The Living Need Light, and The Dead Need Music

The Propeller Group and Christopher Myers, based between New York City, Los Angeles and Saigon, have encapsulated the elusive butterfly effect — the theory of “nonlocality” whereby two distinct phenomena affect one another across a vast expanse of space and time. The film, The Living Need Light, And The Dead Need Music, a phrase taken from a Vietnamese proverb, documents the funeral tradition of Saigon from the vantage of New Orleans: two cities, two cultures, mirroring each other from worlds apart. A cast of spiritual mediums, professional criers, and musicians guides mourners through a euphoric public ritual; their costumes and instruments are arranged here in a “shrine”. “One of the gifts of the Global South,” the artists say, is “this ability to be many things, many places at once.” Such a feat may seem absurd — but that’s part of the magic and the Einsteinian science: here, distance collapses to reveal “otherness” as no more than an optical illusion.

Photo courtesy of the organiser/s

For more information, please click here.