Hayoun Kwon
Des murs - Film - 2010
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 12
Film
Having acquired a different stance from abroad, how can one view ones own history? In this film, I revisit my past and bring a new look at my identity. As a Korean, I leave my country. Meeting Masami, a Japanese woman, left me in deep confusion. I was troubled to see the idea of nationalism (that I had internalised) emerge, the presence of which I had never suspected. This is a journey into the history of a country. 1910-1945: the period of occupation, the time when Japan colonised Korea. Today two social and historical fictions are merged. Japan conceals, forgets, erases. A fiction of omission. Korea, legitimate in its suffering, sets itself up with a victimised and cathartic history. A fiction in the way it is staged: the Seodaemun prison in Seoul is the place where they keep the most painful memories of the colonisation of Korea by Japan. But in its attempt at "reconstitution", Seodaemun prison seems to have become a stage where the performance it gives (animated dummies) throws aside any possibility of individual projection into the dimension of memory. How should one find the right distance faced with these images of recreated horror like in an amusement park?
