The Possibility of the Half
2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
13:32 minutes
Minouk Lim
The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground. As both frames progresses, a montage of large crowds of mourners are depicted in slow motion interwoven with a variety of images including bomb explosions, fireworks, vacant stores, sunsets and sunrises, beachside landscapes, and infrared shots. At midpoint, life in the year 4012 is foreshadowed down to living insects and the video concludes back in the year 2012 as a burning inferno. A melancholic soundtrack of a stringed orchestra number plays in the background. In this video work Lim appropriates various televised footage from the aftermath of two different historical events: the death of former President of South Korea Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) and the death of former dictator of North Korea Kim Jong-il (1941–2011). By combining these undistinguishable footage from separate eras in each channel, Lim extracts the political divide that underlies the two events and focuses on the universality of their anguish. The Possibility of the Half is the first in a series of works that center on broadcast TV. The video in its original installation form restages a broadcast network studio, this simulated newsroom addresses the integrity of journalism amidst today’s fake news phenomena. In recent years, the pervasiveness of fake news and the manipulative power of the media to shape public knowledge and thus collective memory has prompted a subversive tactic in which Lim incorporates reportage in her work.
Loss, grief, trauma, death, and memory are consistent themes that Minouk Lim addresses through her sculptures, installations, performances, and videos. Lim’s provocative body of work is a response to and reconciliation of traumatic historical events in Korea from the late 1940s to the present day, including the undocumented massacres that occurred during the Korean War of the late 1940s and 50s, the protest for workers rights in the 1970s during the economic expansion of South Korea, and the ever-present fear of nuclear obliteration that clouds the entire Korean peninsula. For Lim, the collective experience is personal and her research confronts forgotten pasts and unlawful persecutions and in many instances, involves direct contact and establishing meaningful relationships with victims of torture, wrongfully accused North Korean spies, and civil rights organization employees.
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