Ho-Jin Jang, Artist and lecturer at Yonsei University

Held on October 19th, the fifth workshop was directed by Ho-Jin Jang, a media artist and a lecturer at Yonsei University. Jang organized a special exhibition and seminar about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at Off and Free, a non-profit experimental documentary film festival in Korea which began in 2009.

Jang began the workshop by sharing his personal experiences in researching the works of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, whose work she had happened to come across during her graduate studies at University of California, Berkeley. Jang expressed how amazed she was by Cha’s progressive oeuvre, which made her seem more like her contemporary rather than an artist from decades ago. Jang also commented how she felt it was unfortunate that Cha, who was the last generation of avant-garde artists in USA at the time, was just seen as a female Asia artist during her life.

Jang defined Cha’s work as being interdisciplinary and experimental, which comprises of a mixture of various mediums and approaches of expression. She added that the deconstruction and reconstruction of language and the use of filmic techniques and apparatus in her work defined Cha an artist who predicted Post-Modernism. She repeatedly emphasized that the element of skepticism towards truth, introspection into presence and absence of existence, communication between self and other, and the artistic sensibility in her work all conform in penetrating irony. Furthermore, through explanation about Cha’s video work and her most renowned work Dictee, Jang explained the idea of ‘otherness’ in her own research.

Jang expressed that Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s work has the possibility to form new discourses in contemporary generation, as her work has so far been coined only by the keywords ‘Diaspora’, ‘Feminism’ and ‘Third world’. He continued on by stressing the importance of ‘refocusing’ in curators. The workshop encouraged the three participants to think about how they intend to interpret Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and at what point the three participants wish to converge. Jang wrapped up the workshop by offering her advice as someone whose research had focused on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and by encouraging the three participants to approach the exhibition from their own style and perspective that differs from previous researches on Cha.