Community of Parting screening + Q&A with Jane Jin Kaisen and Crystal Mun-hye Baik

MOCA Grand Avenue
250 South Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Space is limited; RSVP recommended
This event is free; $10 suggested donation to GYOPO

GYOPO and MOCA co-present this special screening of Community of Parting (2019) by Jane Jin Kaisen. 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). Community of Parting was recently exhibited at the 58th Venice Biennale Korean Pavilion.

Synopsis
Community of Parting 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.

Kaisen treats the myth of Bari as a gendered tale of migration, marginalization, and resilience in a way that is at once inter-subjective and deeply personal. Rituals by Shaman Koh Sunahn, a survivor of the Jeju Massacre fuses with the artist’s story in a ritual for the dead. The myth is also reflected in the poetics of Kim Hyesoon and the poetry of Mara Lee. It further resonates in narratives by South Korean, North Korean, and diasporic women whom together come to form a community of parting as they negotiate how gender bias along with colonization, modernity, and the Korean War have resulted in radical ruptures while unfinished histories continue to linger.