Jesse Chun

O dust uncovers intimate poetics on language, heritage, and the intangible, through decentering the Eurocentric translation and historiography of cultural inheritance. Filmed at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (FR),O dust looks through the institutional apparatus of speech, such as the interpreter’s booths, machines, microphones, the empty conference rooms, and the Intangible Cultural Heritage archives. The non-linear film oscillates between moving image poetry, an imaginary multilingual folklore, and an abstract letter to Chun’s late grandmother, who was an un-historicized Korean folk dancer, and later a Buddhist monk. Aurally narrated by a French translator from the UN and the artist herself, it speaks through layers of sonic, linguistic, and visual ruptures that evade the bureaucratic narrative. O dust summons the impermanent and the untranslatable to reflect on the afterlife of inherited lyrics; and what continues to get carried across tongues, place, and time.

installation iteration forthcoming at the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul, KR; Sept, 2023
currently screening at Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, as part of Artists' Film International; June 13 - Sept 17, 2023