GYOPO and MOCA co-present this special screening of Community of Parting (2019) by Jane Jin Kaisen. The film traces a different approach to borders, memory, and aesthetic mediation by invoking the Korean Shamanic myth of the Abandoned Princess Bari who was exiled at birth but who becomes the goddess and mediator at the threshold of the living and the dead. Deriving from Kaisen’s extensive research into Korean shamanism since 2011 and her long-term engagement with communities affected by legacies war and division, the film is composed of imagery filmed in Jeju Island, the DMZ, South Korea, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Japan, China, the United States, and Germany. Combining shamanic ritual performances, nature -and cityscapes, archival material, aerial imagery, poetry, voiceover, and soundscapes, the piece is configured as a multi-scalar, non-linear, and layered montage. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artist and Crystal Mun-hye Baik, author of Reencounters: On the Korean War & Diasporic Memory Critique (2019).
Jane Jin Kaisen (b. 1980 Jeju Island, lives in Copenhagen) is a visul artist working across video installation, film, photography, performance, and text. Recurring themes involve memory, migration, and translation at the intersection of personal and collective histories. Kaisen holds an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles, an MA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has exhibited widely, including the Venice Biennale (IT), Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Berlinale (DE), Seoul Museum of Art, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, and the Jeju Biennale (KR), Kunsthal Aarhus and Kunsthalen Brandts (DK) ParaSite (HK), the Liverpool Biennale (UK).
Crystal Mun-hye Baik is Assistant Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies (GSST) at the University of California, Riverside. Prof. Baik has published widely in venues including the Journal of Asian American Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Periscope/Social Text, and the Oral History Review, among other journals and anthology volumes. Her first sole-authored book, Reencounters: On the Korean War & Diasporic Memory Critique (2019) examines the everydayness of the Korean War and its racialized gendered implications through a diasporic archive of subversive memory works, including oral history projects, "re-performances," and video installations.
FREE; priority entry for MOCA members. RSVP here.
