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HAYOUN KWON was born in Seoul (South Korea) in 1981. She first studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, and then graduated from Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in 2011. Her work revolves mostly around the notions of memory (whether individual or collective), boundaries and limits, questioning the blurred lines between intention and interpretation, construction and fiction, recollection and invention. Using video and performance to create both narrative films and documentaries, she examines the ambivalent relationships between reality and fiction. Kwon oftentimes tackles the subject of Korean history touching upon the geopolitical situations in her country, which is not only divided in two parts, but also caught between China and Japan.
- International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014
- São Paulo International Short Film Festival 2014
- IndieLisboa 2014 International Film Festival
- Arte Creative Award - European Media Arts Festival Osnabrück 2014
- Ann Arbor Film Festival 2014
- Cinema du Réel Paris 2014
- Milano Film Festival 2014
- Guanajuato International Film Festival 2014
- One World Romania 2014
A village loosely inspired by a North Korean propaganda village, Kijong-dong. MODEL VILLAGE reveals a setting and invites us into a fiction, carrying out the journey by proxy. This film testifies to this ghost town in its true state as a mechanism of fiction. The reality of a border confronted with its staging. This village can only be reached within our imagination. (Hayoun Kwon)
Curator's comment:
Hayoun Kwon performs herself. She is a new generation of South Korean artists, who dares to move further with the memories of the promise of utopian space given by the propaganda of North Korea. Model Village comprehensively translates the oral myth into a visual that can be seen in a tangible way. Production-wise, she has successfully employed physical craftsmanship with generated images that blur each other, in the same way the narration does with the reality and fiction about a fake and hollow border village. Arte Creative for the Newcomer Award is granted to this work for its ability to incorporate the actual technical language of the artist's generation, as an instrument to encounter history and overcome displacement. (European Media Arts Festival Jury Statement)