2014
4-channel video
HD, color, sound
Plywood screening structure and bench
Dimensions variable

We cannot leave this world to others centers around the figure of the student as a vehicle for cultural transformation. Straddling a line between so-called childhood and adulthood, students have been pivotal to various political movements across a diverse set of histories and geographic and cultural locations. Made specifically for the 2014 Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea, We cannot leave this world to others stages four scenes which exist in a semi-autonomous relationship to each other: two visualize speech without bodies and two visualize bodies who don’t speak.

Each of the four videos in the work display a public performance that is at once familiar and strange. In one, a set of hanging protest banners fall one after another to enunciate a poem of political desire. In another, an older woman and younger woman wrestle in a kind of public outburst. The third pictures two daejabos (a personal opinion written on a large piece of paper and posted publicly), one predominantly in English with some Korean and the other dominantly
in Korean with some English. These fictional texts stage a speaker/writer reaching out to a group of students to share the anxiety of their generational divide. And the last video is a collection of moving image selfies shot by students in Korea and the US whose collective presence insists on recognition though refuses a specific demand.

Like flyers on a campus kiosk, the projections are united only in their desire to address a community of potential viewers.

Production Credits:
Performers: Hyun Sook Choi/최현숙, Peggy Gould, HaRe/하레, Kahlo/칼로, Yujin Kim/임유진, Ok Bong Lee/이옥봉
Students on Campus: Jane Bradley, Cynthia Chang, Azure Osborne-Lee, Stephanie Corrales, Alex Trost, Woohee Cho/조우희, Suejeong Ka/가수정, Minkyung Choi/최민경, Seungil Lee/이승일, Hyeree Ro/노혜리, Seung-Rin Rhee/이승린, Han-ul Kim/김한울, Sejin Hyun/현세진, Kayoung
Lim/임가영 , Sungwon Heo/허성원, Chase Doremus, Vita Haas, Francesca Michel
Project Coordinator: Ahram Jeong/ 정아람
Production Manager: Yoonjoo Rhee/이윤주
Director of Photography: Kyunghyun Hwang/황경현
Second Camera Operator: Soomin Kim/김수민
Assistant Camera: Sehwan Park/박세환
Production Assistants: Hyeyoung Chyun/김한울, Guiyoung Hwang/임윤경, Han-ul Kim/전혜영, Yoonkyung Lim/황귀영`