March 26–30, 2025
Convention & Exhibition Centre, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, China
Presented by gdm, Alison Nguyen's Prosthetic Memory will debut at Art Basel Encounters in Hong Kong. Prosthetic Memory is an installation involving two multichannel video works which explore the relationship between media, individual histories, and the politics of cultural memory. This includes the premiere of Aisle 9, a new film by Alison Nguyen.
Aisle 9 is a work of speculative fiction which deals with cultural memory, censorship, and subversion of state censorship. Set in the near future, a family-owned hosiery company rents out part of its factory space to avoid further employee layoffs and possible foreclosure. Amidst the haze of dire economic times, things take a turn for the better when their storage ad is answered and a startup company rents a large vacant space in the warehouse. Strange boxes begin flooding in at unpredictable times and in large volumes.
The warehouse crew, a tight-knit group of misfits, become annoyed at the erratic nature of the workflow. Discontent spreads throughout the staff; at night they play archery in the warehouse aisles and smoke and speculate as to what is happening with the influx of boxes. One night an arrow sails into Aisle 9 where the new tenant’s boxes are stored. With their interest piqued, they open the tenant’s boxes and find that they are full of government censored material.
Apprehensive, a worker drags over a monitor for the rest to watch the censored material and they dread what kind of political content they might see. Much to their surprise the censored material is that of everyday life – video diaries, home movies, artist films, and prosumer content. At night the staff slowly begin to turn Aisle 9 into viewing stations where they take in the censored materials and memories pass through the screen.
Photo Credit: Ben Salesse