Videos

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September

2019
A woman returns home after spending many years in an English-speaking country. She gets a job as an English teacher and gives herself an Anglicized name September. At work, she is unexpectedly forced or forces herself to "wear" a different langauge and cultural identity. Later she finds herself very committed to playing this fictitious and stereotypical identity of an English teacher named September. The work asks questions about where one's body is located or can be located in relation to the languges spoken.
Added on: July 30, 2021

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A Kitchen Reading

The artist reads aloud a piece of text written in English and the artist's friend Sofya Melnichuck orally translates the reading into Russian on the spot. The reading was filmed at the communal kitchen of Artkommunalka*. The kitchen was the place where families in the communal apartment exchanged their ideas, arts, and samizdats during the Soviet era. Unlike other works by the artist, this video was made with an awareness that the work would go through a translation in the future (in this case, into Korean). There are multiple translations in the work: from written text to spoken words, from spoken to spoken words, from English to Russian, and finally from spoken words (English) to written text (Korean subtitles). The text that is read and translated in the video keeps referring back to itself by discussing these various translations and the corresponding processes.
Added on: July 30, 2021

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ephemeras (excerpt)

The video features various images of Kolomna along with fragments of texts in English and Russian. The Russian-English and English-Russian texts are a record of translations done in Google Translate during actual conversations. They represent the speakers' awareness of the possible failure of language as well as their mutual efforts to communicate with each other. The audio is the artist copying the text of Moscow-Petushki by Erofeev, making reference to the history and culture of the city, Kolomna. The audio also addresses both the physicality and ephemerality of the act of speaking and writing.
Added on: August 16, 2019

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Re-Conversation(s) [sic] (excerpt)

2016
Re-Conversation(s) [sic] is a single channel video, featuring a conversation in English and Korean. There are two speakers: Sujin Lee and Jiwon Yu. Yu works as a translator and an interpreter. They talk about their own relationships with the languages they speak and write. One of the topics that keeps coming up in their conversation is how one chooses a language to speak and write. Each section of the conversation is punctuated by Re, the musical note. The conversation (text) is presented in various ways: spoken, transcribed, translated, reenacted, edited, or "unedited." The text(s) is controlled and also improvised, blurring the line between spoken text and written text. Spoken text and written text are intimately connected, but they are never identical to each other.
Added on: July 31, 2018

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This Voice (excerpt)

2013
This Voice is a single channel video in black and white with a voice-over. The voice-over describes another voice that never appears in the video. The black and white images in the video are abstract, fragmented and layered; their textures have sonogram-like qualities. They comment on the impossibility of describing a voice because it has an ephemeral nature and may be remembered on a deeply personal level.
Added on: July 31, 2018

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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Project (excerpt)

2015
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Project is a video work accompanied by research documents. The project looks into the Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's work and life through language by exploring themes such as translation/use of multiple languages, time, mother/national identity and sound (in echo). Cha is only present through her text and others' memories and voices in the work. The project also reflects on the question of how an individual's history can be documented, which I find very similar to the process of translating spoken words to written texts. I created my own archive, which consists of interview tapes, letters, handwritten notes, and various ephemera produced during my research on Theresa Cha. Selected documents from the archive are presented with the video. I plan to make a different selection from the archive every time I exhibit the project in order to experiment the relationship between the video work and the documents. The archive is growing, so the project is always in the making.
Added on: July 31, 2018

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Text to Speech (Statement)

The artist's statement is presented in the style of karaoke, with words on the screen that become highlighted as they should be spoken. In addition to the video, Text to Speech (Statement) can also be performed live. This piece makes a humorous play on the similarities between performing karaoke (in Korea) and the artist statement as a vehicle for social and promotional presentation of oneself. Peaceful landscapes, which do not have any relationship to the song lyrics in most cases, are typical screen imagery for Korean karaoke. The images in Text to Speech (Statement) often mimic such separation between image and text, while sometimes distinctively corresponding to the text displayed. The video was created and first performed at I-Park.
Added on: July 31, 2018