Burn/City is a deeply personal project, conceived from autobiographical accounts and imagined narratives, facts and propagandas, personal histories and collective memories, the gigantic and miniature ones. It is both about me, my country, and something larger. This has been an ongoing experiment in my artistic career.


It started out as a three-act play; about a family from a utopian city that underwent various incidents following the suicide of their youngest son - the 17-year-old Sky. The project has since taken on many shapes and forms: as an immersive installation/performance, an adventure video as well as fragments of writings. This time, I want to present it in a new form of similar spirit; a cross-disciplinary work that combines elements of puppetry, theatricality, performance, spoken words, and videography


Artist Profile

Linh Valerie Pham is an experimental theatre and puppetry artist based in Vietnam. She is interested in movement, puppetry, breath, pretty words, ugly words, and all things magical. Her art is a medium for her to tell stories in an unusual and out-of-the-ordinary manner. Her works have been showcased at Vicas Studio (Hanoi), A Space (Hanoi), Vincom Center for Contemporary Arts (Hanoi), The Factory Contemporary Arts Center (HCM City), Soul Live Project (HCM City), Brick Theatre (New York), CPR-Center for Performance Research (New York), and HERE Arts Center (New York).

Valerie is also the founder of Mat Tran Ensemble, a performing arts collective with a focus on inclusive and socially-engaged practices. Valerie was artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan (Malaysia) and a Fellow of Arts for Good Singapore in 2019.