술래 SULLAE

술래 SULLAE, 3-channel installation view, 2020

술래 SULLAE, 2020
3-channel video documentation, 6 minutes 25 seconds, voiced and voiceless consonants (English), hangeul (한글) and English text, images, precolonial korean women's moon dance, index pages from intonation books, white noise, word censor bleep, dimensions variable

new moons, 2020, graphite on wall, surveillance mirror, 18 x 6 inches each
untitled (ㄷ), 2020, a functional concrete stool

score (for unlanguaging), 2020
graphite, watermarks, paper, aluminum frame, 13 x 16 inches

술래 SULLAE, 3-channel installation view, 2020

술래 SULLAE, 2020, single-channel version, 2 min 17 sec excerpt

술래 SULLAE, 2020, single-channel video still

술래 SULLAE translates systems of language, power, and legibility by looking to the Moon as a conceptual site; addressing it not only as a poetic metaphor but also as a colonial site. In this video, moving images of a precolonial Korean women’s Moon dance, gang gang sullae (강강술래), are interwoven with consonants of the English language, Hangeul (한글) and English text, various index pages from intonation books, white noise, and word-censor bleep. Chun highlights the way in which this dance was historically used as a means for unleashing silenced anger: release through song, bellowing, yelling, and circling under the Moon. The video oscillates between the sonic, visual, and semiotic; undoing the English language, its embodied violence and dominance through abstraction and mistranslation — a process the artist describes as unlanguaging. In SULLAE 술래, the Moon encircles a multiplicity of systems, languages and untranslatable memories — simultaneously transcribing and unlanguaging, so one can shout into the night, under its warm shadow.

ARTFORUM, Jesse Chun on lunar colonization and "unlanguaging" empire
The Brooklyn Rail, Jesse Chun: SULLAE 술래
월간미술, Jesse Chun: SULLAE 술래 / 달, 강강술래 그리고 '탈언어화'의 여정
C magazine, SULLAE 술래