Binghamton University students and staff had the opportunity to step out of reality and into the worlds created by Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, a London- and Berlin-based artist whose works inhabit various mediums, including sculpture and video. As part of the Cinema Department’s Visiting Artist Series, Nguyen-Chi’s audiovisual artworks were exhibited in Lecture Hall 6 last Tuesday.

Featured creations included audio from Nguyen-Chi’s multimedia piece “The light comes in the name of the voice” (2024) and her short films “Linger on Your Pale Blue Eyes” (2016), “The In/Extinguishable Fire” (2019) and “Into the Violet Belly” (2022). Alongside Katie Kirkland, an assistant professor of cinema, Nguyen-Chi discussed the selected pieces in detail, sharing personal anecdotes relating to each artwork’s process and inspirations.

Though nearly every seat in Lecture Hall 6 was filled for the event, when complete darkness took over the room, it was as if attendees were momentarily connected to perceive the world through Nguyen-Chi’s endless imagination. This united, intimate experience is unique to the cinema and essential for appreciating art as a community.

Armand Tufenkian, a lecturer of cinema, shared the importance of this practice and how it makes the University’s Cinema Department unique.

”I think there’s something different that happens when you’re sitting next to each other with a lot of other people looking at something together,” Tufenkian said. “You experience it differently than when you’re on your computer, for example, in your room, or on your phone, looking at it on your own time. You have to account for everybody else in a sense, and there’s something about the collective experience also — sometimes you hear people laughing, you hear people reacting in certain ways.”

“But also, you get the built-in questions, and you can kind of just feel the energy in the room, and I think that’s one of the most integral aspects of art,” he continued.

Nguyen-Chi studied fine arts at Städelschule in Germany and film at the Art Institute of Chicago and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in film at the University of Westminster. Through her work, Nguyen-Chi aims to understand what is impossible to understand. Her short films repeatedly present mathematics not simply as a science or an art, but as a metaphysical power.

“Linger on Your Pale Blue Eyes” demonstrates how, through precise use of this tool, a filmmaker can transform reality into something they can grasp and use it to navigate through the darkness toward freedom. This alternative perspective on arithmetic exemplifies the convergence between the arts and sciences.

Kirkland discussed the role this kind of academic intersectionality plays in the University’s Cinema Department.

“It’s always been interdisciplinary,” Kirkland said. “We certainly have current faculty members in the department who are thinking across not only the arts and other kinds of humanities, but with people in the sciences. My colleague, [assistant professor of cinema] Magdalena Bermudez, works very often with scientific imaging and botany, kind of working across both the humanities and sciences.”

“Historically, those ways of thinking about the world and thinking through ideas have always been very porous for us,” she continued. “So I think it both is important for the broader Binghamton community, but also is something that has always been a part of the Binghamton way, at least for the Cinema Department, and to think across different disciplines and see what they might have to converse with one another.”

The exhibition and discussion of Nguyen-Chi’s work allowed the University community to practice something integral to its roots. Thanks to the artists’ unique perspective and open reflection, an environment free of boundaries between the realms of thought was explored.