Jesse Chun ’ s video poem is silent . Yet , language is at its center . In her oeuvre , the artist , who is South Korean , often explores language , its relationship to place and power , and what an “ untranslatable future ” might look like . In its foreground , INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE browses through dizzying frames that feature the book Word Power Made Easy , the Ford English School Program , sentence visualizations , word and numeric mappings , pronunciation and intonation diagrams , diplomas , internet dictionaries , and book indexes . The passages and texts are taken from a range of sources , such as postcolonial theory , poetry by women of color , Asian-American writers , etc . The English language continues to permeate U . S . immigration policies as both a prerequisite and a signifier of American citizenship . In Chun ’ s constructed bibliography , we might imagine how someone for whom English is not their first or native language could attempt to navigate them — at once daunting , estranged , and necessary .
Notably , Chun sets the video against a kaleidoscopic background featuring the watermarked ideological landscape pages of the U . S . passport . In doing so , the artist positions the passport as a language in itself . In this intersection of language and the passport , INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE points to an ironic absence — of all the information required to be listed on the passport , language is not . As writer Amitava Kumar poignantly notes , “ My passport provides no information about language . It simply presumes I have one .”
In Chun ’ s poetic film , language exists in a sea of silence . In this setting , we witness her tedious choices between words , phrases , and texts to frame a monologue . While Chun visualizes obstacles that make the English language elusive , she alludes to its required perfection to exist in the United States freely and safely . The artist pushes us to understand the perspective of someone who does not speak English as their first language , and the struggles that they may face in finding home .
— Francesca Kern Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies , Art History
Jesse Chun , INDEXING MY MONOLOGUE , 2020 , single-channel video , silence , MDF , mirror , 7 minutes 57 seconds , installation dimensions variable . Courtesy of the artist . Photo credit : Ivan Peñafiel .
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