What Is Your Name, in the United States. interview installation
iPad, steel, video in loop. Dec 2022
The video installation, “What is your name, in the United States” gathers
the video documentation of interview series that I have done with Simranpreet
Anand, Sunhong Kim, and Do Young Kim currently living in the United States but
having their cultural roots in India and Korea. They talk about their
experiences to introduce their names to others in the United States, coping
with a “wrong” pronunciation or contradiction of their names. They confess that
they have chosen to be a ghost or antagonist, by hiding their identities to
comfort humans or teaching their
names not to allow humans to
approximate their identities at their convenience. In this way, I invite the powerless, unnamed, and
unanchored to prove one’s own ability to do a speech. Aristotle said a being
who can do speech is a political animal.
A voice of the Other–stating one’s experiences of being a ghost and antagonist–implies one’s subversive potential in the dominant and concrete politics of language, territories, and representation. For this reason, their faces are blurred and fluctuate. Such visuals indicate their ontology of being the Other, a figure hard to see clearly but having the possibility to be visible if you understand them.
Throughout this practice, I dream of expanding a loose ally with those feeble existences who are inevitably invisible, actively uncomfortable, or diligently repetitive in their places. Bringing their testimonies is a part of the practice to gather weak, invisible forces to dream of deregulating partitions of a human and not-a-human through communal voices.
A voice of the Other–stating one’s experiences of being a ghost and antagonist–implies one’s subversive potential in the dominant and concrete politics of language, territories, and representation. For this reason, their faces are blurred and fluctuate. Such visuals indicate their ontology of being the Other, a figure hard to see clearly but having the possibility to be visible if you understand them.
Throughout this practice, I dream of expanding a loose ally with those feeble existences who are inevitably invisible, actively uncomfortable, or diligently repetitive in their places. Bringing their testimonies is a part of the practice to gather weak, invisible forces to dream of deregulating partitions of a human and not-a-human through communal voices.
Photo by Ben Zink
Interviewee: Do Young, Sunhong, Simranpreet
©2022 Okyoung Noh All rights reserved
Photo by Simranpreet Anand
Comedy in America. performance
video screening and performance. Dec 2022
The pieces of performance “Comedy in America” shows my minimal,
failing effort to erase and modify the man-made speech in the United States–the
series of comedies where people made racist jokes against “Asian” people. I
perform to intervene in a human’s speech repeatedly, diligently, and
feebly.
Interrupting or hijacking human speech (either spoken or written statement) is an act that invades the politics of an orderly world. This is represented as a performative interruption in my art, which is poetic but disconcerting, feeble but persistent, quiet but assertive.
I intervene in racist comedy by reducing the speed of the videos of comedy radically so that it may sound ridiculous, not normal. I try hard, repeatedly, but all of my attempts fail by missing many of the racist sentences to slow down.
Interrupting or hijacking human speech (either spoken or written statement) is an act that invades the politics of an orderly world. This is represented as a performative interruption in my art, which is poetic but disconcerting, feeble but persistent, quiet but assertive.
I intervene in racist comedy by reducing the speed of the videos of comedy radically so that it may sound ridiculous, not normal. I try hard, repeatedly, but all of my attempts fail by missing many of the racist sentences to slow down.
Filmed by Ben Zink
Naming Myself (within 4 Weeks). performance
4” 09’ video documentation of the performance. Oct 2022
Photo & Filmed by Ben Zink
©2022 Okyoung Noh All rights reserved
Learn My Name. participatory installation
plywood, video, monitor. Oct 2022
The two-channel video installation of “Learn My Name” (2022) is designed for the audience to sit on either side of the installation and watch the other side of the video installation. The audience can see a screen of either me teaching others how to pronounce my Korean name or Americans struggling to learn how to pronounce my name. I intend for the audience to experience a flipped power structure as well as the seemingly small struggles and countermeasures that those in the Asian diaspora must face to fight against an identity crisis.
Photo & Filmed by Ben Zink
©2022 Okyoung Noh. All rights reserved.
“Oak”-”Young”-”No”. sound and light installation
programmed led lights, plywood, sound. Oct 2022Photo & Filmed by Ben Zink
©2022 Okyoung Noh. All rights reserved.