Chang Gyeong

“She would narrate events she had witnessed with her own eyes, as well as events that she had never witnessed.” Haruki Murakami

When I was a child, the zoo was a place that gave me a very fantastic experience. Changgyeonggung (then called Changgyeongwon) in Seoul was particularly strange, a place where a zoo, amusement parks, and old palaces coexisted. Perhaps childhood memories remain as an emotional vestige of events – the people, the food, the weather – rather than specific moments. These emotions lie somewhere between the boundary of reality and the virtual.
I later learned that the coexistence of these elements came from Changgyeonggung’s tragic modern history. At the time of Japanese rule, a zoo was created with the purpose of mocking and degrading the palace. During liberation and the Korean War, the palace grounds witnessed the victimization of animals. Uncovering this painful history stripped Changgyeonggung of its emotional appeal.
The video installation Chang Gyeong explores this shift: emotional memories that once blurred the line between reality and fantasy now separated again, leaving no emotion on either side. (Jangwook Lee)

Jangwook Lee studied filmmaking at the School the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He works on film materials and expanded cinema such as live film performance. In 2004, Space Cells was founded to hold experimental films and hand-made film workshops and is currently underway. Many of the films are archived in the Korea Film Archive and the Asia Culture Center. His works have been screened in Oberhausen, FIDMarseille, Tate Modern, Exis, Jeonju International Film Festival, and many other film festivals.

Director Jangwook Lee. Screenplay Jangwook Lee. Cinematography Jangwook Lee. Editing Jangwook Lee. Sound Design Jangwook Lee. Sound Jangwook Lee. Producer Jangwook Lee. Executive Producer Jangwook Lee. Production company Space Cell (Seoul, South Korea).

Films: 1998: Echoed Silence (8 min). 1999: Surface of memory, memory on surface (23 min). 2007: Hibernation (10 min). 2012: Stillness of the garden (12 min), Thin Traces (13 min). 2013: Conversation (film installation), conversation print1 (3 min), Autumn Film (11 min), Landscape in the afternoon (10 min). 2014: Distance (film installation). 2015: Lazimpat (15 min), SUNDAY SEOUL (15 min). 2019: surface,memory,oblivion (10 min). 2025: Chang Gyeong.