The Blindness Series
8 Episodes
A series of eight densely layered experimental video essays by Vietnamese American artist Tran T. Kim-Trang, The Blindness Series encompasses a dizzying array of themes and aesthetic strategies as it explores the many metaphorical resonances surrounding blindness and vision. Ranging in style from highly processed collage that mimics the aesthetics of MTV to more straightforward documentary, these thought-provoking, politically engaged works explore questions surrounding cosmetic surgery of (Asian American) eyelids, vision and sexuality, video surveillance, and hysterical blindness as they open up entirely new ways of seeing.
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aletheia
Episode 1
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1992 • United States
The introductory title to The Blindness Series, ALETHEIA presents an indexing of categories investigating different aspects of blindness as metaphor. Stylistic preference for the techniques and conventions of MTV, and American television in ge...
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operculum
Episode 2
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1993 • United States
The artist visits with seven cosmetic surgeons specializing in blepharoplasty (cosmetic eyelid creasing surgery) in the West Hollywood/Beverly Hills area for initial consultation sessions. The doctors demonstrate different reshaping options an...
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kore
Episode 3
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1994 • United States
By focusing on the blindfold, KORE explores the eye as purveyor of desire, sexual fear, and the fantasy of blindness. An alternative sexuality is founded in touch-based (feminine?) pleasure as opposed to a vision-based (masculine?) pleasure. A...
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ocularis
Episode 4
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1997 • United States
This video highlights several narratives concerning video surveillance—not to reiterate the conventional privacy argument but rather to engage the desire to watch surveillance materials and society’s insatiable voyeurism. A variety of subjects...
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ekleipsis
Episode 5
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 1998 • United States
In 1992, Tran T. Kim-Trang came across a New York Times article about a group of hysterically blind Cambodian women in Long Beach, California, known as the largest group of such people in the world. Hysterical blindness is sight loss brought a...
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alexia
Episode 6
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 2000 • United States
ALEXIA is an experimental video about word-blindness and metaphor. Word-blindness is a condition that usually afflicts people who have suffered a stroke, causing them to lose the visual recognition of individual letters but perceive the entire...
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amaurosis
Episode 7
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 2002 • United States
AMAUROSIS is an experimental documentary about Dat Nguyen, a blind guitarist living in Little Saigon in Orange County, California. Dat Nguyen was a “triple outcast”: blind, Amerasian, and an impoverished orphan. The video unfolds through layer...
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Epilogue: The Palpable Invisibility of Life
Episode 8
Directed by Tran T. Kim-Trang • 2006 • United States
EPILOGUE: THE PALPABLE INVISIBILITY OF LIFE is the final chapter in the Blindness Series, a body of eight videos on blindness and its metaphors that was begun in 1992. The inspiration for the series came from a 1990 exhibition Jacques Derrida ...
