South (3 iterations). Performance. 2017 - ongoing. Variable length, often 15 minutes long.
“South” is a performance realized during a final review at my Master’s program (Parsons, MFA).
Set up consisted on a landscape-like video projected in the back, a table conjoined with panels on the sides to create a stage like situation while using a review happening as a starting point. Without warning I take off my shoes and sit on top of the table and tell a story with an imposted voice.
The narration is a compilation of stories told by my father about his own childhood in Korea and my own understanding, fascination, questions, and answers those stories.
I’ve been interested on forms of oral narration that are part of cultural heritage and other shapes of theater tradition as Rakugo (Japan) and Pansori (Korea). Both depend on a skilled single performer, as a kind of one person theater. Often they are passed on from master to pupil, and memorized by listening the master or someone who knows the piece that wants to be learned.
In this case, is from my father to me, it does not hold a passing-on intention, but holds information of a style of life that I can’t meet by any means. The story happens mostly on my father’s hometown, spaces and situations are inexact as they are from memory.
This performance seeks to create a situation of mythology around the events that are told, as every time is narrated will change sightly by the interaction of the performer and the spectators. By being told repeatedly, the story becomes more known, but also further from reality._