Queen Bee Snake Bar & Tea Room
My friend Miss Mai told me how she came to live in Saigon. She was born and grew up in Hanoi during the war and her father was an important Communist at that time. In April 1975, when the Communists took over South Vietnam, the Americans and many people that had worked with them left Vietnam. Victors from the North came to take over the running of the South and when they came to Saigon they needed somewhere to live. So the practical rule at that time, was to find one of the many houses abandoned by those that had fled the city, and move in, taking it as their own. The space that Miss Mai's family found was an abandoned "snake bar" on Dong Khoi Street (called Tu Do Street pre 75). When being told this story, my immediate question was "what is a snake bar?" She told me that it was the name Saigon people gave to drinking holes where American soldiers went to look for Vietnamese women.
Miss Mai recounted that although she was only a few years old, she still vividly remembers the eerie feeling when she first entered the bar. The neon signs and fairy lights were still lit. Empty drink bottles filled the space and everything was as it had been left on the last night of business there, everything, but the people.
I am intrigued by the atmosphere of empty spaces where people used to be. Places like a seaside resort in winter, an empty cinema, or a city center on Sunday morning. Queen Bee, Snake Bar & Tea Room recreates this "situation" by referencing Miss Mai's story and creating my own version of such a bar.
As a full-scale interactive performance / installation at Raid Projects, Los Angeles, the Queen Bee opens as a working bar on the evenings of October 21 st and 28 th . During these occasions, Asian performers working as 'bar girls' tend the bar, and it operates much as it would have done during the Vietnam War. For the next week, the ghostly atmosphere of the 'aftermath' is on exhibition as an installation.
The American War in Vietnam ended more than 30 years ago, but even today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are struggling to recover from the effects of that war. The USA is currently involved in another unnecessary war in Iraq that bears alarming resemblance to the past. Perhaps we know all too well how this will end. The Americans will get out of Iraq at some point, when they privately deem the war un-winnable, leaving the locals to deal with the problems that we've created and left behind.
Queen Bee, Snake Bar & Tea Room , enjoyable and seemingly light-hearted, is also a sinister reminder of the devastating effects of war. The public (the customers), enjoy their time in the bar during the opening night, while at the same time creating a mess of their empty beer bottles, strewn peanut casings, etc., which will be "memorialized" and left behind permanently after they go home. The public are creating the art of the aftermath.
-Rodney Dickson
Queen Bee Snake Bar & Tea Room
2004 | present, Mixed media installation
Web Site: www.rodneydickson.com
SPONSORS
Annie Adjchavanich
The Irish American Arts Awards
Jeffrey du Vallier d'Aragon Aranita, MOCA China
The Centrifuge Group, Inc.
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Jill McDiarmid
Jamie Maxtone-Graham
Colin & Melissa Mangham
Thi Nguyen
Robert Petrullo
M.E. Fox & Company
ADVISOR
KoLan Jeff Baysa, MOCA Beijing |
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PREVIOUS QUEEN BEE LOCATIONS
Queen Bee, Snake Bar & Tea Room has been developed in several spaces around the world since 2004, including the Lab Gallery (New York, USA), The Engine Room (Belfast, N. Ireland), Jack The Pelican Presents (New York, USA), and Scope Hamptons (New York, USA). Forthcoming shows will be include Scope Miami 2006.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Born in 1956 in Northern Ireland, I grew up during the troubled years of civil disorder that engulfed that country. Having drawn and painted since a child, I have reacted to my early experience by considering the futility and hypocrisy of war through art. As time went by I developed an interest in Vietnam and Cambodia where I have researched extensively and completed a number of art projects since 1992. There I witnessed the aftermath of conflict in its indiscriminately brutal form: it is from this point that my work proceeds.
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