In 술래 SULLAE, Chun has created an encounter with the grammars of polyphony a simultaneity of sounds that are both restrained by and resistant to the imposition of English on the Korean diaspora. The sound of the English language is disembodied and spliced into phonemic pulses. In the video, language becomes unhinged from expectation but at the same time, given form through history. 술래 SULLAE combines archival clips of ganggang sullae, index pages from intonation books, images of Hangul and English consonants and audio splices from YouTube tutorials on how to pronounce English correctly. The women flash on screen as an unbreakable chain reinscribing a gendered history with new sounds and images that gesture to emancipatory possibilities. This dance was a license for their one release.” In 술래 SULLAE, the dance proves to be a defiant presence. She writes: “the women participating would not have been able to, in their everyday lives, sing, speak loudly, nor leave the house at night, in the patriarchal society of ancient Korea. Video made by the Cultural Heritage Administration of the Republic of Korea (2008) for UNESCO “intangible heritage” applicationĭiana Seo Hyung Lee (2020) suggests that historically ganggang sullae was meant to provide a forum for its participants to express emotions connected to living within patriarchal systems of power and oppression. The songs can be both impromptu or pre-determined and encourages the participants to express their feelings in chorus with one another. The participants hold hands forming a circle that through their movement, expands, disassembles, and changes its form. 술래 SULLAE (2020) is a single channeled video that draws from ganggang sullae, a Korean seasonal harvest and fertility ritual that integrates song and dance and is typically performed by women under the glow of moonlight. This piece reminded me of how sound, in its most ambiguous and queer forms, can hold the contingencies of history, language, memory, family, and the genealogies of loss that mark these sites of colonial dispossession. It is this disjuncture between words, meaning, and their sounds, that drew me to Chun’s work, 술래 SULLAE (2020). There are sounds that can stir up a blend of affect and ideation that is comforting when whiteness is unsettling. There is a sonic residue that sticks to diasporic experiences. In the above passage, artist, Jesse Chun, reflects on how her grandmother spoke words in a language she did not understand, but yearned to hear and feel those sounds after her passing. Language can be a site of loss, a wholeness with which one, due to migration, has never really known. Now that you can access them all in one place, and you may be in need of a less, shall we say, stressful depiction of life’s struggles, let’s highlight the 12 best nature docs to stream on Discovery+.“To this day I think about all the strange words I missed out on, all the losses I’m still carrying from faraway…I still think of the time when I spoke one language, and that language was whole.” Chun 2020 Though some of these documentaries present an unflinching depiction of survival of the fittest, the soothing, professorial voice of Sir David Attenborough sets a tone of matter-of-fact calm that counterbalances even the most tense animal attack. Throughout the past two decades, thanks primarily to the advent of high-definition television, the BBC Natural History Unit has made must-see documentaries that offer some of the most hypnotic pieces of 21st-century filmmaking. This filmmaking unit has, over nearly seven decades, worked to create the fullest possible documentation of the natural world that exists outside the borders of humanity. But its hidden gem is the Planet Earth channel, where you can find a long list of nature documentaries from the BBC’s Natural History Unit. Since Discovery+ is the home of HGTV, Food Network, TLC, and more, there’s a wide swathe of reality programming on the streamer. The New Year marked the arrival of another new, brand-specific streaming service: Discovery+. Photo: Tom Walker/Silverback Films 2017/Discovery Plus
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