Visual Culture Projects

We are working on projects that documents the Dega peoples’ visual vocabulary, how they organize stuff and see the world around them. This could be really, really exciting. Not only does it tell us about how they view the Piedmont through different eyes, they give us different solutions to shared experiences and encounters. Obvious examples: bamboo imported from China as an ornamental plant is regarded as a pesky invasive to mainstream Americans, but to Southeast Asians it's the source for all kinds of building and craft projects. In our area pig weed is a garden intruder but to Dega it's an edible. We're putting together ideas and would be interested in hearing from others on this.

• Betsy Renfrew’s Projects with Montagnards
• Montagnard Dega Visual Culture Project: Weaving and Literacy
• About Montagnard Dega Weaving
• Chram Project: Illustrating the Past



A stairway to a longhouse, from the music CD, Anak Cu Chiang: Traditional Music Performed by the Montagnard American Music Group.












My ELT students were asked to tell a story (ngoch bri, bunong) that explained the pictures showing a tree, trunk, and stairway. They said this is no longer done in Vietnam because there are no more suitably large trees. The men in class said they were still capable of fashioning such a stairway using saws and axes, but adzes would not be required. The woman in the class insisted that women, too, would have helped fell the tree and carve it. Children would not be engaged in this work. There was a debate about how long it would take to make the stairway. Two stairways (enan, jong gung, bunong) were typically in the front of a house and one in the rear. The projections at the top of the stairs represent a woman's breasts. The rear stairs would be plain without decoration. It’s hard to avoid seeing a connection between the sculptural quality of the Montagnard stairway and the work of Brancusi.