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"if you think it is romantic"
Texts by-and selected by-Sung Hwan Kim

May 17th - June 30th, 2012

This presentation is loosely connected to a recent exhibition curated by Janine Armin at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, which included artist Sung Hwan Kim's film Summer Days in Keijo-written in 1937 (2007). Unlike the initial exhibition context, the library provides the opportunity to read texts pertinent to Kim's work. The vitrine holds two books authored by Kim, one of which is available at the reserve desk along with several others the artist has selected for this occasion:


Music and Madness, & the Unworking of Language (2008) by John T. Hamilton
Ki-da Rilke (2011) by Sung Hwan Kim
when things are done again (2010) by Sung Hwan Kim
War and Cinema (1989) by Paul Virilio
Masquerade and other stories (1990) by Robert Walser


Summer Days in Keijo will screen at the library following a talk on contemporary art and writing with author Chris Kraus on the evening of May 17th. Kim's fictional documentary is inspired by two chapters from Swedish ethnographer and zoologist Sten Bergman’s travelogue In Korean Wilds and Villages (1937) about Korea while under Japanese rule. Keijo was the Japanese colonial name for Seoul. In Kim’s film, a Dutch woman takes Bergman’s place and imparts his 1936 observations as she passes through Seoul’s architectural projects erected during the building boom from 1955 to 1970. Now facing demolition, these sites and the recapitulated journey address the city’s vulnerability to re-development. A soundtrack created in collaboration with David Michael DiGregorio (dogr) accompanies the film.


Sung Hwan Kim’s films and performances often employ narrative in exploring subject positions and questions of gender and colonialism. In each production, he attends to the unique context in which the viewer encounters the work. Kim also works in other media including drawing, which fills the pages of his book Ki-da Rilke (Sternberg Press, 2011); he collaborates with dogr on music projects such as the CD One from In the Room (2010). Kim has shown at venues including: Kunsthalle Basel; the Queens Museum; STEIM, Amsterdam; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Tranzitdisplay, Prague; the 2004 Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju; the 2008 Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Manifesta 8, Murcia; and Media City Seoul 2010, Seoul.


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