25/ It is not a question but a balloon

2010
By Jeamin Cha
Duration: 7:44 min.
Recommended by Marie Martraire

How does this work investigate “hope?”
Jeamin Cha’s video perfectly embodies the ambivalence and fragility of hope, and its complex relationship with the past, the present, and the future. Mixing the tenses of narration, the video interlaces the characters’ destinies, their relationships with one another, and the grander narrative of South & North Korea. Yet no outcomes are disclosed, only those left to the imaginary and memory.

About the work:
“It Is not a question but a balloon stems from my inquiry into a controversial political figure Sukyung Lim, best known for her illegal visit to North Korea in 1989. She participated in the video as the voice over narrator. Reading scripts through a walkie-talkie, she recalls the events that took place between June and August 1989. The script is written in mixed tenses of past, present, and future, drawing its content from newspaper reports. The film is divided into two parts: the question and the balloon. In the first part, a balloon carrying a leaflet cluster flies toward its destination in a straight line. The leaflet cluster acts as a weight as the balloon is carried by the wind. This scene is voiced over by Lim’s narrating through the radio that doesn’t have any recipient specified. In the second part, the balloon is floating lightly around in the air of Seoul without the leaflet cluster. This video work is a monologue delivered by my generation, including myself, who often forget the fact that we live in a divided nation-state. Rather than study official history, can I instead learn to trust and remember the past through an experience of my own? I wanted to explore this question by focusing on personal experience as an active interpretation of history. Thus, I wanted to create a little incident, via a helium balloon, equipped with a timer, en route to some unknown destination.” —Jeamin Cha