Dissident Translations

Jane Jin Kaisen’s research-based art projects take the form of film, video installation, performance, and text. She is educated from the University of California Los Angeles, the Whitney Independent Study Program, and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She is currently a PhD candidate in artistic research focusing on the aesthetics and politics of translation.

Abstract

Taking outset in her video installation and film Reiterations of Dissent (2011/15), Jane Jin Kaisen will talk about her extensive artistic research into the political history of Jeju Island, which she began in 2011 with the exhibition project Dissident Translation.
Reiterations of Dissent illuminates the suppressed history and fragmented memories of the Jeju April Third Uprising and Massacre, which unfolded shortly before the outbreak of the Korean War on Jeju Island, South Korea where Kaisen was born.
Told through the voices of individuals who have been active in efforts to investigate and narrate the events surrounding Jeju April 3rd as a primal scene of the Cold War in Asia, Reiterations of Dissent discloses how un-reconciled trauma continues to resonate through multiple forms: the island's present landscape, suggestive literary representations, recurring memories of survivors and relatives, shamanic rituals that mediate between the living and the dead, and in protests against the re-militarization of Jeju Island with the construction of the Jeju Naval Base.
Reiterations of Dissent explores an alternative filmic language that challenges relationships between text, image, and narrative. Constituting a multi-layered archive of experiences, events, and perspectives, each video shows a different aspect and a different attempt at approaching the Jeju April Third Uprising and Massacre as an unstable episode of modernity.