Pleased to Meet You: KimSu Theiler at White Dot Studio, New York
Aaron Yassin
KimSu Theiler, installation view of "Let Me Introduce Myself," at White Dot Studio, New York
Let Me Introduce Myself is the second line of an email KimSu Thelier received earlier this year from someone claiming to be her younger half-brother in South Korea that she never knew she had. It is the first in a series of five email messages that inspired Thelier’s installation at the White Dot Gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
The email messages are hung on one wall, but the letters that comprise them are faint indentations in sheets of paper made by pinpricks. Paired with each of these emails is Theiler?s responses, scrolling across wall-mounted screens. A fresnel lens in front of each screen magnifies the text but also slightly distorts it, particularly at the edges.
At one end of the room there is a video projection with sound. It shows a hand with a finger pointing across a Korean text. The voiceover translates this text into English and we understand that it is an article from the Kyung-Hyang daily newspaper about Theiler’s 1993 film, Great Girl that tells the story of her trip to South Korea in search of her mother. The article explains that Theiler was born in South Korea and sent to an orphanage when she was four, where she was adopted by an American couple.
The first email message from Theiler’s half-brother explains that a few years ago, his aunt saw this article and told him about his older sister. But it is only now, after several years have passed, that he has the courage to contact her. The resulting exchange provides a glimpse into Thelier’s unknown family, her mother and her memories of her very early childhood in South Korea.
The overall effect of the installation is deeply emotional, transfixing, painful, tragic, touching and even uplifting qualities that are a result of the metaphoric relationship between the formal properties of the presentation and the story they tell. For example, the process of pinpricking a piece of paper thousands of times to create words that remain difficult to read reminds us of the pain of loss and the careful attention it requires to overcome. This text, which is almost illegible form a few feet away, requires a close, intimate viewing. Each pierced hole opens up a small space of darkness, yet these many holes of darkness combine to also give light to the words of a half-brother, and, in the fourth pinpricked letter, to the words of Theiler’s mother herself, which Theiler reads for the first time in shock.
In contrast, Theiler’s own emails are scrolling videotext. In an endless cycle, each word appears letter by letter until the small screen fills, and the text vanishes. Although the text moves slowly, it is difficult to comprehend the whole message on the first pass. It is too fleeting. The words must be held in one’s memory and then carried to the next message to complete the story. This cognitive game connects the viewer’s experience with Thelier’s memory of her first four years in South Korea that she has kept in her mind for so long.
The complexity of time is expressed in every word and every sentence that unfolds in these ten email messages. Although they were instantly transmitted halfway around the globe, they speak beyond the three decades of Theiler’s absence from her homeland. They speak beyond individual transmigration, so common at this moment in history. They provide, rather, a simple poetic meditation on some fundamental questions about identity, personal history, family and most of all one’s love for their mother.
