Channel 1
It begins with me filming my father’s side grandma, who has Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t recognize me so we communicate with a photo album. She moved to Los Angeles in the early 60’s and regularly sent money back to Korea. She abruptly passed away in 2010, leading me to search for a narrative of the past. I found this exiled perspective through the only family member alive, the wife of her brother. Through a personal quest in 2012 I began my journey to visit her in Korea. She shows me their wedding photo with my grandma in it. In this photo I asked about a distinct figure on the left with a mustache and cane. She tells me about this figure named Kim Sangdon. He’s my grandma’s uncle and my great-grandfathers brother.
In order to look into this archive as a documentary, I use inherited methodologies from my grandma who studied fashion and grouped images together with the garments worn by Kim Sangdon. I see tailoring, which was my great-grandfather’s profession, as a way to understand the archive as material to narrated into essay film.
“The very existence of the archive constitutes a constant threat to the state”- Achilles Mbembe -
Reading Material:
Achille Mbembe - The Power of the Archive,
Allan Sekula - Reading an Archive,
Ariella Azoulay - Archive,
Arjun Appadurai - Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination,
Griselda Pollock - After Affects After Images
Channel 2
British Pathe
MayDay Rooms
Independence Hall of Korea독립기년관
Cultural Heritage Administration문화제청
Tokyo Korean YMCA東京韓国YMCA
Kim Sangdon Archives김상돈기록
The Center for Historical Truth and Justice
민족문제연구소
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Charlie Dean Archives
Channel 2
Suggests that group photography in formative years is a social schema and directs a point of origin in order to resurrect one’s narrative. The earliest images I could recover of my relative, was as a student activist in Tokyo, Japan (1922-1927) and as a farmer in San Francisco (1927-1929). Both were geopolitical locations for liberation, knowledge production & labor during the annexation of Korea (1910-1945).
Hal Foster - An Archival Impulse,
Hal Foster - Artist as Ethnographer,
Hito Steyerl - Politics of the Archive,
Hito Steyerl In Defense of the Poor Image,
Jacques Derrida - Archive Fever a Freudian Impression,
Channel 3
Looks into Kim Sangdon’s role in de-colonization architecturally after WWII as a vice-president of a committee that trialled Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese (1948-1949). The president Rhee Syngman disbanded this law. In one fictionalized drama “Yainsidae”(2002), a scene shows police raid the committee in front of what is now the Seoul Museum of Art. Originally that building is a Japanese justice court used to persecute independence fighters.
Channel 3
National Assembly Library of Korea국회도서관
Chosun News조선일보
Kyunghyang Shinmun경향신문
National Folk Museum of Korea국립민속박물관
Found History book
Seoul Museum of Art서울시립미술관
Rustic Period (2002)양인시대 (2002)
National History Compilation Committee
한국역사정보통합시스템
Channel 4
Reveals in a news article an assassination attempt on Kim Sangdon, as well as others assumed to be threats to the autocratic regime. Through non-violent tactics, hunger and sit-down strikes, a controversial National Security Law was forcefully passed with the help of 300 National Guard on 12.24.1958. This would widen the regime’s control of its southern border.
Channel 4
Pacific Stars and Stripes
Democratic Party Propaganda민주당선전부김의택
Kim Sangdon Archives김상돈기록
Ilmin Museum of Art일민미술관
The Korea Times한국일보
KBS History Special KBS 역사스페셜
Jacques Derrida - Copy Archive Signature -A Conversation onp Photography,
Karl Marx - Capital a Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1,
Okwui Enwezor - Photography Between History and the Monument,
Peter Feng - Identities in Motion,
Philip Monk - Dissembling the Archive - Fiona Tan,
Channel 5
This sequence looks to compare narratives from an uncirculated photo book and a segment from a documentary made by KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) that used the same images. [I was never able to obtain archives from there.] On the other hand I use the graphic design from a banned photo book depicting the 4.19.1960 student movement to counter the a memorial politics of images. It also shows Kim Sangdon’s election and his role as Mayor for the eight-months he was in office. The City Hall building is now a public library. There are many photos of him released publicly as well as in his archive.
Channel 5
동방사진 Dongbang Photo News
Korea Democracy Foundation민주화운동기념사업회
Kim Sangdon Archives김상돈기록
Seoul Metropolitan Library서울시청도서관
Kyunghyang Shinmun경향신문
National Archives of Korea국가기록원
KTV National Record Film KTV 국가기록영상관
Channel 6
Reconstructs the process of recollection during the arrest of Kim Sangdon on the day of the coup d’état on 5.16.61. Court trials (1961-1963) consist of court documents and images found in the personal archive. After a six month trial, he was found innocent in charges of overthrowing the military government but blacklisted from politics. The information found was crucial to understanding his arrest during the coup because institutionally these archives were not released or still remain confidential. After his case was dismissed I look into family footage of his visit to Chicago in 1964. He hasn’t seen some of his children in 16 years since their scholarships to study in America, because the government of Korea wouldn’t let them re-enter.
Channel 6
CIA Electronic Reading Room
National Editorial Association
Movietone News
Criminal Department제일범죄형사사진과
Presidential Archives대통령기록관
British Pathe
National Archives of Korea국가기록원
KTV National Record Film KTV 국가기록영상관
동아일보 Donga Ilbo
Kim Sangdon Archives김상돈기록
Why exhibit at a resource center?
Marginalized history is suppressed, it becomes forcefully forgotten, fictionalized, and over time; sanitized through redaction. With a layer of Alzheimer’s; a photo becomes a piece of paper until my generation remembers. I found my voice as an artist through this forgotten figure Kim Sangdon by constructing an archive that unpacks a different glimpse of history that I can identify with, researched within, and began a process to find my own struggle as a Los Angeles native where I felt rootless and unidentifiable without a context to voice from.
Yet the material shouldn't had never survived like many other cases facing turbulent and violent history was preserved by Kim Sangdon as he auto-archived and continually created scrapbooks while leaving vast clues to pick up on. I believe his activities were well documented as a public figure that left fragments of material scattered throughout over thirty sites from art institutions, government agencies, news outlets, whistle blower organizations, archive centers, libraries, and used bookstores. The regimes did well to control and eliminate facts about this figure to the public and the generation that recall him were silenced to speak in fear of the National Security Laws. He can be traced throughout the political discourse of modern Korean history from 1919-1980s, yet there isn’t any serious research, publications, or surveys of his activities still today. There are mentions but never spotlighted.
Ravi Arvind - Palat Beyond Orientalism - Decolonizing Asian Studies,
Suely Rolnik - Archive Mania,
Walid Raad - Excerpts From the Atlas Group Archive,
Walter Mignolo/ Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing,
Channel 7
The Korean Central Intelligence Agency followed Kim Sangdon from 1967-1970 and charging him with defamation and sedition charges while he attended various political rallies against a third-term president election throughout South Korea. With severe state oppression and the passing of the Yushin Constitution, Kim Sangdon self-exiles to America and stages protests with various groups to restore democracy in Korea. By using graphology I analysis the protest signs the various groups led movements to restore democracy in Korea that span from the State Department in Washington D.C, where the South Korean Embassy in Chicago used to be, and across from the United Nations building in New York.
Channel 7
Google Maps
Kim Sangdon Archives김상돈기록
Kyunghyang Shinmun경향신문
The Korea Times한국일보
Associated Press
National Institute of Korean History국사편찬원희
Wikileaks
Channel 8
The Korean Friendship Bell was presented to the United States during the 1976 Bicentennial Year. For that reason Chun’s officiating bell ringing ceremony has special significance for both Americans and Koreans. The digitized 8mm footage from personal archives reveals a glimpse of Kim Sangdon and activists adamantly protesting Chun Do Hwan’s visit in Los Angeles on Jan. 28th 1981. The protestors gathered at the Los Angeles International Airport, then off of Olympic & Western, and later at night mobilized in front of the ABC Entertainment Center in Century City were Chun Doo Hwan was staying. This marks one of Kim Sangdon’s last protests of his life before his death in 1986.