“Half for You, Half for Me”
Reflections on Artistic Creation in a Time of Turmoil Continued with a Photography Project “Album 205: Stargazing Through My Dreamy Scars” by Chiron Duong, based on the “Sustainability and Recirculation Spirit”
The scar is a metaphor for the upheavals and wounds in all aspects of human life: from ecological environmental issues, Artificial Intelligence, Development between nations, Mental health in cities… The artist is at the border between the upheavals of the times and artistic personality. More than ever, I deeply feel the quote that appeared in the documentary HoneyLand 2019: “Half for you, half for me” (directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov), since it is quite similar to my background as both a landscape architect and a visual artist, should the artistic ego be allowed to create recklessly, perhaps even promote destructive trends of nature for the sake of art, ignoring the current environmental disasters?
Stargazing as a metaphor for dreaming. So, how to dream in each tumultuous era, with scars crisscrossing the sky.
“Album 205: Stargazing Through My Dreamy Scars”. That is also the way I think when creating art, but how to limit the impact on nature is my core goal: “half for you, half for me”.
Album 205 was born with a series of new experiments with a long-term orientation that I named after each technique, researched the nature, and divided into different Tracks like a music album:
Track 1: La Main De Saigon (ft. Dremachi Space)
Track 2: Geno Korner (ft. Dremachi Space)
Track 3: Eternal (ft. Dnnly Vietnam)
Track 4: Love will find a way (ft. Dnnly Vietnam)
Track 5: Bartender (ft. Dnnly Vietnam)
Track 6: Pure Raps (Ráp) (ft. Chilab Vietnam)
Track 7: a life on a planet (ft. Chilab Vietnam)
Track 8: A Camera (ft. Chilab Vietnam)
Track 9: F.ke News (ft. Chilab Vietnam)
Track 10: Magic Door (ft. Chilab Vietnam)
Track 11: Coi Mong Blog
Track 12: Think Of A Park
–
PART I – Collaboration with Dremachi Space (Track 1- Track 2)
Dremachi Space: “Application of craft, creativity, and design based on Vietnamese folk culture and Oriental culture. First is to create an impressive visual experience, but with the most minimal amount of props, and combined with manual steps to create compositions on the work.”
Track 1: La Main De Saigon
La Main De Saigon: “A creative fusion between fashion photography and handcrafted material techniques on printed surfaces. The project seeks a balance between aesthetic beauty, emotional impact, and sustainability, reducing waste from unnecessary props used in fashion photoshoots. It is a small but meaningful contribution to creative practice amid today’s environmental challenges.”
Track 2: Geno Korner
Geno Korner– “Dedicated to Mother Earth. Gen and 0 (zero) = Geno. Drawing inspiration from philosophical illustrations, Geno Korner invites participants to let their imagination run free. From hand-drawn sketches, we co-create textures and visual layers using photography and handcrafting techniques, blending human imagination, manual artistry, and technological potential. The result is a vibrant, hybrid work that celebrates creativity in every form.”
–
PART II – Collaboration with DNNLY Vietnam (Track 3- Track 4- Track 5)
DNNLY Vietnam: Promoting Vietnamese culture in a changing era based on the context and characteristics of the country, and researching the ability to connect artists and communities through social networks through the keyword: “Don’t Be Afraid to Say Love.”
–
Track 3: Eternal
DNNLY Vietnam: “This project explores how humans perceive time, like water slipping through our hands. In certain moments, time seems to pause, allowing us to grasp the fleeting beauty of ‘eternity’ in simple things.
“Time reveals the essence of each stage of life. The present, the past, the future, sometimes they shimmer together like drops of water in our palms. Those brief instants of awareness, I call them eternity.”
Beyond photography, this journey encourages participants to slow down, connect with nature, culture, and local landscapes across Vietnam, and rediscover stillness in motion.”
Track 4: Love will find a way
As the Vietnamese saying goes:
“Yêu nhau mấy núi cũng trèo,
Mấy sông cũng lội, mấy đèo cũng qua.”
(“When two love each other, no mountain is too high, no river too wide.”)
Inspired by this spirit, Love Will Find a Way explores how people can still connect deeply despite distance, borders, or time zones. This remote photography process allows participants and photographers to co-create from afar, proving that love and connection always find a way, helped by modern technology.
“Let distance never be a reason to disconnect us.”
Track 5: Bartender
DNNLY Vietnam: “Build a completely spontaneous and unexpected photographic process, get inside the mind, and share the experience. Connect through real communication, not through pre-conceived photography concepts. Emphasize energy resonance and mutual creative inspiration.
“The bartender stands between sorrow and bliss, the one who tells you to stop after three shots, and the one who makes the perfect drink that soothes your soul. If there were a gatekeeper between heaven and hell on Earth, they would surely be a bartender.”
Inspired by the poetic duality of bartenders, this project invites participants to choose or create a drink that mirrors their current emotions. We ask: If a photographer were a bartender, what kind of photograph would they mix for you?
A photo that heals, comforts, or helps you forget, just for a moment.”
–
PART III – Collaboration with ChiLab Vietnam (Track 6- Track 7- Track 8- Track 9- Track 10)
ChiLab Vietnam: “Research on photography in a multimedia relationship with other art genres to create the ability to reflect and encourage observation in real life through the keyword: Still living (emphasizing adaptation to life’s changes and towards responsible creation with sustainability and circulation)”
Track 6: Pure “Raps” (Ráp)
ChiLab: “Revisiting the role of editing software as a pure creative expression of imagination. However, exploiting the characteristics of editing software in creating color reactions on pixels, creating interesting textures, resonating with the original work to satisfy emotions, but at the same time limiting unnecessary props in reality.
Pure represents the pure joy of experimenting with color interactions in editing software. “Ráp” (in Vietnamese) refers to assembling textures and layers into visual compositions. This experience combines basic yet fascinating digital editing techniques, blending and transforming colors, to create expressive photo-graphic artworks. It’s a joyful fusion of color, structure, and spontaneity, where creativity flows freely between the human eye and digital tools.”
Track 7: A Life on the Planet
Chilab: “Research on the role of photography in preserving Vietnamese indigenous knowledge, bridging indigenous culture and global ecology.”
Track 8: A Camera
ChiLab: “Research and Emphasis on Camera (A type of machine) is a poetic invention of man that proves the connection between science and humans in the process of artistic creation.
We go back to the original desire of mankind when we started to create the camera. Combined with the frozen moments by shutter speed or special effects created by this device. What makes it Different from magnifying glasses, microscopes, scanners, or image editing software?”
Track 9: F.ke News
ChiLab: “This idea was formed from the fact that we have been surrounded by unclear information since the birth of cameras. The images are modified to intentionally create confusion, suspense… from that idea, we experimented with another possibility on the surface of the image: We cause changes and uncontrolled chemicals on the surface of the print. On the one hand, this process creates interesting and attractive content like fake news, on the other hand, it shows the dark side of the mass subconscious about trying to impress instead of respecting the inherent natural organic.”
Track 10: Magic Door
ChiLab: “What differentiates humans from machines based on? By asking this question, we experiment with creating experiences in space by relying on the context and feeling of space, thereby creating stories. We take advantage of the objects in the space and transform their arrangement to form new emotional experiences. These experiences cannot be transferred to other spaces, so they become unique based on the context of the space.”
–
PART IV – Thinking about the future (Track 11- Track 12)
by turning to Eastern philosophy with the Dreamland Blog project and A Park by Chiron Duong
–
Track 11: Coi Mong Blog (Dreamland Blog)
Coi Mong Blog (Dreamland Blog) A Blog combined with the Dreamland photo project, Digital pattern inspired by Oriental Calligraphy – the space with the feeling of Asian tea ceremony and meditation, displaying works about Eastern philosophy about impermanence and the beauty of life that we can hardly see in today’s modern digital age. – inspired by the space with the feeling of the Asian tea ceremony and meditation, displaying works about Eastern philosophy about impermanence and the beauty of life that we can hardly see in today’s modern digital age.
A boundary between reality and illusion, between the living world and the spiritual world. The journey of this photo series does not aim at a specific destination or search for a specific object. Everything evokes a floating and drifting in time and space. Fateful encounters, fateful departures, moments that are unknown and unexpected, unwaited, in the brief moments when nature blends with life, creating an illusion of miracles in these journeys of encounter.
Track 12: Think of a park
Chiron Duong Park: Linking the creativity of an artist and the thinking of a landscape architect: I see my photographic and visual works divided according to the experience corresponding to different functional spaces in a lively park such as: entertainment space, sports space, inn space, botanical garden, psychological therapy area and Vietnamese costume experience area, cultural and art performance stage, souvenir area, culinary area, etc. From there, personal works are formed on many topics, from fashion, psychology, plants, animals, ecology, etc.
PART V – Finally, my long-term vision for the proposal, called Dandu Museum Ideas, is on the potential to promote rural culture and connect communities across sectors.
