---

A note from the artist:
The audio incorporates both Korean (my mother tongue) and English (my second language) reading a poem that I originally wrote in Korean. As an Asian female queer artist, I locate myself in the margins, insisting on opacity and being unexplainable.

HISTORY

A woman sits at a cinema in Jongro

a familiar face emerges from a blue screen

Leslie Cheung embodies a queer Chinese opera singer

the woman fails at the interpretation

unversed in a Cultural Revolution



when we first talked about this film

you handed a woman a film critique book based on Chinese history

a warmth of emotion enables the present

maybe it is a gesture for the beginning of love

the act of giving your history to another



open the history book for a glimpse of a little scare:

Father hitting mother, fresh bladder that leaks, a cat swallowing pesticide, a hole in your grandmother’s tongue


the depth of the gaze is as deep as the abyss of revolution,
your

grayish blue dark circle is becoming more vivid

grandmother cannot see due to worsening glaucoma

a woman with a UTI struggles so she cannot even fall into sleep



after 319 days have passed, the familiar ending credit rolls upward

your mother tongue

the woman still cannot differentiate Cantonese and Mandarin

a custodian forces the woman to leave the theatre



Though the woman does not see her future

she leads the way to a soy sauce eggplant dish

holding your translucent hand

---