Goethe-Institut Chicago

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At the intersection of foley practice, cinema sound, and meme aesthetics, this performance lecture explores the sonic structure of trauma, Hollywood portrayals of the Vietnam War, and cultural soft power through sound. This work takes as its starting point the iconic helicopter scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, in which a full-scale U.S. air assault is executed on a Vietnamese village with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries ('Walkürenritt') playing on loudspeakers. It asks: In a rapidly evolving media environment, how do we depict, listen, and respond to the pain of others?

The performance will last approximately forty minutes, and light refreshments will be served.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Moving between languages, time zones, and visual cultures that connect Vietnam, Germany, and the United States, Nguyen considers translation as a form of arrival. Titled after the German word 'Quereinsteiger,' which refers to someone with nontraditional training who transfers into a new professional field, LATERAL ENTRANT is installed throughout the Goethe-Institut Chicago's space and responds to its environment in an office building. Incorporating video, photography, and performance, this exhibition considers coincidence, misinterpretation, and analogy as tools for investigating both individual biographies and broader experiences of immigration.

Please register in advance on Eventbrite and bring a state- or federally-issued photo ID for check-in in the 150 N. Michigan building lobby.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
MAYA NGUYEN
Maya Nguyen is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sound and diasporic making. Marked by migration from Hanoi, to Moscow, and now Chicago, her practice develops formal strategies to articulate experiences of lived ambiguity. Nguyen incorporates disparate (and often clashing) material sources into forms that remain conceptually indeterminate, such as performance-lectures, sound improvisation, and collaborative sculptures. Some favored materials include: speech fragments, mistranslations, body glitches, migratory routes, urban recordings, sounds imitating nature sounds, internet debris, baby babble, breast pump parts, and videos of daily life, among others. Her works are presented internationally, moving fluidly between galleries, sound venues, pop-up shows and universities, with recent shows at Watershed Art & Ecology (Chicago), Jack Straw New Media Gallery (Seattle), Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin), Saari Residency (Mynämäki, FI), Manzi Art Space (Hanoi), and recognition as Arts Club of Chicago Fellow 2025-26 and Karl Sczuka Radio Art Research Prize 2024 (SWR/Goethe Institute). Nguyen holds a BA in Philosophy/Comparative Literature from The University of Chicago and MFA in Sound from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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This presentation will provide context for their summer 2026 walking tours about Chicago's German-Jewish labor history, produced by Chicago Shpatz with support from the Goethe-Institut Chicago. Their guided tour of Randolph Street will use methods of street theater and historical reenactment to illustrate how Jewish immigrants and activists moved from the background of the 1886 Haymarket Affair to the foreground of the 1910 Chicago Garment Strike. Topics covered will include the political and industrial revolutions of 1848, German and Jewish immigration to Chicago, the Civil War and the Great Chicago Fire, the use of Turnverein (or Turner Halls) and Hull-House as hubs for social activism, Chicago's German and Yiddish press, the eight-hour day movement, and the class divide (and subsequent historical biases) between machers and shnorrers in Chicago's early Jewish community.

This program is presented in partnership with the Chicago YIVO Society, the Chicago Jewish Historical Society, and the Illinois Labor History Society.

Please register in advance and bring a state- or federally-issued photo ID for check-in in the 150 N. Michigan building lobby. Light refreshments will be served.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ben Schacht is a writer, educator, and board member of the Chicago YIVO Society. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from Northwestern University.

Matthew Schlerf is a performer, tour guide, and community organizer. He holds an MFA in collaborative theatre making from Rose Bruford College in London. This July, Ben and Matthew will co-teach an adult education course at the Newberry Library titled "A Social History of Yiddish Chicago" (details forthcoming).

Chicago Shpatz is an experimental theater collective created by artists Matthew Schlerf and Sivan Spector. The word shpatz is a Yiddish pun based on the words shpatzir (“stroll”) and shpas (“joke”). Chicago Shpatz specializes in immersive, site-specific and environmental theater, blurring the lines between tour guide and storyteller, and bringing the history of Chicago and its peoples out of the archives and into the public. For queries or information about upcoming tours, reach out to chicagoshpatz@gmail.com.