Down the rabbit hole with Tung Khi

The alchemist behind mind-bending visuals for nightclubs, art installations and assorted events of revelry, Le Thanh Tung – Saigon’s experimental visual artist who goes by Crazy Monkey – talks us through his creative approach. 
Having represented Vietnam at Cannes Young Lions and London’s Design Biennale, visual artist Le Thanh Tung has shown his immersive, audio-visual installations at global exhibits and events in Denmark, Taiwan, Japan and more. He invited Hive Life to visit him at his studio in Saigon, home to a vibrant group of artists known as The Box Collective, to tell us his story from a traditional upbringing in Hanoi to one of his country’s most experimental artistic minds. 

For Le, what sets his work apart is its daring juxtaposition of opposites: sacred symbols intertwine with futuristic phantasmagoria, age-old traditions flourish in the form of psychedelic holograms. In ‘Hau Dong Ca,’ a collaboration with artist Ngoc Nau being shown in her latest exhibition at Cuc Gallery in Hanoi, Ngoc Nau is seen performing a trance-like dance based on the traditional "Hau Dong" ritual, in which the dancer becomes a spirit medium for deities. For it, Le captured her form using a Kinect camera to produce a wireframe of the artist dancing in a 3D environment. 

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