From a Distant Relative: Review of Suwon Lee’s Dictée/Exilée
The following is a review of my performance Dictée/Exilée by Ju Ly Ban, a CUNY English Literature PhD candidate, specializing on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's archive. Written in the form of a letter, this piece emerged from a thoughtful exchange of emails that began the night of my performance, when Ju Ly kindly reached out to me.
Suwon,
Did you know that the first work featured in Exilee and Temps Morts, “audience distant relative,” is a multimedia project in letter form? In this series of letters, she explores her uncertain relationship with the audience—people she has never seen, knows only through others’ descriptions, yet assumes will hear her voice. As if she were their distant relative.
This phrase has stayed with me ever since I saw your performance at the Americas Society in New York City. I’ve been thinking about the connections we trace through her artistic world, as artist and audience. That is why I am writing this review in a letter form rather than any other. As if you were my distant relative.
*
I arrive at your venue breathless, having run from the subway station after a delay. Pulling in a deep lungful of air, I slip into the dark, silent crowd. With others, like others, I wait for you as the projector beams begin to illuminate the large white screen on the stage.
A smile is my first reaction. I smile as you step in front of the screen, the radiant glow washing over it. You are dressed entirely in white—a long shirt and matching pants. Your outfit immediately brings Theresa to my mind. Theresa, whom I have never met, has remained in constant dialogue with me through her works, stills, letters, and streets in the city. Your white echoes what she wore in 1975, an image now preserved as a still from her performance Aveugle Voix(1975).
My smile rises from the intimacy your white clothing evokes—a thread that connects you to Theresa, me to Theresa, and, most tenderly, me to your performance. I picture you finding it in her closet. It is a gesture of closeness, like when I slip on my brother’s hoodie or a friend’s coat. Leaning forward, I wonder about the world you are about to share. Like anything borrowed, shaped anew by its next holder, I am eager to see how you’ll make this stage distinctly yours.
Ambient noise mingles with the projection beams that dance across the screen. Such broken pieces of sight and sound reach me through Dictee. In the book, they emerge as the speaker—often understood to be Theresa—writes a letter to her mother. Through writing, she steps into a time and place she never experienced: Yongjeong, Manchuria, in the 1930s. It was the time when her 18-year-old mother, part of a landless and language-less diaspora under Japanese occupation, had just become a teacher. The fragments arise as the speaker calls out to her mother in this imagined space. Realizing that what emerges from her mouth is not a seamless sentence but “speech morsels” (56), she pauses to observe these fragments released from her body. To me, this act of observation feels inevitable—inevitable for someone who carries the layered stories of wandering as well as refuses to explain themselves with narratives too smooth to match the realities of their bodily experience. Today, enveloped in the fragments of noise you summon, I step into the space-time you invite.
In this temporal space, you gaze toward me—or perhaps at the small, round lens where the projection beam streams through. You exist both as the speaker and the foreground as the light washes over the screen, including your body. Theresa's word “re / dis / appearing” lingers a couple of seconds in the dark, caught in the glow. Your body catches the letter “e” from the final fragment, imprinting it. As I quietly echo the vowel in my mouth, the bell rings, and you begin to voice out.
*
The first word you utter confuses me. It is neither Korean nor English, but a sound you draw from your body, speaking with a relaxed posture. As someone unfamiliar with the language, I can only imagine it as one deeply connected to the space captured in the photo spilling onto the screen. Each time an image—a street, a landscape, or striking architecture—passes by, you utter a few syllables. I wonder: What are you seeing, and how? For a moment, I turn from the screen, my gaze shifting between the projector and your eyes.
What are you seeing, and how? I briefly recall Theresa. Aveugle Voix, known for the iconic still of her covering her eyes and mouth with a white cloth (each labeled as “Aveugle” and “Voix”), is not simply a declarative representation of “a Third-World woman silenced by multiple oppression in the 1970s.” Rather, I understand this performance as a meditation on her experience of language, captured in a few remaining stills. This reading comes from the gestures she makes after covering her eyes and mouth. The gesture involves her spreading a large white banner, far larger than her body, across the floor. Inscribed vertically on it are the words: “WORDS” - “FAIL” - “ME” - “SANS” (WITHOUT) - “MOT” (WORD) - “SANS” (WITHOUT) - “VOIX” (VOICE) - “AVEUGLE” (BLIND). She then moves among the words, touching them with various parts of her body. Her movements draw the audience away from familiar perceptions of language, revealing her own way of seeing and speaking. To grasp the idea of a ‘blind voice,’ the audience must reimagine the possibilities of their senses.
What are you seeing, and how? I am still curious. You are not Theresa. Yet Theresa, moving through words with her eyes and mouth covered, and you, standing still, speaking to the light and offering it as sound from your body, are linked by a common practice. Similar to how Theresa’s movements exceed the written text, yours exceed the photographs. In other words, to make sense of your images, I need to consider how you engage with light—how you see it and how you speak from it.
The light touches your hair, skin, and clothes all at once. I watch the active, vivid, and intense relationship between you and the light. The picture zooms in and out over your still form, its colors shifting moment by moment, heightening the dynamic. As I watch, I imagine the unknown meaning and depth these images hold within you. My thoughts expand as the images move from landscapes to fruits, animals, and plants. What causes their ceaseless shifting? What are you seeking as you address each one?
I feel like I am dreaming your dream.
Warmly,
Ju Ly Ban
jban@gradcenter.cuny.edu
December 24, 2024
Works Cited
Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung. "Aveugle Voix." 1975. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Gift of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Memorial Foundation. https://collection.bampfa.berkeley.edu/catalog/2622e817-686b-4830-bcfb-0aa3e8d57f0a.
—. Dictee. Tanam, 1982.
—. Exilee and Temps Morts. University of California Press, 2022.
Lee, Suwon. "Performance Series: Dictée/Exiléé by Suwon Lee." YouTube, uploaded by Art at Americas Society, 26 Nov. 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AziSWA09lYE.
Lewallen, Constance M., editor. The Dream of the Audience: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982). University of California Press, 2001.
Ju Ly Ban is a Ph.D. student in the English Program at the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches composition at Baruch College. Her research focuses on Black feminism, Queer kinship, and translation. She is currently on an archival research journey, tracing the work of Korean American artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha across Toronto, Hawaii, New York, and Korea. Throughout this journey, she strives to engage with the legacies of Black feminist writers and activists, including bell hooks and Audre Lorde.
