BO SHELL
| 5.3.2006
 
The scene is set: a 7-year-old Vietnamese boy and his family set sail on the high seas, fleeing communism and a life he still doesn’t fully remember.
Via a stunning video montage on display this week, pirates of varying sorts, including Burt Lancaster, attack the family, as images of gay pirate porn fantasies splash across the screen.
Meet Nguyen Tan Hoang, a gay Vietnamese-American artist in Atlanta, and his constructed memories of leaving his home country for a new life in America.
His medium of choice is video, and the work is "Pirated!" an 11 minute romp through an alternate reality, where memory is honored and created via filters of cultural influence and fantasy.
Hoang brings "Pirated!" and six other video art pieces, including "Forever Bottom" with its new perspective on bottoming, to Atlanta’s contemporary art haven EyeDrum Gallery, for "Found Fantasies," a one-night show also featuring several videos by other queer artists earmarked as Hoang’s recent favorites.
"Because it’s a relatively new medium, there was still a lot of experimentation," Hoang says. "It’s also good for the fact that there hasn’t been a lot of exploration in terms, from more marginalized groups like Asian-Americans and gay and lesbian artists."
Video art may take catch some viewers off-guard, as the loops played around the gallery often lack the kind of narrative some audiences are used to. But Hoang says he was immediately drawn to the medium’s thrifty economics and accessibility for audiences.
Hoang got his start as an art student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and picked up his pension for video art in graduate school at UC Irvine, first making a documentary about "Sticky Rice," or Asian gay men who date other Asian gay men, he says.
The work took an experimental turn in which he comfortably explores what it means to be Asian and gay, carefully examining the cultural exploitation of Asian gay men as submissive objects of desire, rather than desire for themselves.
"At the end of the day, I really hope to contribute toward conceptualizing or asserting a presence of queer Asian American male sexuality and portraying and depicting us as… sexual agents, not just sexual victims," Hoang says of his ultimate goal as an artist.
Hoang’s knack for appropriating archival footage in his short films gives audiences identifiable points of reference, increasing the accessibility of his work, even the subtexts are sometimes complicated.
"I think it’s so freeing to work in the non-narrative form," he says. "We find narrative everywhere and the fact that I used a lot of found footage makes it accessible for people because everyone has different associations for things like Hollywood films and homoerotic footage."
As part of his exhibit at EyeDrum, Hoang brings a short film by German artist Michael Brynntrup and three pieces by French artist Jean-Gabriel Periot. Both bring a straightforward approach to queer video art.
Most notably, Jean-Gabriel’s work "Gay?" features the artist speaking directly the camera, outing himself to anyone who doesn’t already know his orientation, saying that he enjoys being a stereotypically stylish and cultured gay man, but most of all, he loves gay sex — a subversion of the typical, non-threatening image gay men are known for in popular culture.
But Hoang’s work shines without back up, due to his rich cultural heritage as both a Vietnamese American and a gay man, two facets of his background that mix in this thoughtful body of work that both art and pop culture fans can enjoy similarly.
"I would say all of those things contribute to my perspective," Hoang says. "Where it all begins and ends is for me to say. All different faces of my identity contribute to how I make my art."
Nguyen Tan Hoang’s "Found Fantasties" are slated to appear May 11, 8 p.m. – 10 p.m. at Eye Drum Atlanta, 290 MLK Jr. Drive, Ste. 8. 404-522-0655, www.eyedrum.org
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