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Hysterics is a work inspired in part by Heinrich Heine’s poem “The Vale of Tears,” in which a coroner reveals the cause of death of a miserable couple. I focused on the fact that the death of a couple is what is excluded in the situation, conceiving a relationship between hysteria and the agent that raises questions. In short, the work attempts to stage ‘meaninglessness’ and a hysteric state as a theatrical situation where white papers and a specific kind of lighting interact with each other. Moving on a circular track, the camera gazes at the situation within the boundary of the track. It is the gaze that is singular and fixated (the video is shot in a single take). As the camera circles along the track, it records spatters of unidentified fluids on the sheets of paper, illuminated temporarily under the black light. This type of light is used as a scientific instrument in criminal investigations as the light illuminates the phosphorus in bones and blood. Pain makes people raise questions, and those who question become hysteric.Those who refuse to take plausible explanations and attempt to find the fundamental reason constantly raise questions. [...] Those who are in this hysteric state, the ones that raise questions until the end, discover other individuals who become victims.
(Jeamin Cha)
Jeamin Cha, born in 1986 in South Korea, is an artist and filmmaker living and working in Seoul. She holds degrees from Chelsea College of Design and Arts in London and the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul. Her works have been exhibited widely, among others at DOOSAN gallery and Audiovisual Pavilion, Seoul, at Surface Gallery, Nottingham, DMZ Film Festival, Korea, and Rencontres Internationales, Berlin and Paris.
Contact: theyoungowl@gmail.com
Format: QuickTime ProRes, single-channel video installation
Running time: 7 min
Language: Korean
