Wheel in the Sky (2008)
3-channel video installation
black & white with sound
digital video
9:00 minutes

Three large walls, each 7’ tall, with the flanking walls slightly angled towards the viewer as if to embrace—repeats a U.S. Huey helicopter struggling above a turbulent South China Sea, almost disappearing beneath the waves but in a moment never complete. It rises over and over in distressed suspension above the disappearance we know is imminent but never realized. The middle screen opens to show a man’s slow footsteps through a recent snowfall. A conversation between the filmmaker and her father overtake the deep thrum of the helicopters’ blades. What begins as a discussion of Vietnamese poetry and the band Journey shifts into a frustrated collision over the impossibility of translating language, meaning and memory.

Watch video here.