Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee: A Marathon Reading

Dictee is the pathbreaking and genre-defying magnum opus of internationally renowned artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, whose practice encompassed conceptual, visual, performance, film, and video art and creative writing across three languages. Posthumously published in 1982, the profoundly influential book continues to underscore the urgency of experimental memory work and challenge the boundaries between written text, speech, performance, and image. Dictee is widely taught across fields including literary studies, arts-based practice, American studies, ethnic studies, and gender and sexuality studies.

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s birth, USC students and guests will collectively read Dictee in its entirety, both orally and in ASL. The event will also include presentations by Laura Hyun Yi Kang (UC Irvine), Lawrence Rinder (UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), and John H. Cha (the artist’s brother and biographer); projected images of Theresa Cha’s work; and selected video works, addressing the sobering consequences of colonialism, forced migration, displacement, and violence.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by GYOPO, Annette Kim (Public Policy), Holly Willis (Cinematic Arts), and Yong Soon Min (Professor Emeritus, UC Irvine).

John H. Cha has written several biographies about Korean and American leaders and is an award-winning translator of Korean literature into English. His titles include Willow Tree Shade: The Susan Ahn Cuddy Story and The Do or Die Entrepreneur: A Korean American Businessman’s Journey. He is currently working on Dear Theresa, a book about his sister Theresa Cha.

Laura Hyun Yi Kang is a professor and former Chair of Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine. She is the author of Traffic in Asian Women (2020) and Compositional Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/American Women (2002). With Elaine H. Kim, Kang co-edited the anthology Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings (2002). She is currently at work on Sallim, a book about women’s labor and social reproduction in the Korean diaspora.

Lawrence Rinder directed the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive from 2008 to 2020. He came to the University of California from the California College of the Arts, where he was Dean of the College and Dean of Graduate Studies. Previously, he was the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he organized exhibitions including the 2002 Biennial.

Photo: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Surplus Novel, 1980. Photograph by Benjamin Blackwell.
Slideshow Photos: Caroline Yoo