Beach Pocket

－EARLY PRACTICE



－COLLECTIVE WORK



－SELECTED WORKS



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Beach Pocket

First thing I said when a guy took my shirt off was always ⎯ “Am I too skinny?”

From 2019 to 2022, my best friends and I made occasional getaways to the beaches in Vietnam. There we swam, sunbathed, read, danced, and radiated under the sun. There I found comfort in my own skin. There I realized the beauty of our shapes. The whole process is a healing journey for me.

This pocket notebook includes all the portraits and self-portraits that I documented during the time. People are welcomed to use it for their own purposes.

“My boyfriend once said that I was so tiny
That he could carry me in his pocket anywhere
So put me in your pocket
Use me as your time goes by
Use my body as your late-night canvas

Write on me
Compose on me
Fast on me
Slow on me
Release on me
Spit on me
Piss on me
Bleed on me”

Nhân Phan ␥



In search of another technological future, Nhân Phan looks toward a vision deeply bound to humanity: technology invented by and for the powerless, carrying hopes and dreams, making space for personal feelings, and giving form to what once seemed impossible. His practice reclaims this sense of possibility: imagining technology as it once promised to be, before commercial interests and large-scale systems of control narrowed what it could mean.

Questions of love, desire, digital identity, and poetic computation recur across his work in software, data, installation, film, language, and pedagogical experiments. Nhân emerged from Saigon's DIY tech community and founded CodeSurfing, an art-tech collective in Vietnam. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been both a fellow and mentor of the Processing Foundation Fellowship. He is currently an MFA candidate at UCLA Design | Media Arts.


CONTACT

You can reach me via my email. My teaching and programs are public via CodeSurfing (IG and Web).