WEBVTT

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(ethereal music)

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- The world of image felt
always like never enough for me.

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(piece being dragged)

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What felt the most real, close to life,

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was performance, involving body.

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You feel the weight,

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you feel the texture,

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you hear the sound.

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It is there, tangible,

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but with this tangible thing,

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you create intangible scenes in mind.

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(ethereal music)

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(traffic hums)

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I arrived in LA to meet my father

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for the first time, in... 13 years?

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(traffic hums)

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I remember in the car
driving to his apartment.

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He held my hand and
kind of said, (chuckles)

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"Oh, your hand grew so much."

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(turn signals)
(traffic hums)

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Since I started reconnecting with him,

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almost every time I visited him,

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he tried to plan some kind
of road trip together.

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So the car space is like the space

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that I spent the most time with my dad.

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The project came about with
thinking about this car space.

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(paper rustling)

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This is actual Niro,

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outlining what kind of
skeleton that I could build.

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I made the car sculpture based
on the model my dad drove.

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(items rattle)

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I laid out a lot of materials
and objects that I have made

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or collected over time,

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seeing if it works or
not, compositionally,

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considering its shape, material,

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and different sounds that it would make.

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(soft scraping)

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I wanted some kind of a plane in my piece

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because it's very skeletal
and it only has sticks.

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I wanted some space

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for other objects to exist on.

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(clay thumps)

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Each step of the way
required interpretation

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and a lot of like abstraction.

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(twinkling music)

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Being precisely ambiguous,
it's important to me because

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when you're puzzled by what you're seeing,

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you see things even more closely.

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(twinkling music)

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You observe the thing as what it is

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instead of what it means
or what it's symbolizing.

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(twinkling music)

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Driving for hours, you're kind
of together the whole time.

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I had faint memory of like who my dad was,

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but then there's like this big gap,

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so it felt like meeting a familiar figure

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but a stranger.

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What we like or how we like to do things

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felt pretty different a lot of times.

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(piece being dragged)

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no music

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not too slow

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not too fast

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don't stand out

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he said

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Look for a Korean restaurant

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McMornings

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and Korean food

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(gentle music)

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Object, movement, and language,

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I want each part to exist on their own

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and then try to figure out

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how they can coexist in a performance.

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Water

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pouring

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climb the hill

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I think of language as sound
components in my performance.

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There's a kind of calculation in silences

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for words or scenes to sink in

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and give space to the object sounds.

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(objects rattle)

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Some words I feel like
I cannot say in English,

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or in Korean.

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Whenever he talks about the trip

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sometimes it’s ominous

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strange

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Translation is perpetually incomplete.

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Accepting that there are things
that are not understandable

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or accessible at the moment is
also part of the experience.

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(gentle music)

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They said

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Do you know

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a blue Kia Niro?

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emptied parking lot

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a car left there

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(falls roaring)

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My dad talked about
going to Niagara Falls,

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but we didn't go.

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He was afraid to go near the US border.

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After he passed,

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it kind of hit me that

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it will be meaningful
to take that trip

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with him, metaphorically.

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I wanted to just spend
time in car, moving,

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and think about the time I spent with him.

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(falls roaring)

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(speaking Korean)

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door

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(speaking Korean)

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(speaking Korean)

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(speaking Korean)

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(speaking Korean)

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embrace

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(wood slams)

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(twinkling music)

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I like road trips because
you're moving forward

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to a destination together,

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but then you're also
intimately in this one space.

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You're almost in a same destiny.

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(twinkling music)

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When I perform, I feel the presence

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and energy of the audience

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and that feels like we
kind of shared something

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at that moment.

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What's important lies in
what's actually not being said

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because it gives room for mixing
with people's own thoughts,

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own memories, or stories.

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(twinkling music)