Precarious Times and Disidentification: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Unfinished Film White Dust from Mongolia
Precarious Times and Disidentification: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's unfinished film White Dust from Mongolia
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This essay examines Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s unfinished film White Dust from Mongolia (1980) as material that contextualizes her multilingual text Dictée (1982). White Dust represents a significant transition in Cha’s aesthetic practice and her embodiment of Asian American subjectivity. Filmed during her three-month visit to Korea, the black-and-white footage depicts rooftops, city streets, a forest, a traditional market, a railway station, and an amusement park. The film articulates Cha’s shifting relation to her motherland, where Asianness emerges in a liminal space, evoking both collective affective lives and the impossibility of fully returning to a mother’s place. Rather than aligning with racialized visual regimes, Cha explores amorphous forms of language, decaying senses, and residues of signification. The film introduces multiplicity into Asianness and illuminates Cha’s movement from a given name to a self-practice of the name, transforming "whom she is seen as" into "who she becomes."
Abstract
This essay examines Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s unfinished film White Dust from Mongolia (1980) as material that contextualizes her multilingual text Dictée (1982). White Dust represents a significant transition in Cha’s aesthetic practice and her embodiment of Asian American subjectivity. Filmed during her three-month visit to Korea, the black-and-white footage depicts rooftops, city streets, a forest, a traditional market, a railway station, and an amusement park. The film articulates Cha’s shifting relation to her motherland, where Asianness emerges in a liminal space, evoking both collective affective lives and the impossibility of fully returning to a mother’s place. Rather than aligning with racialized visual regimes, Cha explores amorphous forms of language, decaying senses, and residues of signification. The film introduces multiplicity into Asianness and illuminates Cha’s movement from a given name to a self-practice of the name, transforming "whom she is seen as" into "who she becomes."