S P C | Sài Gòn, 'Start with Something Simple'

The lead story for this issue is Trang Le's piece 'A discovery of... myself'. Cover imagery is by gardener and terrarium-maker Dinh Ngô. Both contributors for this issue were part of ateliers on the fringes of Đà Lạt that DK had hosted from March-June 2020, while in 'lockdown' and generally staying put for a spell, in Central Vietnam.

Trang Le

The lead story, 'A discovery of... myself', is by Trang Le. Written and shared here in the Vietnamese language, 'Discovery' chronicles the author's feelings during her stay in the time of COVID-19 in a city far from home: Đà Lạt. 

As DK was in the same place at the same time, we by chance bumped into her while chatting about lakes at a kitchen table. Soon, DK got to hear Le's insightful, sharp observations about people, the world, life, and how she was finding her way around the city. Two of her photographs--lovely vignettes of Đà Lạt--are included, too. 

Dinh Ngô

Our cover this issue features the terrariums of Dinh Ngô, who took the cover photograph of some of his works. 

DK had noticed the teapot in real life and asked about it, then this image came back with the cup. It fit the mood and conversation that we had had with him, about ecology, people, changes, and, more generally, trying things out. 

More images of other works he has made are in this issue, too. Like this one:

Atelier S P C | Đà Lạt

A short piece, 'Phoneless', by Dipika Kohli is included in this issue of S P A C E, too. It is in both English and Vietnamese--special thanks to Bích Ngọc for a professional translation. 

A set of chance encounters during lockdown in Đà Lạt, mostly at True Coffee, led DK to invite a handful of those whom we found exceptionally cool, quite delightful, curious, inspiring, and engaging to meet others we also found to be the same. The idea was to make a time and space for us all to then connect, and interconnect, in real life. That chance encounter magic is the stuff of our ateliers, after all. What was cool was that it became a series. Out of which we found the theme for this issue, ‘Start with Something Simple.’ 

More about our project S P A C E is at: Insta @dkompany. Our crowdfunding page is: chuffed.org/project/spacethezine.