Bora Lee-Kil
MY EMBODIED MEMORY
Contents
Prologue
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1. Stand up Straight with My Arms Apart
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2. Pledge of Allegiance
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3. Black Paper
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4. Our Bodies
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Epilogue
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References for Artistic Research
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Credit
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Artist Biography
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“Meal”
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The woman is saying ‘meal’ in sign language.
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She met a man who speaks in sign language and fell in love.
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I was born from the relationship between them.
In June, 1992. The hundred days since my youngerbrother was born.
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I’m saying ‘corn’ in sign language.
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That is how I learned sign language from my mom.
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I learned sign language from my parents and spoken language from the world.
It became my first language and mother tongue.
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But the gestures learned in South Korean society were slightly different from the gestures I learned from my parents.
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When the two gestures were placed side by side, they were constantly crashing and colliding.
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However, I couldn’t ask the reason why.
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The gestures I learned from school and society were inscribed inside my body. The journey to find those gestures will be a process of finding my memories and feelings that I had to keep buried at the time.
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1. Stand up Straight with My Arms Apart
Everyone is lined up on the playground. Stand with your arms open. “Left! One, two. Right! One, two.�
Moving according to the slogan. Keeping my arms apart. The movement to become one.
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Morning assemblies at the time during the Japanese colonial period(1910-1945). At that time, young men were mobilized into the Japanese army.
Morning assembly in the 1990s.
Morning assembly in the 1970s.
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There was a morning assembly every Monday. When the bell rang, all the students had to run out to the playground. We had to line up according to numbers, and my number was 37. A teacher called us by number.
For each class, a teacher was in front. The class leader had to stand at the head of each line as a model student. I was one of them. Up on the drill platform, the vice principal and the head teacher of the school stood.
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“A Pledge of Allegiance!” The morning assemblies always started with a pledge of allegiance. Place your right hand on the left chest and at the sound of “A Pledge”. (Music reverberates) I, before the proud flag of Taeguekgi, pledge strongly to serve for the infinite honor of my country and my nation with all my heart and my body. “Front!” My heart was beating.
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2. Pledge of Allegiance
It was not until I became an adult that I felt somewhat awkward about a salute to the flag. After I started working in the fields of writing and film making, I became exempt from attending occasions which require the salute. Every event hosted by the government, various corporations, and institutions always included the Pledge of Allegiance in their ceremony. It happened when I graduated from university. While I was busy interpreting for my parents in sign language, people stood up from their seats. I also stood up in spite of myself. With someone calling, “salute the colors!” the entire audience put their hands on their left chest. Should one salute the colors when graduating from an art school? Shocked, I looked around. The school president, professors, students, and parents - everyone’s hand was on her or his left chest. It was somewhat terrifying. I didn’t follow them. I was there to graduate from university, not to pledge my allegiance to a nation.
Pledge of Allegiance in Japanese colonial period.
In February 2018, I happened to watch a video made by a German bank to celebrate South Korea hosting the Pyeongchang Olympics. A German guy was clumsily imitating the movements of the national gymnastics invented by South Korean government. It felt strange and new to watch a non-Korean doing the national gymnastics, especially in his German office. What was more interesting was that my body remembered all of those movements. After ten years of not doing the national gymnastics, and studying abroad in the Netherlands, my body still remembered those motions exactly.
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I was a model student. To me, doing the national gymnastics felt like an extension of P.E. classes and sports. My body had learned those movements precisely and remembered them even now. So, I tried doing it. After that, I looked into the gymnastics for people. The morning assemblies and vowing loyalty before the flag, which had started in the Japanese colonial era, and the National Physical gymnastics - these were all inseparable. Even after Japanese colonial rule, the South Korean government used these methods in various schools, army camps, and offices to instil totalitarianism and conformity in the name of economic growth. Early Pledge of Allegiance I, before the proud flag of Taegeukgi, pledge to serve my nation’s unification and prosperity with justice and truth.
Every day at 6 pm, all the citizens had to stop and salute the flag.
Pledge of Allegiance since 1972 I, before the proud flag of Taeguekgi, pledge strongly to serve for the infinite honor of my country and my nation with all my heart and my body.
Amended Pledge of Allegiance since 2007 I, before the proud flag of Taegeukgi, pledge strongly to serve for the infinite honor of free and just Republic of Korea.
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It was shocking that various institutions in South Korea, including schools, the army, and government offices, continued the ceremony of “Salute the Colors.� The words in the pledge have changed over time, but it has remained the same in that the state forces everyone to pledge to be loyal to the nation. It was in 1953 that the newly formed South Korean government popularized the gymnastics to its people. Entitled the National Health Gymnastics, the purpose was to incorporate calisthenics into the everyday lives of the people and to enforce physical fitness. It required them to do movements along to music and commands coming from an early morning radio program. This was similar to the national gymnastics for Imperial Subjects (often called Radio Calisthenics) utilized by the Japanese colonial government to reinforce imperialistic colonization.
Gymnastics for Imperial Subjects.
South Korean governments variously created the Reconstruction Gymnastics (1961), the New World Gymnastics (1972), the New Village Gymnastic (1974), and the National Physical Gymnastics (1977). The National Physical Gymnastics of 1977 was disseminated to various institutions and schools for twenty-two years. It is very similar to the original army gymnastics.
Radio Calisthenics in Japan.
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National Health Gymnastics (1953).
Army Freehand Gymnastics (1970s - Present).
Reconstruction Gymnastics (1961).
National Physical Gymnastics (1977 - Present).
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In 1999, the New Millennium Gymnastics was created and disseminated, and its title was changed to the National Health Gymnastics in 2010. In 2014, they started developing the Korean Gymnastics, but in 2015, the Improvement Gymnastics was created instead. This was related to former President Park Geun-hye, and her aides, who had embezzled a lot of public money and eventually impeached. Various schools, offices, and army camps still engage their members in the national gymnastics. New Millenium Gymnastics (1999).
Neulpum Gymnastics (2015).
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3. Black Paper
S#1. After filming the “Pledge of Allegiance” video, I could further clarify my research subject. My early subject was how a woman’s memory differs from that of a nation, but this was a rather broad and abstract topic narrowed down to the relation between a body’s memory and the collective memory of a nation and society. I recognized that what I aimed for was the writing of a new history, a new narrative not around an existing language, but around one’s body by using gestures and body movements. (RE)WRITING HISTORY THROUGH GESTURE AND BODY MOVEMENT - Reading the silence and memories of our bodies.
S#2. I made a list. National Physical Gymnastics Standing in lines Filling in paper Sitting for a long time Putting my hand on my chest My middle finger thickening from using pencils too much Lowering my eyes when someone scolds me Having Double Eyelids Outfit check-up Reading the atmosphere Boot camps Wearing brassieres, wearing stockings Drinking with people till late at night, filling cups for my elders Becoming a reproducing body the nation wants
Even in a country far away from Korea, these were the things ruling my body. Always observing other people and what they are doing. Checking myself to not stand out. Never asking questions, and writing down what the teacher says in class. Comparing my clothes to those of others to check if there are any differences. When I had severe pimples for a day, worrying that other people might notice and point it out. When acting, considering how my action might affect the group before any other factors. And so on. These behaviors, totally normal in Korea, seemed very different in another society and circumstance. Among those peculiar acts, I chose a basic learning method and decided to make it into a film.
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S#3. Filling a paper with small letters. It was how I studied from my elementary school onwards. Literally, it is filling sheets of paper, writing down what one should memorize repeatedly in very small letters. It’s called ‘Black Paper’. When you fill in the sheets with small tight letters, the paper looks black. My teacher used to assign us Black Papers for homework. Also, she ordered Black Papers together with physical punishments; when punishing a student, she would add, “bring five sheets of Black Paper tomorrow.” Subjects that need memorizing were often subject to Black Papers: memorizing English words by writing them down repeatedly, science, sociology, history, ethics, and even practical courses. When blackening the paper, the hands and school uniforms became balckened by pencil lead. Actually, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t so bad. School tests were based on multiple choice questions anyway. Some of the questions required short answers, but none of them asked us to write our opinions about something. So, I only needed to memorize the given information. When memorizing, there’s no better way than writing, speaking, and listening repeatedly. Also, there was a certain pleasure when completing a Black Paper. Looking into the black paper filled with those tight letters! My efforts and willpower blackening the paper, the sense of achievement it brings! It was always fun to admire my work.
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S#4. I chose a park in Amsterdam as the location for filming. I placed a desk and a chair in an open landscape with sky and trees in view. I prepared a roll of paper to blacken. It was partly because notebooks and A4-size pages were hard to shoot from a distance. Also, I wanted to imply the impossibility of writing letters ad infinitum. However, the planned day for the shooting was terribly windy. The wind was even stronger around the filming location as there was water nearby. I had planned to start filming at sunset and continue shooting for about one hour or an hour and a half until it would become completely dark. The wind became stronger. We couldn’t use the sound equipment at all because of the strong wind. Although we brought heavy tripods and sandbags, they were useless against the Dutch wind. The roll of paper I had prepared flew away as soon as I laid it down. I started shooting with hot packs all over my body. The original plan was to attach a Go-pro camera on my forehead and film the image of the paper getting filled from my own point of view, but as the situation didn’t allow it, we proceeded to shoot additional videos indoors.
I knelt down and started doing the Black Paper. It had been twelve years from the last time I did it. When I was little, my right middle finger was severely curved from using pencils too much; but now it is just slightly bent over time. My body remembered the motion exactly. Reading, memorizing, and writing; or, was it reading, writing, and memorizing? It took two to three hours to fill the paper. A sense of achievement came to me first upon finishing. That sense of fulfillment. My body remembered it naturally.
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4. Our Bodies 우리의 몸
S#1. 우리 [uri] means ‘we’, ‘our’ or ‘us’. Korean use ‘uri’ when something is shared by a group or community, or when many members in a group or community possess the same or similar kind of thing. It’s based on the collectivist culture. For example, Korean always use uri nara(our country) instead of nae nara(my country). ‘Nae nara’ sounds weird. It sounds like they own the country. So they call Uri(our) father, Uri(our) mother, Uri(our) grandmother, Uri(our) teacher. S#2. If my works until now were attempts to revive totalitarian memories injected and engraved into my body, hereafter I wanted to further explore how those memories clash with one’s independence or individuality. I recalled my body, my mother’s body, and my grandmother’s body.
- Column in Hankyoreh Newspaper on October 22, 2016.
On October 2, 2017, a Black Protest (Czarny Protest) was started by women in Poland, wearing black clothing and striking in opposition to a proposed ban on abortion. Soon, there were similar Black Protests in South Korea, too. The demonstrators shared their abortion experiences claiming a right to free speech. The South Korean government has criminalized abortion since 1953. I wrote this essay feeling sorry and indebted for not being able to participate in the demonstrations. For a long time, I hoped to write about this experience.
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061 I had an abortion. My mother also had abortions. My grandmother had abortions, too. Actually, I was the child my grandmother wanted to abort. The reason was that I was the first child in my family and a girl. In 1990, when I was born, the sex ratio was 116.8 boys to 100 girls due to the preference for boys. Many pregnancies were terminated because the child would be female. But my mother chose to have me, saying that my sex didn’t matter to her. It was not until a few years ago that I found out there could have been three more siblings other than myself and my younger brother. My mother needed a large amount of time before she was able to talk about her abortion experiences with me, her adult daughter. My grandmother had also been obsessive to give birth to healthy sons. She had sons and daughters, but both sons lost their hearing. So, my grandmother lived her whole life suffering. Although she had sons, disabled children couldn’t be included in the category of “male.” Once, when she gave birth to another daughter, she climbed up a mountain. The baby was not seen again. A few years ago in South Korea, I got pregnant with a baby I didn’t want to have. I considered giving birth to the child, but I couldn’t afford that. On catching the heartbeat, the doctor congratulated me and told me the price of a photo album he would make for the baby. When I burst into tears and said that I was not planning to have it, he looked at me with contempt in his eyes. Another hospital I visited after several nights of terrible dreams gave me some pills without any further comment. When I asked her to explain the operation procedure in detail, she looked as if it was tiresome. So, I looked for another hospital. As abortion was illegal, it was not easy finding information. Time was passing by, but I couldn’t tell anyone. A hospital in Seoul I finally found said the price of the operation was several hundred thousand won in cash. I could choose, if I wanted, to take nutritional supplements, and they
recommended taking them if I planned to have a baby in the future. But I didn’t have enough money. It was miserable. I lay down on the operating table, and my limbs were tied. Cold surgical equipment touched my body. It was horrible. After a while, a nurse led me by hand to a ward. I lay down there and shivered as it was so cold. I left the hospital as soon as the anesthesia wore off. I went to a bus station, bought a ticket, got on the bus, and finally cried. It came to me later that I forgot to buy the prescribed medicine because I was out of my mind. I was anxious from the start to the end. I lost my stamina rapidly and had countless nightmares. It needed so much time until I was able to talk about it with somebody else. Later, When I spoke about what I had gone through, many people nodded and told me that they had the same experiences. What I found out later was that most women experience an abortion in South Korea. Like my mother, like my grandmother. Then why can’t we “talk” about it? Why should finding a hospital, saving a large sum of money for the operation, and being pestered without knowing if the operation has gone well all be secrets? The South Korean government’s pre-announcement of legislation attempting to reinforce punishments for an illegal abortion, along with the current criminality of abortion, makes people miserable. But why is it a crime? Who makes those people criminals? One who suffers the most from the sense of guilt is not the people in the government, but me. No one can take my place of misery. But who makes me miserable? My womb is mine. Who the hell is muffling my voice and talking about my womb?
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S#3. In December 2018, I talked to my grandmother on the phone. I wanted to know about her third daughter, who was born a girl. This is what she told me. Bora: Grandma, I asked you on the phone. the girl born after my second aunt. Grandma: The daughter? Bora: Tell me about it. Grandma: The story is... I thought it was a son, but it was a daughter. Well... My husband’s older brother had a son, and his younger brother also had a son. My husband hated my daughter very much. I wasn’t able to keep my head up, either.
Grandma: So, I raised her roughly. One day, she got tetanus. She was born less than two months before. We didn’t take her to the hospital. She died after having convulsions. We did not take her to the hospital. I don’t know why we didn’t take her. In other words, I let her die. After that, I had a deaf son, I think my body got punished.
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My grandfather(Eunwoo Lee) and grandmother(Imsoon Jeong)
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S#4. The bodies of me, my mother, and my grandmother were a place where all these memories pass by. Female bodies, which are considered as reproducing bodies by their nation. My grandmother, whose body struggled to acquire independence, along with legitimacy and social membership through childbirth. My mother, whose body has been repeatedly told that one child was enough for a disabled person, even though she wanted to give birth again and raise more children. I, whose body couldn’t say a thing to anyone after having an abortion. What was interesting was that we haven’t talked about these things at all in public places. Not even between the three of us. Abortion was a memory and a deed against the national policies and social atmosphere; it was not socially acceptable to talk about those things.
S#5. I planned to have an interview in the studio. What I wanted was an opportunity for me, my mother, and my grandmother to talk about each other’s abortion experience. I have never told my mom about my abortion. My mother has read the column I wrote in the newspaper but never mentioned any of it. My grandmother knew nothing of that column. I wanted to question why we could not have shared the abortion experiences of ourselves and
our bodies openly. On the day before filming, I went to Daejeon where my grandmother lived. We had dinner together. The next day, my filming crew came from Seoul. I told my mother and my grandmother in advance that I wanted to interview them, but I didn’t tell them about the topic. I thought it would be hard for my grandmother, who was 83 years old to endure our filming schedule which would last the whole day; so I asked my dad to drive her to the studio midway through the session. My mother and I filmed the interview in the morning and my dad came with my grandmother in the afternoon. The interview was done in four ways: First, my mom sat in front of the camera and I interviewed her using sign language beside the camera. Second, My mother and I sat in front of the camera and talked about my abortion experience. Third, my grandmother sat alone in front of the camera and I interviewed her using spoken language. Fourth, My mother, my grandmother, and I sat in front of the camera and had a conversation. In between, I interpreted sign language into spoken language and spoken language into sign language. I started the first interview with my mom.
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“Abortion”
“Abortion”
“Ashamed”
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“I don’t want.”
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S#6. The shooting didn’t go very well. I asked my mother to look at the camera for five minutes. I wanted to know how her body would move in such situations. During the interview, I asked my mom about her body. Then, I slowly proceeded into her abortion experience. I was curious about how her body would react while reviving the memory. It was cold in the studio, and my mother kept her coat on. She was familiar with how cameras and videos worked. As my documentary films about myself and my family have been released in South Korea and Japan, and as they were viewed at various film festivals, my mother was well aware of the impact of a video. Also, she has filmed and edited a sign language video by herself. She constantly smiled in front of the camera. When I started asking about abortion during the interview, my mom said that she didn’t want to talk about it. She told me to ask other questions. When I told her that I had nothing else to ask except the abortion, she changed her expression and told me that she didn’t want to do this anymore. She also asked me not to use the footage either. There was a war of nerves. I asked my mom why she felt uncomfortable, and she told me that she felt ashamed. I asked why, not because the reason for the abortion mattered to me, but because I wanted to know why this particular experience was socially unspeakable and shameful. My mother said that the reason she didn’t want
to talk about it was that other people didn’t, either; that it was not an issue to be spoken about in our society. I asked her why it should be that way, but my mother only responded that she felt ashamed.
S#7. The second interview. I mentioned my own abortion experience. It wasn’t easy at all. I felt uneasy looking at my mother, who didn’t have the confidence to say a thing about her abortion experience. Talking about my own experience in sign language was also hard. My mother and I did not have that kind of relationship to share this experience. I felt sorry and guilty for making a situation where my mom had to stand in front of a camera and talk about something she felt emotionally unable to. At the same time, I became angry with her and everyone who couldn’t do away with social prejudice. Or, I got angry at the social circumstances which forced us into this situation. Why is abortion illegal? Why is mentioning abortion not socially acceptable? Shouldn’t they provide us with a proper education about our bodies, sex, and contraception if they wanted to avoid abortion? Then why are they all taboos? Why am I not allowed to talk about my own body?
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“See”
“See”
“See each other”
“Be seen”
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I asked my mom if she wanted to know more about my abortion. She said she didn’t want to know the details. I agreed. My mom recalled reading my column for the first time in a newspaper and told me that it had been a shock. I asked her if she wanted to know more, but she said that it was all in the past and she didn’t want to know any further. I agreed with her, because I had to do filming, but I didn’t want to talk about it as well. My mother and I had that kind of relationship - when something hard and disturbing happened, we never talked about those things in front of each other. We just kept them to ourselves. I have never brought up how I fought against the bullying and the social prejudice and how I suffered because she was deaf. My mother also wanted to deal with her own daily hardships by herself. It felt as if it would be too disturbing and unbearable to reveal the problems to each other. So, we buried these stories and feelings deep in our hearts.
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S#8. The third interview. My grandmother was not conscious of the camera. She was not aware of cameras and how they function. With poor eyesight, she couldn’t even see the camera installed at a distance. My grandmother often touched her knees and looked somewhere else. Every time I asked my grandmother about her body, she told me narratives with males at the center. They were sentences beginning with words like “your grandfather”, “your father”, “your uncle”, etc. Even when I asked about her life and her body, she only talked about the history of her husband and her sons, not herself and daughters. “Abortion”
What was interesting was that she talked about her abortion experience freely. In fact, during the military dictator Park Chung-hee’s government (1963-1979) family planning counseling centers were installed nationwide and abortion buses sent all around as a part of its population control policy. Combined with a preference for sons, this action caused frequent abortions of female foetuses. Even though abortion itself was illegal, abortion for population control was encouraged. In effect, abortion could be said to be led by government.
“Two is Enough!”
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These slogans were all around the street. Mothers tried to give birth to sons under this family planning; they exchanged secret advice on how they believed they could have sons.
“Don’t distinguish if it’s a daughter or a son, let’s raise them well”
“Have a small number of children and raise them well.” “Family prospers from family planning.” “Don’t suffer providing for a large family; have a small number of children and raise them well.” “You cannot escape poverty if you give birth blindly.” “Have only three kids with three years of age gap. Stop giving birth when you become thirty-five.” “A smaller number of children is better for them and their parents.”
In that social atmosphere, my grandmother tried hard to have sons. Her first child was a daughter. Her second was a son who soon became deaf. In South Korea, a hearingimpaired person, was merely disabled, an abnormality, not considered as a son. My grandfather had an affair and left his own family to go and live with his new lover. My grandmother pretended that she didn’t know anything about his affairs to avoid divorce, and tried to keep her family by providing for her children. As she wanted to have a son more than anything, she gave birth to another child without telling her husband that she had gotten pregnant; but it was a daughter again. The next child was also a daughter, the one who had become infected with tetanus within two months. After that, she had to have a son by any means. When her husband returned from the Vietnam War, she got pregnant again and finally had a boy. However, that son had convulsions and lost his hearing, too. My grandfather bemoaned that he had no “son” at all to carry on the family line.
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My father was present at the studio. He was there in one corner of the studio where I was interviewing his mother. However, he didn’t know what I was filming because he could not hear the spoken language.
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He was there when my mother had an abortion; he was there when my grandmother had an abortion, and he was also there in the studio. Nonetheless, the issue was not for my father, a Korean male.
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S#9. The fourth interview. My grandmother watched her own son meeting a woman and living with her before marriage. When my mother got pregnant without getting married, she wanted to have an abortion because she felt ashamed; my grandmother nodded. When my mother was expecting me, my grandmother told my mom that a son would be better. However, my mom chose to have me. When she was pregnant with her second child, my grandmother told her to have only one child, saying that it was very hard for a disabled person to raise two kids. I wanted to find a certain point of contact between the three bodies with abortion experiences, the bodies of me, my mother, and my grandmother. I told my grandmother that I have had an abortion.
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095 Bora: Grandmother: Bora: Grandmother:
Bora: Grandmother: Bora: Grandmother: Bora: Grandmother: Bora: Bora: Grandmother: Bora: Mother: Grandmother: Bora:
I had an abortion in the past You… had an abortion? Yes Where...? Now... You... had... had an abortion with a Japanese? No, long ago. Long ago? With whom? Your boyfriend from Jeju Island? With him? No. Long ago. Before that? Yes, you don’t know. With someone in the navy? No, you don’t know him. … Do you want to hear? No, just forget it. (Sign language) I asked grandma if she wanted to know, but she didn’t want to. … … …
S#10. After the shooting, we separated without having a meal together. My mom asked me if I wanted to join her and have dinner with my grandmother, but after some consideration, I told her that I couldn’t because I needed to round off the shooting. Actually, I had planned to have dinner with them and go to my parents’ home, but I couldn’t face my mother and my grandmother any longer; it made me uncomfortable. I wanted to be apart from them, especially from my mother, even for a moment.
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Epilogue
After the shooting, I didn’t contact my parents for a while. I only told them that I arrived in the Netherlands safely—we both didn’t mention anything about the filming that day. On April 11, 2019, the Constitutional Court ruled that the current criminality of abortion is incompatible with the constitution. Only after a long sixty-six years, the Republic of Korea is finally taking steps to make abortion legal. Then, my mother sent me a photo. It was a headline of a newspaper article about the Constitutional Court’s decision on abortion. It was just a simple photo without any comments. But it was enough for me. I knew the implications of that single picture. My mother would have seen the news, understood that it was the topic we had discussed, and taken the photo to send to her daughter; even though she
know what it all meant. She had sent the photo because she didn’t know what to say. But it showed that she supported and respected my works, including the recent shooting. She had told me that I should not proceed with the interview because it was illegal back then; however, she wanted to tell me that I could continue as it became legal. The picture had meant that my mother had agreed to my will, although it was not easy to speak face to face and to express accurately in any words.
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The South Korean government must revise the laws on didn’t abortion by 2020. Of course, it will not be an easy task. We will need a lot of discussion about how to amend it. From now on, my body is not illegal. The bodies of my mother and grandmother are not guilty, either. Our bodies are not sinful. No, it’s more appropriate to say that they were made not sinful. It doesn’t feel real enough yet, but finally, we came to have our own rights to reproduce with our own bodies. But where are all those body experiences? Are the memories of the body recorded or written? Where should the memories stay that had not been taken out of the body for sixty-six years and which were not shared with the mother and grandmother? Can my embodied memory be met with other people’s memories? The (female) body is a contested site, a space imprinted by power and politics. My artistic research focuses on reading that space and the process of reproducing the social-political through the body and the need to try counter or rewrite it.
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References for Artistic Research Moving Image Works Including Films Sivan, Eyal. IZKOR - Slaves of Memory, 1990. Popivoda, Marta. Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, 2013. Cornelio, Agnese. Free to Work, 2014. Arias, Lola. Theatre of War, 2018. Varda, Agnès. Women Reply, 1975. Varda, Agnès. One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, 1977. Leth, Jorge. The perfect Human, 1967. Whitten, Diana. Vessel, 2014. Marina, Abramović., Grigor, Murray. The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk (film version), 1988. Rottenberg, Mika. NoNoseKnows. Si Shang Art Museum collection, Beijing, 2015.
Exhibitions Reenacting History_Collective Actions and Every Gestures. MMCA Gwacheon Exhibition, 2018 Counter-Memory & Reconstruction of Body Movement. The 18th Seoul International Newmedia Festival, 2018 Freedom of Movement -Municipal Art Acquisitions 2018. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2018.
Performance Marina, Abramović. The Artist Is Present. The Museum of Modern Art, 2010.
Books Kim, Eun-shil. Women’s body, Cultural Politics of Body. Alternative Culture Press, 2010. Aleksievich, Svetlana. The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, Penguin Classics, 2017. Flusser, Vilém. Gesture(Gesten. Versuch einer Phänomenologie). Workroom Press, 2018. Baek, Yeong-kyung., Lee, Yoo-rim., Yoon, Jeong-won., Choi, Hyun-jung., Na-young., Ryu, Min-hee., Kim, Sun-hye., Cho, Mi-kyung., Hwang, Ji-sung., Park, Jong-joo., Na, Young-jeong., Choi, Ye-hoon., Sexual and reproductive rights forum. Battle Ground-The politics of sexual and reproductive rights surrounding the illegal abortion. Humanitas Books, 2018. Abril, Laia. On Aborrtion. Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2018. Munari, Bruno. Supplemento al dizionario italiano(Supplement to the italian dictionary). Corraini Editore, 1963. Louis, Hothothot. Twelve Moments. Louis Hothothot Studio, 2017. Choi, Tae-sub. Korean, Man. EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co., 2018. Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books, 1997 Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books, 1997
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103 Journal Articles Jung, Tae Yun. Historical and Cultural Analyses of Collective Features of Korean Society. The Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, 24(3), 2010: 53-76. Kim, Eun-shil. The Politics of the 4·3 Holomong Bodies: ‘Speaking’ and the Emotion as Embodied Languages. Korean Cultural Anthropology, 49(3), 2016: 313-359. Gwon, Gwi-sook. Social Memory of the Jeju 4-3 Incident. Korean Journal of Sociology, 35(5), 2010: 199-231. Gwon, Gwi-sook. Generational Transmission of Collective Memory: The Case of the Social Memories of the Jeju 4-3 Incident. Korean Journal of Sociology, 38(5), 2014: 53-80. Gwon, Gwi-sook. The Construction of Remembering Memories of the Jeju 4-3 Incident, Korean Journal of Sociology, 38(1), 2004: 107-130. Gwon, Gwi-sook. Representation of Gender and Genocide : The Case of Jeju 4-3 documentary Films, The Journal of Asian Women, 43(2), 2004: 241-271.
106 Photo Sources National Archives of Korea Hankyoreh Kyunghyang Shinmun Projects Pledge of Allegiance, Black Paper, Our Bodies
Credit
My Embodied Memory, Work in progress
Writing and Research Bora Lee-Kil Design Louis Hothothot Proofread Andrew Jensen, Michael Dale Morgan
Copyright © 2019 Bora Lee-Kil All rights reserved.
This research publication is developed in the context of the MA of Film programme in Artistic Research in and Through Cinema at the Netherlands Film Academy.
Thanks to Our Bodies, Kyunghee Kil and Imsoon Jeong. Ken Tanaka, Sangkuk Lee, Kwnaghee Lee, Sojin Kwak, Sojeong Lee, Louis Hothothot, Stella van Voorst van, Community Media Center in Daejeon, Giorgia Piffaretti, Albert Kuhn, Stefan Pavlovic, Marleine van der Werf, Yafit Taranto, Peter Hammer, Victorine van Alphen, Robin Coops, Timo Geschwill, Sander Blom, Mieke Bernink, Eyal Sivan, Wineke van Muiswinkel, Aneta Lesnikovska, Kris Dekkers, Sabien Schütte, Agnese Cornelio, Áron Birtalan, Eliane Esther Bots, Mirka Duijn, Eugenie Jansen, Albert Elings, Rada Sesic, Menno Boerema, Sabine Groenewegen, Angela Melitopoulos, Floris Paalman, Sona Jo, Hayang Yang, Jesung Lee, Jihyun Lee, Soyoung Kang(Humanitas Books), Myung Sanstra, Ronald Aartsen, and Sunyoung Glebbeek. Millie Brothers Scholarship for Hearing Children of Deaf Adults Holland Scholarship Supporters of Crowdfunding Scholarship for Bora Lee-Kil Schuurman Schimmel-van Outeren Foundation Talent Grant of Amsterdam University of the Arts Netherlands Film Academy
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Artist Biography
Bora Lee-Kil is a South Korean writer and filmmaker who believes that being born to and raised by deaf parents has given her the best gift of storytelling. She dropped out of school at the age of sixteen and traveled South East Asia for 8 months. This experience inspired her first film, Road-Schooler (2008) which also resulted in a book, Road is School (2009). Following this, she studied filmmaking at Korea National University of Arts. Glittering Hands (2014) is an award-winning documentary based on her stories of growing up moving back and forth between two worlds – one of silence and one of sounds. She also published the essay book Glittering Hands(2015). Her recent feature film, A War of Memories (2018) received the jury’s special mention for the Mecenat Award at the Busan International Film Festival in 2018. She won the Korea Emerging Women’s Culture Award in 2015.
boraleekil.com nomadbora@gmail.com
The book documents the research into the way in which the body is a political medium. Using three projects - Pledge of
Allegiance, Black Paper and Our Bodies - it discusses the historical and politics contexts that the movements and gestures which my body remembers, are based on. The book also acts as a proposal for Our Bodies as an ongoing research and film project.