Vivian Tran: See You Tomorrow

Inspired by Vietnamese street vending culture and the labor of the artist's grandfather, who once sold ice by trike, See You Tomorrow is an outdoor installation comprising two interactive, pedal-powered flip books from artist Vivian Tran. Two tricycles are installed face-to-face, each with a large-scale flip book apparatus connected to its pedals. As passersby ride the trikes, they simultaneously animate and star in sequences of horizon imagery collected via video stills from tv shows popular in Vietnam in the 1960s-2000s. Centered in front of the moving images, riders produce an animation in which their body becomes a thread, seaming together scattered moments across time and place. Though each person produces a unique visual, they cannot see the image they create themselves. In this way, the installation functions via interdependencies: it cannot be fully seen without another’s presence. The act of understanding becomes contingent on witnessing another’s movement, on inhabiting space together.