A text and a tragic destiny to start with. In 1982, the Korean artist Theresa
Hak Kyung Cha, who had recently moved to the United States, was killed by
a crazed gunman in the streets of Manhattan. She was 31 years old and her
first and only book, Dictee, had just been published three days beforehand.
How could this text regain a material voice? How could the poet, sculptor,
performer and filmmaker, whose materia prima was her own language,
regain a material body?
Both a testimony and an adaptation, this work had the missing person
embodied by an actress. Through translations of one woman to first another
and then several other women, Korean language to English language,
Korean war to New York, Lee Mi-young tells us about all the emblematic
places and events that marked the work and career of the artist. No
document, no record regarding Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Instead, the actress
reproduces actual, fantasised and imagined actions to restore their
dramatised presence through performance. Excluding all types of mimicry,
naturalism or fetishism, Lee Mi-young creates a possible transcription to
reactivate a geographical and mental path. Many borders are crossed by the
American artist, between writings, countries, eras and modes of expression,
voices and languages being mixed together. This is a polyphonic proliferation,
a living tribute to hybrid writing that Theresa Hak Kyung Cha wanted
to be guided by the Muses, the latter being convoked in Dictee as many
chapters organising this rare biography. (NF)