Today we’d like to introduce you to Seokyoung Yang.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Experiencing an eating disorder after the loss of my father naturally led me to approach the themes of physicality and bodily wounds in my video poetry.
I am also interested in analogue film that enacts a materiality that transforms unseeable ideas into the optic and haptic illusions in my cinema. Tactile awareness is a key way that my films deliver the agonizing pain within self-growth.
Inclusion of poetry and text elevates the power of visual imagery as well as functions as a tool to exhibit resistance against silenced diasporic identity.
As an Asian female queer artist, I locate myself in the margins, insisting on opacity and being unexplainable. As an extension, my films often deal with abstraction of movements and utilize my mother tongue—a non-dominant language in a global context—Korean, as a highlighted method of communication.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
During COVID pandemic, I had to fly back to my home country, South Korea, because the school required students to evacuate and I was an international student who does not have home in U.S.
I was a part-time student in CALARTS while I was doing several part-time jobs in Seoul to raise some money for my savings.
My father was severely ill at that time and in June 2020, he passed away. After experiencing this loss, I felt like I was incapable of pursuing art and would never be able to go back to the past, where I had an artistic passion to explore cinema.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a moving image curator and a writer. I select several short experimental films under one specific theme and find a venue to screen them for LA audience.
How do you think about happiness?
I feel true happiness when I curate experimental films that I love and show them to the LA audience. Because I come from different cultural background, I feel I have so much to say and show to the audience who has not been exposed to the works that I feel valuable.
I feel excited when I have a new idea and able to write them down on a pitch proposal deck. I love writing and enjoy how text can deliver my experiences to someone else. I also feel happy when I research and find a new connection with emerging artists who has similar interest with me.
My recent show, <5973 miles away: Women’s exorcism of Loss> is going to happen on August 6th, 2023, 7:30pm at 2220 Arts and Archives, co-presented with LAfilmforum.
Contact Info:
- Website: seokyoungyang.com
Image Credits
<Exquisite Corpse Trilogy> Thesis film Claire Richards
