The 92nd ARTCaffè hosted Youngjoo Cho, who delivered an engaging talk to a packed room in Seoul, with attendees from 15 different countries.

During the event, our guest speaker introduced her most recent solo work, Cadenza, which took place last spring at Songeun Art Center in Seoul. She also shared insights into some of her earlier works.

Below is a transcription of her thought-provoking conversation during The Talk.

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Youngjoo Cho: I am an artist currently based in Seoul and recently I held a solo exhibition titled Cadenza at the Songeun Art Center. Today, I will guide you through that show.

My work focuses on women, particularly the lives of Korean women and the societal perceptions of women's bodies. I explore how these perceptions influence women's identities and how they are shaped by societal norms. My latest exhibition delves into themes of care, labor, body image, and my personal experiences as a woman.

Discrete Bodies Reconnect is a two-channel video work that also includes a live performance component. In the basement of the Art Center, I installed a two-channel video setup, while the live performance unfolded simultaneously in two separate locations within the building: one in the exhibition space and the other in the parking lot. The performances featured four performers, divided between the two spaces. These performances were connected through a live broadcast, allowing images from one location to be displayed on screens in the other. If you were in the exhibition space, for instance, you could see live footage of the performance happening in the parking lot, creating a sense of interaction between the performers through the screen.

The audience could move freely between the two spaces, witnessing both the performances and the behind-the-scenes process, including my role as the director managing live editing. The entire experience was streamed online, but afterward, I edited the footage into a polished two-channel video work.

‍Discrete Bodies Reconnect explores themes of migration and the experiences of Korean women in Western societies. The piece features four performers, each embodying a character from a different era and city. For example, one performer, dressed in a blue-sky sweater, portrayed a Korean nurse in 1970s Berlin. Another, wearing a hat, represented an unknown Korean artist living in Paris during the 1980s. These characters converge in the performance space, their stories intersecting in a symbolic, almost surreal manner.

The piece incorporates live interactions and imagery, including glimpses of the audience, which I deliberately included as part of the work. In the gallery's white cube environment, the audience's presence—whether moving through, staying to watch, or even interrupting the performance—became an integral element. This dynamic interaction added another layer to the narrative, blurring the lines between performers, spectators, and the artwork itself.Ultimately, the performance and video work examine how individual and collective identities evolve in the context of migration and displacement, with the audience's participation serving as a metaphor for societal interaction and influence.

‍Discrete Bodies Reunite builds upon the concepts of the earlier project, using a similar system of live broadcast performances. This piece draws inspiration from the 1983 Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) program Finding Dispersed Families, a live broadcast that aired from June 30 to November 14, reconnecting families separated by the Korean War.In this work, I employed a live broadcast setup with two simultaneous performances in different locations within the same building. Like the previous project, it involved four performers. However, this time, I collaborated with dancers instead of actors, introducing a more fluid and expressive physicality to the performances.

The dancers brought their unique movement styles to embody the themes of separation, connection, and longing, echoing the emotional essence of Finding Dispersed Families. The dual performance spaces and live broadcasts allowed for dynamic interactions, both between the performers and with the audience, continuing my exploration of how live and mediated experiences intersect in a shared space.

After the Korean War, many families in Korea were tragically separated, and the KBS national television station created a groundbreaking program to help reunite them. This program aired for nearly six months, with daily live broadcasts lasting eight to ten hours. Though I was very young at the time, I vividly remember watching it every day. The show used live broadcast technology to connect people across the country. Without mobile phones or modern communication tools, families relied on these broadcasts to identify missing relatives. Viewers could confirm whether someone on screen was their family member and then communicate through phone calls facilitated by the TV station. In many ways, it resembled an early form of the video call, using television as a medium for connection. What fascinated me about this program was its immediacy and the emotional resonance of live interactions. It captured the “liveness” of multiple performances happening across Korea, all shared through a single television screen. This inspired me to adopt a similar system for Discrete Bodies Reunite, merging the emotional depth of live broadcast with the expressive potential of performance art.This work is also presented as a two-channel video, using the same live broadcast system as in the previous project.

The performers, this time dancers, created movements inspired by various Korean media portrayals of disasters. These included footage related to the reunions of separated North and South Korean family members, the Sampoong Department Store collapse, and the Sewol ferry tragedy. I gathered imagery and strategies from these disaster-focused news programs, analyzing how they conveyed emotion and memory. I then worked with the dancers to translate these into physical gestures. For instance, specific movements were directly inspired by gestures seen in these contexts, such as a those tied to familial grief or collective mourning.

The dancers performed these movements repeatedly, embodying the weight and emotional intensity of the gestures until they physically collapsed from exhaustion. This repetition mirrored the relentless cycles of trauma and memory tied to these events, reflecting both personal and collective responses to disaster. Through this, the performance not only reenacted these gestures but also explored their impact on the body and psyche, transforming individual movements into a profound commentary on shared histories of loss and resilience.

The dancers in this piece might appear highly emotional, but that wasn't the intent. I deliberately separated my personal motivations from the dancers' movements. My focus was not on evoking emotions in the audience but on examining the repetitive physicality of women's bodies. I asked the dancers to repeat specific gestures until they were physically depleted—until their bodies were emptied of energy. This process removed any performative emotion, centering purely on the movements themselves. These gestures were rooted in Korean history and collective memory, drawing from cultural and personal references. For example, I observed similar gestures in my grandmother—when she was deeply sorrowful, she would collapse to the floor, crying. Growing up in this environment, I must have absorbed these movements unconsciously, and they became part of my own visual and emotional language.In this work, I sought to question the origins of these gestures: how they are shaped by history, cultural trauma, or familial inheritance. By isolating and repeating these movements, I aimed to strip them of overt emotion, presenting them as physical expressions of memory and history. The resulting performance is like a mirror, reflecting the layered, often unconscious ways our bodies carry the weight of the past.

The performer featured in Writing My Body is me, and because of that I always find it a bit awkward to watch this video. It was filmed shortly after I gave birth, and my body still bore the physical traces of that experience. The dance in the piece is directly derived from a parenting note I kept for 30 months, meticulously documenting everything about my baby’s routine—diaper changes, feeding times, bath schedules, what she ate, and more.This detailed record became the basis, or "score," for my dance. The movements in the performance mirror the repetitive and intimate acts of caregiving, transforming them into an embodied choreography. The piano music you hear in the piece is also connected to this parenting note—it’s an interpretation of the markings and rhythms I recorded in the note, turned into a musical composition.

This parenting note is deeply significant to my practice. It has inspired several projects, serving as a way to explore the intersections of care, labor, and the body—particularly the ways in which caregiving shapes identity and is inscribed on the physical self. Writing My Body is both a reflection of that period in my life and an exploration of how mundane, repetitive actions can become a profound source of artistic expression.

As an artist and a new mother, I had to balance the demands of earning a living with caring for my baby. This led me to develop a system of symbols and shorthand in my parenting notes, as I didn’t have time to write in full detail. These notes weren’t just for myself—they became a shared document with my baby’s caregiver. I worked in my studio for eight hours a day, and when I returned home, we would exchange information about everything that had happened during the day. Initially, these notes were practical—a way to manage and communicate daily routines. But over time, I realized they held deeper meaning. They weren’t only about my baby’s life; they also documented my labor as a mother and the labor of the caregiver. Looking back, I saw the sheer intensity of that period—waking every two hours to care for my baby, constantly working for her well-being. Some notes even revealed the dynamics of relationships: between me and my baby, and between the caregiver and my baby.

These notes became a rich source of creative exploration. They inspired a piano sonata, created in collaboration with a composer who transformed the symbols into a musical score. With a choreographer, I translated the notes into movements, which became the basis for my dance in Writing My Body. The notes were also reimagined in other mediums, such as a 30-meter-long carpet crafted by another artist, where all the symbols were woven into a physical form.This multi-disciplinary approach revealed how something as personal and practical as a parenting note could transcend its original purpose, becoming a profound exploration of care, labor, and the interwoven relationships that define those experiences.

In Human Beings Don't Spring Up Like Mushrooms, each performer selected a specific part of their body to disable during the performance. For instance, one chose to keep their eyes closed, another refrained from using their hands, and so on. The performers then engaged in a "survivor game" set on a surface made of sponge insulation. The rules were simple yet challenging: if you fell off the surface, you were "out"—a metaphorical death within the performance.

Throughout this journey, the performers faced a duality of dynamics: they had to either cooperate to navigate the shared challenges or compete, sometimes undermining each other to stay in the game. This tension between collaboration and rivalry highlighted themes of human interdependence, vulnerability, and survival.

While the performance stood as an impactful live event, I later created a film inspired by it: Com Pani. Although the title of the film differs, it builds on the same concepts, exploring the physical and emotional dimensions of this unique "survivor game." The transition from live performance to film allowed me to delve deeper into its visual and symbolic elements, giving the work a new layer of interpretation.

In both Cohabitating with Yellow Benjamin and Col ere, I incorporated sponge insulation, but this time, the performers are offering massage services to the participants. My intention was to explore the relationship between passive and active bodies. The concept of care—whether it's something you give or receive—becomes even more complex when we consider these contrasting body states, such as the passiveandtheactive.

In Caring Exercise, the audience is invited to follow along with the exercise shown in the video displayed within the exhibition space. The video features three different groups participating in this dual exercise, where each participant must work with a partner. At times, you’ll need to support your partner, while at other moments, you’ll be called upon to help them. Recently, I’ve conducted several workshops using this exercise, working with various groups such as teenagers and elderly individuals, including those withdisabilities.

Soloist was the final piece of the show, featuring migrants from South Asia, China, and Russia, all of whom are currently living in Korea. In this performance, they sing their own names, and when the lyrics mention their name, they become the soloist of the song. I incorporated the exhibition view into the piece, and we also held live performances during the openingoftheshow.

In addition to Cadenza, I would like to close my speech by reflecting on some of my earlier works.‍

Feathers on Lips explores the context of the body within a domestic setting, where themes of sexuality and violence often evoke personal memories. This piece is deeply rooted in my own experience, particularly with my baby. Through this experience, I came to realize that there are many things we haven’t been taught to discuss openly, yet they still exist. My intention with this work was to bring these unspoken truthstothesurface.

Three Breaths is again based on my parenting notes. I collaborated with another composer to create three distinct moments of ensemble, working closely with musicians. This work can also be experienced as an installation. On the table, there are speakers through which you can listen to the music, accompanied by videos, and I will show you the video. The piece consists of three movements, developed over 30 months of collaboration with parents. The first movement focuses on all aspects of my baby’s experience. The composer and I chose to use an air-based instrument, not to create melody, but to produce breath-like sounds. In the exhibition setting, you can listen to the music through a tube, while in a live performance context, the experience is layered with four distinctelements.

I will close my talk with One Night with Someone’s T-Shirt in My Bed, one of my very first works, created when I was living in Paris at the age of 20. The concept was simple, and the process itself was quite humorous. For three to four months, I always carried new t-shirts in my bag. I would meet people in cafes, parties, or French men who frequently flirted with Asian girls. I would prepare a new t-shirt, flirt with these men, and ask if I could borrow their t-shirt for the night. Once I got one, I would replace it with a new one, take it to my bed, and sleep with it. The next day, I would leave a trace by taking a portrait of myself wearing the t-shirt before returning it to its owner. The entire process involved a lot of text messages, mirroring the dynamics of flirting, and I became the leader of this "flirting act." The idea of exchange and connection through something as simple as a t-shirt has stayed with me and continues to resonate with mycurrentwork.