Date and Time: Saturday, October 31, 2015 6 pm

Venue: 1, Dorim-ro 128ga-gil, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, Korea

Supported by Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Korean Film Council, 7 1/2

 

Who in the World am I?, the fifth project of 7 1/2, starts with Kim Sook Hyun’s experimental film of the same title. The film, which takes its motif from Louis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, explores existential questions as it cleverly connects and at other times disconnects with the work of artists of various genres: Lee Jiyeon(art), Bae Seoyoung Stephanie(art), HASC(art), Ryu Sung Gook(theater), Kang Malgeum (theater), Lee Hyun Soo (theater) and Jang Hong Seok(choreography). The disconnected works of the artists are featured in the form of a screening, play, performance, and exhibition.

 

On Saturday, October 31 at 6 pm, recipients of an unexplained invitation will gather at 1, Dorim-ro 128ga-gil, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, Korea. A screening, performance, play, and exhibition will be waiting for them. The guests will be requested to adopt a different attitude to view the different types of work, like role-playing in a game. Through the experience, the viewers will be invited to enter their own wonderland.

 

Directed and Curated by Sunyoung Oh

 

Film Screening:

Who in the World am I? directed by Sook Hyun Kim

 

Exhibitions and Artists:

Enter Nowhere: Down the Rabbit Hole Jiyeon Lee

Pollination Seoyoung Stephanie Bae

ReNCODE HASC

 

Choreography:

Is That It choreographed by Hong Seok Jang

Here, I am… directed by Sunyoung Oh

Director of Stage: Taejin Kim

Director of Photography: Youngmin Jang

Photography: Ji Rak Lee

Lighting/Sound: HASC

Sound: JANE

Sound Engineer: Tae Soon Jang, Ik Hwan Noh

Coordinator: Jooyoung Yoon, Kyoungmin Choi

 

Advisors: Mansu Cho, Zuckgeuk

The wonderland fallen into a rabbit hole in the film is like a journey into the world of a book. However, rather than an adult “reading letters and words,” the journey is more like that of a child “watching a fairy tale.” The characters of the wonderland express themselves through body language. They are “adults” who put themselves into categories that they can no longer escape from; they impose objectivity on others; they are discontented, isolated and in a state of absurdity. Here, Alice, who up to now had been a mere image in film, video, performance, and animation, meets actual adults in the flesh, the kind that we come across in the real world. Giving the order to the fragmented elements—time, space, narrative, image, physical performance, symbols—and making sense out of them is up to the viewer.

 

ReNCODE (2015)

Artist HASC converted the entire Bible into Morse Code for his work ReNCODE which has been featured in numerous exhibitions. For the project Who in the World am I?, he codified the Gospel of John to create a new ReNCODE. The work is introduced in various ways during the exhibition: a streetlamp lighting up the dark Mullae-dong Steel District alley; a stage lighting; a site-specific installation work. Ha adds another dimension to his work by investigating the different ways it can function and become modulized.

 

Is That Is (2015)

Script and Choreography by Hong Seok Jang

Starring: Hong Seok Jang, Jinan Kang, Seungrok Kim

 

Here is a movement. Looking at the movement,

performer A calls it △△;

performer B calls it □□;

performer C calls it ◯◯.

 

What, then, is this movement?

 

In the process of expressing thought through movement and explaining movement through words, various interpretations come into play, rendering the thought ambiguous, but also revealing diverse perspectives that expand the spectrum of movement.

 

The objective of expressing thought through movement is more to express the images that are evoked or the senses that one feels when thinking (or imagining) rather than reveal the exact content of the thought itself. The expression/movement of a vague thought (imagination) therefore could not be defined precisely as “thought (imagination) = movement (expression).” That is because no one can understand what the thought (imagination) is exactly until it is explained with words, and even the person expressing the thought has no way to prove that his/her thought (imagination) = movement (expression).

 

What is seen and felt cannot be captured in precise words. As such, what is seen and felt takes on infinite forms depending on the perspective and thought of the viewer, and results in a multitude of interpretations. What are meaningful the different layers of meaning that is added in the process of interpreting. The distorted interpretations come together to create a certain form, and when a common thread is found within the form, it is only then that the vague nature of things may become clearer. Hong Seok Jang’s Is That Is is a work that extends the spectrum of movement through the diverse interpretations that arise in the process of understanding movement.

 

Here, I am… (2015) 

Directed by: Sunyoung Oh

Script by: Sung Gook Ryu, Sunyoung Oh

Starring: Sung Gook Ryu, Malgeum Kang, Hyun Soo Lee

Special Appearances by Okuda Masasi, Yunjin Choi, Manho Park

 

– Director’s Notes

It rained on the afternoon of October 1, 2015. I went to Mullae-dong to have a meeting with Mr. Youngsik Choi and artist Dusu Choi for the Mullae-dong Steelmaking Signage Art Project, then went to have dinner with them in a restaurant nearby. We found a table and began to eat. At one point, Mr. Choi and artist Choi stepped out for a smoke, and I sat around looking out on to the scene outside. I had a bad cold, and my head was not very clear. It was then that I happened to pick up the conversation at the table next to ours, and the voice of a young guy reached my ears quite loud and clear:

 

“I’m 27. I used to live in a Gosiwon (low-cost, sparsely furnished, a month-to-month small rental room that does not require a deposit), but moved into my girlfriend’s house recently, because I’m broke. To put it bluntly, I’m living off of my girlfriend. In more euphemistic terms, I guess you could say that we were living together.”

 

He was talking about his life. Judging from his company, I would guess that he was a stage actor because Mr. Okuda who runs a small theater in Mullae-dong sat in company with. I listened to the young guy in silence. As I am not unfamiliar with the life of those working in the theater world, I sympathized with what he was saying which, in fact, not only applied to those in his field but also many of our younger generations today including myself.

 

The moment felt like a scene that had popped right out of a play. It did not last long. The two Mr. Choi’s came back from their smoke, and we took up where we had left off.

 

I did not wish that Who in the World am I?, an exploratory work of existential questions based on Louis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, would end with a simple screening. As such, I created a bigger framework in which the film could meet other stories that had been told through the various 7 1/2 projects. I hoped to create an occasion where we could think and communicate together about what we were missing in life and what we should be thinking about through art. Ultimately, the initiative overlaps with the theme of the “senses” that I want to talk about through this year’s Project 7 1/2.

 

Anyway, so I started looking for a theater director who could add a theatrical element to the project, but it was not easy. Then one early morning, I remembered the young guy at the restaurant and thought again about what I wished to go through this project.

 

I called the experimental film director Kim the next day and told her about this story and my thoughts. And director Kim said that Mr. Okuda had invited her to come to see a play that day. So I asked director Kim to ask Mr. Okuda about the young guy. Director Kim did as I asked, and as it turns out, the young guy was the main actor in the play that day.

 

In a matter of just a couple of days, I met the people again who sat on the next table of that rainy October afternoon. I proposed that we make a play together based on their conversation that evening. That was the beginning of Here, I am… is a play, but at the same time, it is the real story of the three actors; it is also our story.

 

Artist Seoyoung Stephanie Bae’s mural painting Pollination serves as the backdrop of this play which also features artist HASC’s ReNCODE and choreographer Hong Seok Jang’s work Is That Is.