How to stop being Korean

Kearn-Hyung Ahn

Kearn-Hyung Ahn, How to stop being Korean, 2018/2024. 2 channel video, b&w, sound. 66 min 24 sec. Originally commissioned by the 10th Seoul Mediacity Biennale. Courtesy of the artist

This artwork focuses on a Korean nationalist phenomenon known as the “Taegeukgi rally” and reconstructs image data and records to investigate its historical origins, thereby reproducing the “intentionally created consciousness” of contemporary Koreans. Using the audiovisual language of documentary film, the artist contends with life on the “periphery” as a place where centrist histories are overwritten and demonstrates an alternative approach to narrating history based on geographical and regional characteristics. This artwork is premised upon the artist's belief that when a group or community with a shared history considers certain events “exceptions,” they actually reveal the most acute representations of that group and thus become indicators of that community. Originally installed on both sides of a hanging screen within the exhibition hall, this two-channel video airs an intense collection of audiovisual archives that correspond to the concept of “twisted nationalism” by separating perspectives into two temporalities: present-day Korea as a republic and historical Korea as colonial Joseon. The newly edited version of this work screens these distinct timelines in close proximity and explores unsolved entanglements of history as well as the fundamental cause of this uncanny collectivism.  

Kearn-Hyung Ahn (b. 1976, Seoul)

Kearn-Hyung Ahn, who majored in documentary filmmaking at Korea National University of Arts, focuses his practice on contemporary life and the existence of art. His experimental documentary films visualize the clash between disparate elements such as life on the periphery and the history of the center, images and text in media, geographical conditions and historical factors. Ahn’s major works include This Will Not Make You Die (2014), Out of the Cave (2011) and There Was a Cat (2018), and he participated in the 10th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Eu Zên in 2018.

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This program offers daily screenings of 5 sessions on fixed schedule. You may reserve seats by registering at the link and selecting a screening date and session. Reservations for multiple sessions are allowed. Group reservations and selecting multiple days are not permitted.

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