Chang Soojin
37 mins
Soojin Chang’s BXBY is a year-long performance that merges forms of documentary and ritual practice, following Chang as a hybrid, shape-shifting being attempting reproduction. Drawing from chimeric figures within the creation stories of the British Isles and the diasporic cultures of Chang and her collaborators, Chang positions her own hybrid body – part animal, part woman, part alien – as a site of technological interaction. Sampling scientific methods such as IVF, biohacking, and voluntary self-touch, BXBY addresses the legacy of colonial science to open up other possibilities found in queer, interspecies kinship. BXBY is intended to open discussion on sacrifice, animality, objecthood and in/visibility; looking in particular to animist techniques of embodying and remembering.
Soojin Chang (b. 1991, unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone) is a Korean non-binary performance artist, filmmaker, and researcher who lives in Glasgow and works internationally. Their rituals experiment with the metaphysics and ethics of hybrid ontologies. Using their body as technology to transmute in/visibility, Chang’s practice reflects on colonial inheritance and trans-species reliances.
BXBY (2022) by Soojin Chang was commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022: a collaboration between Jerwood Arts and Film and Video Umbrella in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery.
Collaborators: Jade O’Belle, Anika Ahuja, Choulay Mech, Aditya Surya Taruna a.k.a Kasimyn