siren eun young jung

Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: To Imagine Queer Mnemonics with siren eun young jung

Tuesday, April 18th and 6:00 p.m.

To join this event on Zoom, please click here

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Artist siren eun young jung discusses her long-term ethnographic research project, Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008-present), which critically investigates gender binaries, the invention of traditions, and history writing. The gender-bending practices of Yeoseong Gukgeuk, a theatrical form played by people who identify as women, reveal the hegemonic construction of modern norms and historiography. In this talk, the artist attempts to imagine forms of queer memory, genealogy, and defiance against hegemonic powers through this long-term project grounded in moving images.

To ensure time for presentation and questions, we encourage attendees to visit the artist’s website in advance of the talk and watch Deferral Theatre (2018) available for streaming (35:05 minutes). 

A presentation co-hosted by Conversations in Contemporary Art (CiCA), the Global Emergent Media Lab (GEM Lab), MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery. This program is part of the GEM Lab 2022-2023 Seminar in Media and Political Theory, Video/Art/TV: Digital Aesthetics and Politics.

About the speaker:

Artist siren eun young jung studied visual arts and feminist theory at Ewha Womans University in South Korea and the University of Leeds in the UK. Her interests lie in the seething desires of anonymous individuals as they encounter events throughout the world and how they grow into resistance, history, and politics. She believes that, by ceaselessly reexamining feminist-queer methodology, artistic praxis that is simultaneously aesthetic and political is possible. Working across various fields such as visual art, film, and theatre, her most representative works include the “Dongducheon Project” (2007-2009) and the “Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project” (2008-present). She has grown mainly through major exhibitions in Asia such as Tradition (Un)Realized at Arko Art Center, Seoul (2014), Ghosts, Spies, Grandmothers: SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul at Seoul City Museum of Art, Seoul (2014), Discordant Harmony at Kuandu Museum of Fine Art, Taipei and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2015, 2016), 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2015-16), 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), 13th Taipei Biennial (2016-2017), 11th Shanghai Biennale (2018), at Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama (2014, 2018), and Serendipity Art Festival in Panaji (2018). She is the recipient of the 2013 Hermes Foundation Art Award, the 2015 Sindoh Art Prize, and the 2018 Korea Artist Prize and participated in the Korean Pavilion’s exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale. siren eun young jung was born in 1974 in South Korea, and currently lives and works in Seoul. 

About the hosts:

Conversations in Contemporary Art (CICA) is a visiting artist lecture series and graduate-level course where artists, designers, critics, writers, educators, and curators share their practice(s) and perspectives. CICA talks are free and open to the general public.

The Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab is a unique research platform centered on the critical study of global new media. GEM projects examine emergent media forms and practices in a global context, and address the pressing need to broaden our understandings of media and globalization beyond dominant Western contexts and epistemologies. Key areas of focus include: Asian Media and Modernities; Video Cultures; Media and Migration; Global Smart Technologies; Internet Television and Videographic Research Methods, among many other collaborative projects. 

MOMENTA Biennale de l’image is a contemporary art dissemination and mediation platform that operates year-round with ongoing activities. The organization stands out for the position it takes and the questions it asks on the place of the image in today’s societies. Among MOMENTA’s wide range of activities, the biennial is a flagship event presented in partnership with exhibition partners from all over the world. Based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal, MOMENTA has been organizing exhibitions, digital projects, public programs, creative workshops, and collaborations of all kinds for over 30 years.

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University is committed to researching, exhibiting, documenting and disseminating contemporary art in a local, national and international context. Through its exhibitions, its educational and public programs and its publications, the Gallery promotes a greater awareness of art as a critical form of knowledge and as a way to engage in larger cultural debates to the general public, art communities and to students and young adults. The Gallery collects Canadian art.