Nguyen Phuong Linh

Memory of the Blind Elephant

Set in the haunting space of an ex-colonial rubber plantation in Central Vietnam, Phuong Linh Nguyen’s film Memory of the Blind Elephant is a tender portrait of the complex economies of interspecies trauma and resilience in the face of continued extraction and destruction. Formerly present in the coronation of P?tau Apui (the Jarai King of Fire), in Dr. Yersin’s exploratory crew during the colonial period, and now a major draw for tourists, the figure of the elephant is ailing, grievous, as though haunting its habitat. Intrigued by the reality she observed, Nguyen gathered, documented, altered, repositioned the local materials of ceaseless exploitation of natural resources: raw rubber, ferrosols, and aluminium to assert a critical proposition.