Jane Jin KAISEN
Korean Premiere
In an abandoned resort on the South Korean island of Jeju, a group of non-conforming people – from musicians, artists and poets to anti-military activists, environmentalists and diasporic, queer and trans people come together at an abandoned resort in Jeju Island to perform a symbolic funeral ritual to end a world built on hierarchies, division and destruction. Time and place begin to lose their stability and the group, in a revolutionary moment, overthrows and dismantles the prevailing order.
A group of protesters carrying a funeral bier on their shoulders enters an abandoned building on Jeju Island. The funeral is a ritual that transforms the death caused by ¡°this order¡± into the death of ¡°this order.¡± The voices and gestures of bier-carriers are the movement claiming that the wrongful death caused by ¡°this order¡± should not be buried by ¡°this order.¡± The performance becomes the movement declaring that the death caused by ¡°this order¡± did not kill ¡°us¡± and will lead to the death of ¡°this order¡± reversely. The bier carriers eventually take off their funeral clothes, take out the death from the coffin, and exit the building leaving the ruins caused by ¡°this order¡± behind. Their dance liberates wrongful death from ¡°this order¡± and declares death to the order.
Jane Jin KAISEN
Jane Jin Kaisen is an artist, filmmaker, and Professor of the School of Media Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She has engaged topics such as transnational adoption and diaspora, the Korean War and division, the Jeju 4.3, and Cold War legacies. Another recurring focus revolves around nature and island spaces, feminist re-framings of myths, and engagement with ritual and spiritual practices.