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Event news: ARTTALK – Filmic Dialogue with Yunjoo Kwak and Igor Sevcuk

Continuing the ARTTALK series, this one focuses on experimental film.

ARTTALK: Filmic Dialogue with Yunjoo Kwak and Igor Sevcuk, moderated by The Otolith Collective

Monday 4 April from 6.30pm to 8.00pm
Korean Cultural Centre UK | Grand Buildings | 1–3 Strand | London WC2N 5BW
Main Entrance on Northumberland Avenue
Registration required via [email protected]

Yunjoo Kwak: Autobiography of Solitude (2015 - work in progress)
Yunjoo Kwak: Autobiography of Solitude (2015 – work in progress)

Now with the fourth instalment of ARTTALK, the Korean Cultural Centre UK presents ARTTALK: Filmic Dialogue with Yunjoo Kwak and Igor Sevcuk on Monday 4 April from 6.30pm to 8.00pm. On this occasion, Kwak will present the first UK film screening of works which were developed during her recent residency in London on the invitation of The Otolith Collective.

This special talk will begin with a double feature of screenings which present a number of short films produced by Kwak and Sevcuk including Triumph of the Will (2008), Autobiography of Solitude (2015 – work in progress), and Icelandic Grass (2006). Through the presentation of these experimental films the artists will interrelate their filmic practices on a range of different topics including ideology, displacement, self-exile, testimony, violence, and collective memory. In doing so, the artists will intertwine the histories of their former homelands, and personal episodes that form the background for their art. Coming from different sides of the world and now residing in the European Union, these two artists articulate their personal experiences of migration through the moving images. As such, by retracing their journeys and finding the way out of ideological traps, they carry a dialogue within their filmic practice that intensifies the sense of self and encourages greater interaction between persons.

After the screenings, The Otolith Collective (Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar) will explore questions emerging from the artists’ filmic practice. The discussion will consider the relation of historical and biographical narratives of the exilic to formal and medial questions of narration, speculation, archive and futurity.

ARTTALK: Contemporary Korean Art Today is an inaugural talk series for Spring 2016. In collaboration with a selection of the UK’s distinguished arts and cultural institutions, ARTTALK provides a platform to explore and understand Korea’s prominent artists and their practice. Using recent exhibitions and residency programmes in the UK as a backdrop featured artists, curators, and critics of international standing will offer audiences an extended opportunity to learn more about Korea’s art scene right in the heart of London.

Yunjoo Kwak

Yunjoo Kwak (Seoul, South Korea) lives and works between Amsterdam and London. She studied and taught in MFA at the Korean National University of Art, Seoul, 2008 and Dutch Art Institute/ ArtEZ, Arnhem, 2011. Her works have been exhibited in a number of different public venues such as Studium Generale Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Reykjavik Museum of Photography, French Cultural Centre, Brain Factory, Hanmi Museum of Photography, Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, and Seoul Museum of Art. Her works often deal within the notion of ‘documentary’ and ‘performativity’ as practising political and aesthetic strategies in various mediums; film, performance, photography, and publication. She is drawn to topics such as architecture, immigration, bureaucracy, and community relations as point of departure for the narratives.

Igor Sevcuk

Igor Sevcuk (Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina) lives and works in Amsterdam where he has resided for many years. Sevcuk’s work reconnects personal as well as collective memories. Hereby it is ‘poetics’ that provides the synthetic strategies for rethinking the experience of the everyday life. After receiving his MA in 2000 from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, he was awarded first prize for film and video, de Prix de Rome 2002. He further developed his art practice throughout 2004/2005 at the residency de Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In 2010 he founded and co-organised the artist-led space Goleb in Amsterdam. He has presented his works at, among other places, Westfaelischer Kunstverein in Münster, Art Space JungMiSo in Seoul, Kunstverein in Frankfurt, Gallery Sign in Groningen, Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, Kunsthall in Bergen, Museum het Valkhof in Nijmegen, Museum am Ostwall/hART ware in Dortmund and Institut Néerlandais in Paris.

The Otolith Collective

The Otolith Collective is the curatorial platform directed by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar of The Otolith Group. The Otolith Collective curates, programmes, publishes and supports artistic practice in the expanded field of documentary fabulation. Recent projects include The Chimurenga Library at The Showroom, LA Rebellion Seminar at Tate Modern, A Cinema of Songs and People: The Films of Anand Patwardhan at Tate Modern and On Vanishing Land by Mark Fisher and Justin Barton at The Showroom. In 2010 The Otolith Group were nominated for the Turner Prize.

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