Zoyeon
Zoyeon
What Has Been Will Be Again,
What Has Been Done Will
Be Done Again
What Has Been Will Be Again,
What Has Been Done Will
Be Done Again
What Has Been Will Be Again, What Has Been Done Will Be Done Again
Zoyeon

HBK Braunschweig University of Art ● Corinna Schnitt

1 black-and-white video; 43:35 min; 1 digital print on cloth; 1860 × 150 cm

What Has Been Will Be Again, What Has Been Done Will Be Done Again—A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

Zoyeon, 2021

The prophetic title of Zoyeon’s journey to the fictive Land of R is taken from Ecclesiastes, one of the seven books of wisdom in the Old Testament. It was probably written in the third century B.C., and as we know, history repeats itself over and over. Zoyeon draws a parallel between Hendrik Hamel, a Dutch accountant who was stranded in Korea in 1653 and spent thirteen years as a detainee there before being released, and the artist Zoyeon, who does the opposite in the twenty-first century as a Korean woman. Zoyeon processes the ambivalent experiences of her protagonist who arrives in a totally foreign, confusing culture, in which racism and hospitality seem to be one, in a film adaptation with diary-like notes and a giant banner that attests to the colonial legacy and influences of foreign cultures in her home country.