Dự án tiếng Việt (Our Vietnamese Project)

Pham Phan Nhan

Our Vietnamese Project is a collective inquiry into Vietnamese as a living language. It begins with an anti-QWERTY keyboard that challenges the limits of the Vietnamese dictionary. The keyboard experiments with the monosyllabic nature of Vietnamese, shedding light on new interpretations and nonsensical syllables. From this emerges Xác Âm, an attempt to render syllables into weights of sensation. If each sound in Vietnamese evokes a distinct feeling, its pronunciation leaves traces in those who listen. Inspired by our diverse dialects, Xác Âm is a concrete expression of a poem: not through scripts, but through the physicality of recital, one that is deeply personal to each voice. If Xác Âm is a conscious impression, the third experiment—Bên kia của vần—explores the community’s subconscious on the language through a game. The rule is simple: when we black out the meaning, what is left in a language. As this playful experiment unfolds, lost links reconnect across different languages. We might be divided in names, but all united in voice. From that, the last experiment—để quá khứ sẽ (tiếp diễn)—escalates language into a social eulogy, hijacking algorithms to endlessly chant empty promises made by the authorities to the trees that bleed in service of Saigon’s 2nd Metro. It is a poetic resistance and also a beautiful, open-ending note of how the Vietnamese language is still living, breathing, and resisting across all domains.