Abstract
This poem was written after a long day at the 2019 Venice Biennale. It is from a body of work—spanning research, writing, and performance—dedicated to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Cha's seminal autoethnography Dictée has been readily mobilized by the disciplinary demands of both Asian American and literary studies, becoming the beloved exception reifying the rule of the false (and racialized, and gendered) binary between expressivity and innovation. Meanwhile, Cha's visual, video, and performance work has remained relatively obscure. My project for Theresa wants to un-discipline her archive while interrogating my own marking as a “Korean” “American” artist. In order to write this introduction, I had to go into the rain in all white, to move through silence with a hand to my mouth. In addressing these texts and rituals to Theresa, I seek to acknowledge the exchange we make in communing with the lost.