As it turns out, she is concerned with learning, too, but the fear she describes around that learning has less to do with her own ignorance and more to do with how knowledge is disseminated, how it’s made available, and to whom. The night before the meeting, I frantically Googled Hinrichs, hoping that by looking at her work I might have something halfway intelligent to say to her. Sure, I took a bunch of art history classes as an undergraduate, and I consider myself a serious fan of visual art works, but there’s a lot I don’t know, and that leaves me, at times, in a paralyzing state of intellectual FOMO. Teaching at an art and design school, as I do, is great in theory, but it means exposing my ignorance on a semi-regular basis. Her work has been shown and studied as a cornerstone of contemporary literature and performance.Recently, I was invited to coffee with Jo-ey Tang, the Columbus College of Art and Design’s Director of Exhibitions, and visiting German artist Heide Hinrichs-because, Tang said, “I think you two should meet.” I was flattered, but also a little terrified. She was assaulted and murdered on November 5, 1982, one week after the publication of Dictee. Of her work, poet Timothy Yu says, “ Dictee’s mix of narrative, poetry, and images destabilizes historical and biographical narratives in favor of a concentration on the workings of language.”Ĭha moved to New York City in 1980, where she worked as an artist, editor, and writer. She also edited the essay collection Apparatus: Cinematographic Apparatus: Selected Writings (Tanam Press, 1980). She was the author of numerous art books and performances, as well as the poetry collection Dictee (Tanem Press, 1982) and the 1976 films Vidéoème and Permutations. She was fluent in French, Korean, and English, and was heavily influenced by Marguerite Duras, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Beckett, and Carl Dreyer. Cha received her BA and MA in comparative literature and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied French, film theory, performance, and multimedia art.Ĭha worked in many mediums-film, sculpture, photography, performance, and poetry among them. At age fourteen, she won a school poetry contest. They moved to San Francisco in 1963, when Cha was twelve. Her family fled four invasions-first to Manchuria, then Seoul, and then to Busan, where Cha was born. A poet, performance, and multimedia artist, Cha was one of five children.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was born on March 4, 1951, in Busan, South Korea.

Theresa hak kyung cha books