The Propeller Group

TPG Films

The Propeller Group also functions as the full-service video production company TPG Films.^[2] In addition to making music videos for Vietnamese pop singers Thanh Bui, Hoàng Thùy Linh, Minh Hằng, Hồ Ngọc Hà, Phương Vy, Anh Khang, Liêu Anh Tuấn, and the occasional commercials, TPG Films has collaborated with Vietnamese American artist Dinh Q. Lê on multimedia installation projects. They also regularly team up with Danish art collective Superflex, co-producing short films and video installations.^[1][6] The distinction between The Propeller Group and TPG Films reflects the shifting relations between art and commerce.^[1]

Phunam and Nguyen also co-founded the artist-run, non-profit, alternative space Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City) along with Dinh Q. Lê and Tiffany Chung in 2007.^[1][2]

Films

• Spray It Don't Say It (2006) – documentary film^[3][9]
• She Sells Seashells (2007) – short film, in collaboration with The Seashores
• Burning Car (2008) – short film, in collaboration with Superflex
• Flooded McDonald’s (2008) – short film, in collaboration with Superflex
• The Financial Crisis (2009) – video clips for television broadcast, in collaboration with Superflex
• Porcelain / Mảnh Ghép Cuộc Đời (2009) – three-part television mini-series, in collaboration with Superflex^[6]
• FADE IN: EXT. STORAGE – CU CHI – DAY (2010) – short film, in collaboration with Superflex
• The Guerillas of Cu Chi (2012) – short film
• Light and Belief (2012) – short documentary film, with Dinh Q. Lê
• The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music (2014) – short film^[12][13]

Video art

• The Farmers and the Helicopters (2006) (in collaboration with Dinh Q. Lê)
• Uh (2007)
• From Father to Son (2007) (in collaboration with Dinh Q. Lê)
• South China Sea Pishkun (2009) (in collaboration with Dinh Q. Lê)
• Modern Times Forever (2011) (in collaboration with Superflex)
• Erasure (2011) (in collaboration with Dinh Q. Lê)
• Television Commercial for Communism (2011)^{[3][8][9][14][15][16][17][18]}

Interdisciplinary projects

• Temporary Public Gallery (2010): Renting out advertising space to curate artworks in public, the group attempts to challenge notions of public space, advertising, and public art in Vietnam as there are limitations of the public art due to control through different censorship bodies.
• Estranged Fruit (2011): A study in the application of political history and socio-political meaning through the introduction of one of America’s most famous protest song, Strange Fruit, into China’s growing rock scene, via Chinese punk rock & industrial metal band, VooDooKungFu. Estranged Fruit was displayed in its first iteration in Hong Kong at 1A Space as an installation.
• Vietnam the World Tour (2010–2012): A rogue anti-nation-rebranding campaign. It appropriates marketing language, graffiti strategies, and viral video platforms to re-associate a historically colonized and mediated national identity with an entirely new mediated history.^[3][9]
• Static Friction: Burning Rubber (2012): An attempt to discuss the larger issues of globalism, economy, industry, individuality, rebellion, violence and aesthetics with one simple act: the burnout. Single channel video, modified Honda Wave, photographs.^[19]
• Static Friction (2012): A five-part work, including 1967, Collision, The Dream, Portraits of Mechanical Reproduction, and Chasing Inertia.^[19]
• The History of the Future (2012): A two-part mold is shown in the gallery space along with an accompanying short film showing a series of packshots, inter-cut with a short documentary narrative of the artists’ journey to an unknown location to bury the sculpture. The GPS coordinates are kept in a steel safe rigged with a time-release mechanism, attached to a digital counter, counting down from 100 years, only to be unlocked when the counter reaches zero.