During the Wednesday Gender Seminar on Oct. 2, Prof. Soo Ryon Yoon, an assistant professor from the Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, shared her research on South Korean media and visual artist siren eun young jung and her work Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008-).
Yeoseong Gukgeuk (Women’s National Theatre Performance), a form of theatre with all characters played by female actors, used to be the most popular art form in the 1950s’ Korea but gradually declined partly due to its inherent tension with the heteronormative logic underlying the state’s imagination of “true” national heritage.
Siren eun young jung, a Korean artist, has spent years to conduct a series of archival research-based installations and performances about Yeoseong Gukgeuk. Through close reading of jung’s works and from the perspective of queer politics, Prof. Yoon analyzes the strategy in her Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project to play with and within the existing normative institutions of South Korea theatre rather than denying them. Highlighting three themes in jung’s acts of intervention, i.e., the archival, the tradition, as well as gender and queer politics, Prof. Yoon explores how jung’s project has interrogated the nationalized and heteronormative theatre history and opened up new possibilities to resurrect queer presence in theatre.
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