Anh Vo: Phoenix Forever⏐The Immigrant Artist Biennial

Anh Vo’s guerilla performance, named after the historic Chinese Phoenix brand bicycle, foregrounds Western ideals of freedom, democracy, and individual expression—in their words: “values that once promised an escape from tightly surveilled social orders.” In the newly-commissioned piece, Vo references Dutch conceptual and performance artist Bas Jan Ader’s piece “Fall 2” (1970), in which he rides his bike into a […] in Amsterdam and the pioneering Vietnamese artist Vu Đức Toàn’s 2002 performance “Phoenix Forever.” In Toàn’s work spectators mounted a small boat on the Red River in Hanoi and after several minutes on the water Toàn, unannounced, rode his bicycle off of a high embankment and […].

For Vo’s reinterpretation they will cycle on the West Side Highway, sharing their gilded bicycle with a musical accompaniment saxophone player riding rear. Throughout, Vo speaks an abstracted poetic work until finally, in the culmination of the performance, they […]. Cloaking the performance in secrecy, fugitivity, and tension, Vo will not describe the performance to viewers: instead, “something happens at the river.”

Supported by The Here and There Collective.