Habitual Sadness 2

They are no different from the elderly women we see everyday. However, they are all marked by pain and sorrow from their shared history of being “comfort women” during World War II. They became subject to prejudice in their own homeland after their return to Korea.


Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani

The screening triggered an identification-process of the fugitives with the protagonist of Kurosawa’s movie, as they recognized their similar desperate situation. It was followed by an experimental setup of cinematic improvisations with refugees and actors, focusing on the exploration of fears and uncertainties surrounding the nuclear catastrophe and ongoing threat of radiation.


Earth

Upon the site lie fifty human beings oscillating between consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death. Each of them emerges into the foreground clutching a fist, batting an eyelid, or weeping for his neighbor.


Shakespeare Must Die

A dictator sits alone in his dark mansion, grieving for his mad, dead wife, as a mass uprising rages against him. Elsewhere in a theatre, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is being staged; its scenes intercut with his flashbacks to tell the story of an ambitious general who, prompted by witches, kills the king to crown himself.


Choi Min-Hwa

The painting materializes the lyrics of a hymn in the scriptures of Cheondogyo, a religion based on the Donghak movement. The work references research on Oh Yoon’s woodcut prints, which was one of the studies to explore traditional formalism, one of the main interests of Minjung art in the 1980s.