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MAYA NGUYEN


Based in Chicago, b. 1996, VN/RUS, Interdisciplinary Performer. Nguyen incorporates disparate (and often clashing) material sources into forms that remain conceptually indeterminate, such as performance lectures, sound improvisation, and participatory sculptural interventions. Her favored materials include: speech fragments, mistranslations, painful sounds, urban recordings, sounds imitating nature sounds, breast pump parts, internet debris, and videos of daily life.
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sound

FOURTH OF JULY
                                             
Video, 02:58min

Goethe-Institut Chicago 
2026

Eaves Journal
Online 2021

︎︎︎https://youtu.be/z78I_eAnqio

An attempt to accurately close caption the sound of 4th July firework explosions through the raw material of American English. As our linguistic imagination shifts from ready-made euphemisms of "boom" and "bam" to the actual mangled sounds of violence --  "Tkpriii" and "Kra qm!" -- language itself starts to unravel in its task of representation.