Event

YEONDOO JUNG AT ASIA SOCIETY

Yeondoo Jungs new theater piece, Cinemagician, aims to recreate the tensions between the magician and audience that arise from watching the unfolding of an unknown event or trick. Inspired by the nineteenth-century French filmmaker George Melies, whose experiments as a magician and cabaret illusionist led him to play with special film effects such as the stop trick (stopping filming, substituting something in front of the camera for something else, and then resuming filming), multiple exposures, dissolves, and hand-painting colors on film, Cinemagician will present a live happening juxtaposed with a projected one. As a live magician (South Korean celebrity Eungyeol Lee) manually constructs the setting of the stage that he is standing on, a camera will simultaneously shoot the stage, and project its feed on a screen hanging above. As the performance progresses, the version shown on the screen will drift from a strict live feed to one transformed by illusions only possible in cinema, leaving the audience to oscillate between the suspension of disbelief and a paradoxically ravishing spectacle. Supported by The Korea Foundation and the TOBY Fund. Co-produced by Tina Kim Gallery, New York, and Kukje Gallery, Seoul. A Performa Commission with the Yokohama Festival for Video and Social Technology.