Single-channel video, color, sound.

Description

‘This work re-enacts a game that my friends and I often played when we were children: Majority Wins. With at least three players, each must show their hands palm-up or palm-down; those in the group with fewer palms facing the same way then become losers. The goal of the game is to remove the losers so that the winners can move on to a different game.’

Part of a series of video art works that Đào Tùng has been working on since 2021, A game or We were born to be losers was filmed in one shot, its setting an unnamed beach. The characters – non-speaking and without any identifiable features – slowly play round after round of Majority Wins. The frame of the camera becomes a site of performance: every time the losers exit the frame, new players enter and the game resumes. The cycle repeats until a loser decides to break away: he undresses, goes into the water, and swims out until his figure is no bigger than a black dot. On the shore, the winners gaze out, emotionless.

The fixed camera position; the unchangeable horizon separating the sky, sea and shore; the repetitive sequence of actions; and the anti-climactic ending devoid of any narrative or plot point – against a backdrop of relentless waves that never stop pushing and pulling, corroding and destroying, these visual experiences subtly allude to the precarious existence and condition of individuals and communities who find themselves at the margins of society.

Description from No more, not yet Exhibition Catalog, 2023.