English | Tiếng Việt

A.Farm is pleased to present Celina Huynh’s “Seeking Severance”, a project that the artist had developed during her residency with Echo Correspondence (Vienna). 

Seeking Severance begins with an inheritance: an archive of Paris By Night’s musical legacy. Working across performance, sound, and installation, Vietnamese-American artist Celina Huỳnh returns to this material not simply to preserve it, but to prise it open—separating what heals from what harms, and testing how personal memory crosses into the collective. 

At the centre is Paris by Night—the long-running live music programme created for the Vietnamese refugee community after the war, produced by Thúy Nga, the company founded by Huỳnh’s grandfather in 1983 and later run by her parents in Orange County, California. For many, Paris by Night is synonymous with a shared diasporic identity: glamorous stages, impeccable arrangements, the consolations of nostalgia. 

Described by the artist as “a haunted attempt at self lobotomy,” Seeking Severance reconstructs site-specific memories that orbit Paris by Night, asking what must be kept, what can be re-edited, and what needs to be released. Objects are reconfigured, recordings are cut and spliced, gestures are repeated until their sentiment thins or thickens. In this compositional field, the archive is both wound and salve: it carries forward the voices of a community while revealing the narratives that have fixed that community in place.

Celina Huynh’s project was made possible thanks to Austria’s Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS), City of Vienna Culture, Goethe Institut & Amanaki.

EVENT DETAILS:

Date & Time: 20:00 – 22:00, 20/9/2025
Venue: A.Farm, Floor 6, Amanaki Hotel Thao Dien, 10 Nguyen Dang Giai, Thao Dien
RSVP: https://forms.gle/q7GYHUewrnijVzC8A 
Free entry, registration required. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Vietnamese/Californian artist Celina Huynh is a multi-disciplinary starseed trailblazing a path that is all her own. The enigmatic nature of her work eludes labels or fixed identities. She is a DJ, creative director, video director, video editor, writer, and music producer. Her sound and video pieces live heavily in the realms of dissassociation, liminality, and the unconscious. As an emotional anthropologist vastly concerned with the human condition, she seeks to find parallels in truth. Beyond the ethos of her imagination lies a deep desire for connection and transcendence.

ABOUT ECHO CORESSPONDENCE 

Echo Correspondence, based in Vienna, is dedicated to fostering long-term relationships within the cultural landscape and opening space for intercultural exchange between local and international artists through residencies, exhibitions, workshops, and events.