the Université Paris 8, the French Embassy in the Republic of Korea, by Sigma Japon and by Subodh Gupta.

At a time when AI is undergoing unprecedented development, the world’s powers are seeking to appropriate key technologies. One point of tension, particularly between China and the US, is the supply of state-of-the-art semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan by TSMC.

Without semiconductors, the economic growth that governments have been calling for, and which would be made possible by the productivity gains resulting from the use of AI, cannot take place. Without semiconductors, there would be no advanced weaponry, no digital memory, not even digital photography.

This video essay invites us to consider another history of digital photography, one in which the resolution of our images rises as industry miniaturizes the semiconductors that make up the image sensors in our cameras.

As the need for AI becomes ever more pressing, Taiwan’s semiconductor production continues to intensify, drawing on the island’s water and electricity resources to the detriment of the population’s needs. For Taiwan, however, relocation of the state-of-the-art semiconductor industry is out of the question, as it is seen as a “silicon shield” against China.

In this story, a Creole storyteller challenges the gigantism of digital memory with the tools of carnal memory, oral memory and poetry. Like a journey, the video takes us through three key countries in the semiconductor industry - Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - from the clichés and images we have of them to the songs and feelings that emerge, from Korean blues to Taiwanese rap.

The Curator’s Ghost, video, color and sound, 17 minutes 50 seconds

In the years 2025 and 2075, some agents travel back in time to the 1960s and 1970s in search of a hammer that contains a wealth of national origins data. During their time travels, they encounter the first Vietnamese curator who is organizing an international exhibition about national identity. The exploration of this identity, intertwined with love across time, prompts them to rebel against the system they are supposed to serve.

Commissioned by Prospect New Orleans for Prospect.6: The Future is Present, the Harbinger is Home, 2024–25