Hayoun Kwon: Virtually Real Presented by Los Angeles Filmforum and GYOPO

Hayoun Kwon: Virtually Real
Presented by Los Angeles Filmforum and GYOPO
Sunday, December 10, 2023
7:30 PM PST
 
2220 Arts + Archives
2220 W. Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
 
Los Angeles Filmforum and GYOPO are thrilled to welcome internationally acclaimed media artist Hayoun Kwon to present her immersive digital animation work in her first solo screening in Southern California. Originally from South Korea, Paris-based Kwon employs numerous tools – including first-person game engines, VR, and various forms of CG – to conjure worlds both real and imagined in a startling documentary mode that blurs the lines between evidence and speculation. Kwon is a rare artist whose dazzling visuals and technological engagement are fully matched and dimensionalized by her powerfully critical perspective and subtle conceptualizing and framing of her subject matter.

Her early breakout film Lack of Evidence (2011), conjures landscapes and spaces of uncertain stability in telling the dramatic story of a young Nigerian’s application for asylum in France. In three remarkable pieces from 2013-2015, Kwon examines the border and DMZ between North and South Korea, allowing three very different technical and aesthetic strategies to enable deep critical and poetic investigation of the implications of this highly politicized frontier. In her more recent work, her subjective and vivid documentary mode of inquiry has employed VR and interactivity as the spectator inhabits fantastic but complex landscapes of unexpected social and political resonance.

With support from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Filmforum has been honored to commission a new work from Hayoun Kwon, and this film,The Butterfly Dream, will have its premiere in our screening, followed by an in-person discussion with Kwon and filmmaker, curator, and film preservationist, Mark Toscano.