Jeamin Cha

Photosynthesizing Dead in Warehouse
Single channel video, 2024, 4K, 30 minutes, color/sound
 

Wooden boxes topped with glass cases sit in an empty house that has stood vacant for a long time. The situation seems at once an isolated art museum, a resource-depleted near future, and a private house under interior construction. Scenes of decaying fruits on a box are interspersed with the correspondence from a researcher studying the kusōzu, Buddhist paintings that depict nine stages of a decaying corpse and are associated with the practice of realizing impermanence. Photosynthesizing Dead in Warehouse is a neo-kusōzu in a sense, with its documentation of decay and questions about death. The narration consists of fragments of correspondence, intertwined with various excerpts from the study of the kusōzu, and contemplates the reason for our symbolic experience of death—or our inability thereof. This work is an essay film about looking at things as they are, making up stories in an attempt to make sense of them, and, as we follow these two axes that cast shadows on each other, what binds and liberates us.
 

Cast
Anthony KIM
GO Unji
Yeonhee BAE
BYEON Woo Seok
Eunbin CHO
Heewon JANG
Jaeyong LEE
Chunbong LIM
Pukku
 

Narrator
Yuki KONNO
 

Researcher and Japanese Translator
Yuki KONNO
 

Director of Photography and Digital Intermediate
Seongtaek LEE

Camera Assistants
Dongseok SHIN, Anthony KIM

Directed and Edited by
Jeamin CHA

Assistant Director
Hyejin BYUN

Sound Mixing
Guenchae KIM
(Punktire Studio)

Carpentry
Unji GO
(Studio Shrimp)
 

English Translator
Achim KOH

Title Design
LEE Soen

Accountant
Seoyoon CHOI

With Special Thanks to
Gookhyun Kang
BYUN Kab Han
BAIK Jisoo
SHIN Jihyun
YOON Yuli
YOON Jihyun
Jihye YUN
Hyunjin CHA

Supported by
2024 ARKO Partners

Organized by
ILMIN MUSEUM OF ART