Introduction and Booksigning by Trinh T. Minh-ha

Filmmaker and UC Berkeley professor Trinh T. Minh-ha's most recent book The Digital Film Event looks at how technology changes our perception of reality and sense of self. To mark its publication, we present a selection of her digital works. Two recent videos relate to the installation The Desert Is Watching, presented at the Kyoto Biennale: The Desert Is Watching (2003, 11.5 mins) is a meditation on the desert landscape; Bodies of the Desert (2005, 20 mins) features vivid body art and land art by Jean-Paul Bourdier in which both the desert and the human figure are transformed by pattern and color. “In the desert, everything moves. Nothing is ever the same. . . . Otherwise, in the desert, nothing moves” (T. T. M., J-P. B.). The Fourth Dimension (2001, 87 mins), Trinh's first videotape, explores the culture of Japan. She “finds great visual pleasure in the everyday, composing and decomposing the social landscape, while constructing a poetic grid of temporalities, symbolic meanings, and ritual. Time is essential-the time of the video frame, the time of the ritualized past, the time of culture speeding toward its consummation” (Steve Seid).