No body
Collection:CSM Museum & Study Collection
Date: 2019
Copywriter: Haemin Ko (Haemin Ko is a South Korean artist and animation director based in the UK. She studied Oriental Painting (BA/MFA) in South Korea)
Dimensions:
Duration: 273 seconds
4 minutes and 33 seconds
Medium: MP4
Object number: MISC.2019.100.CC
DescriptionAnimated film by Haemin Ko. Hand drawn animation featuring images of bodies and cityscapes.
The lines of memoire I wrote every day for 10 years following my arrival in the UK served as the script for this animation. This is my last 10 years of immigration experience in London, especially about the loneliness, the disconnection between the city and me. They document the emotional journey I faced from excitement at the prospect of having a new life abroad, to the frustration and loneliness I experienced and finally looking towards hopefulness. These can be seen as the main themes of the piece.
I used charcoal as the main material, as it has tendencies of creating illusions, leaving traces of each movement and serving as a tool to remind ourselves of our past, present and uncertain future. I wished to leave my presence in the film using the traces I deliberately left behind from the act of hand tracing each scene.
I tried to find the harmonies between the environment I have lived in and experienced and the thousands of line drawings that depict the emotional gestures of a human being. The animation is based on 200 carefully chosen drawings from my past work and a poem I wrote. I worked with a life model to find the gestures to connect each drawing with the poem. These life drawings were a major contribution to my film.
Once I set a theme for this film, I prioritised making music before anything else. The music ultimately acted as a story board for the film. I set the emotional tone of the film with the music first, creating the beat, spacing and connections then adding visual images on top of the music which I believed was different from the method used in other traditional animations.
The lines of memoire I wrote every day for 10 years following my arrival in the UK served as the script for this animation. This is my last 10 years of immigration experience in London, especially about the loneliness, the disconnection between the city and me. They document the emotional journey I faced from excitement at the prospect of having a new life abroad, to the frustration and loneliness I experienced and finally looking towards hopefulness. These can be seen as the main themes of the piece.
I used charcoal as the main material, as it has tendencies of creating illusions, leaving traces of each movement and serving as a tool to remind ourselves of our past, present and uncertain future. I wished to leave my presence in the film using the traces I deliberately left behind from the act of hand tracing each scene.
I tried to find the harmonies between the environment I have lived in and experienced and the thousands of line drawings that depict the emotional gestures of a human being. The animation is based on 200 carefully chosen drawings from my past work and a poem I wrote. I worked with a life model to find the gestures to connect each drawing with the poem. These life drawings were a major contribution to my film.
Once I set a theme for this film, I prioritised making music before anything else. The music ultimately acted as a story board for the film. I set the emotional tone of the film with the music first, creating the beat, spacing and connections then adding visual images on top of the music which I believed was different from the method used in other traditional animations.