Beyond the sea

‘Beyond the sea’ 2018 continues Bona Park’s exploration of themes of extinction and redundancy brought about by human activity, technological development and economic imperatives. Its three channels each focus on an individual working behind the scenes in Korea’s film and television industry – a voice actor, a lighting operator and a stunt performer – whose roles have become precarious with shifts in cinematic fashion and financing.

The work’s central monologue, read by the voice actor, is drawn from French playwright Marguerite Duras’s experimental 1981 film ‘The Atlantic Man’, an ode to a departed lover. The ‘you’ addressed by the central monologue is directed toward film and television workers, and the profession of voice acting in particular. Once popular for dubbing foreign films, many voice actors were made redundant after the global financial crisis of 2008, their function replaced by subtitling.

Abstracted from their workaday context and framed by Bona Park’s videography, the actions of all three professionals take on a poetic resonance. Deeper readings are also possible — both of oblique cinematic references inherent in each action, and of the broader conditions of labour in jobs that are vulnerable to obsolescence, the workforce equivalents of endangered species in the natural world.

Exhibited in 'The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' (APT9) | 24 Nov 2018 – 28 Apr 2019