Artists Space

Cinema for Dreamers:
 Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Kidlat Tahimik

Saturday, November 21
7:30pm
Spectacle Theater
124 S. 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249
Tickets available here

Presented in collaboration with Spectacle Theater, this special screening is in conjunction with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings, on view at Artists Space through November 21.

A closing event for Multiple Offerings, this program pairs rare audio recordings by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha with Kidlat Tahimik’s 1977 feature film Perfumed Nightmare. Tahimik stars as a Filipino jeepney driver who dreams of emigrating to America to become an astronaut.

Drawing inspiration from films past and present from around the world, as well as ideas about cinema and its possibilities, Cha explored the often evolving and fluid relationship between a film, its maker, and its audience. During her three years as a student employee at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, she had nightly access to an extensive collection of international and experimental cinema. After moving from San Francisco to New York in 1980, she continued to frequent cinemas, drawing both pleasure and insight from the work of other filmmakers while refining her own practice through experiments with chance operations, permutations, fades, and dissolves. In a 1981 letter to theorist and scholar Bertrand Augst, Cha recalled seeing Perfumed Nightmare at Bleecker Street Cinema, an influential art-house venue and gathering place for filmmakers and cinephiles that closed in the early 1990s.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Monologue, 1977, 1:07 min
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard, 1978, 7:42 min
Kidlat Tahimik, Perfumed Nightmare, 1977, 95 min
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Pause Still, 1979, 6:59 min

Black-and-white photograph of an empty movie theatre.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard (Ailleurs), 1978. Documentation of performance at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: James H. Cha. [Black-and-white photograph of an empty movie theatre.]

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (b. 1951, Busan, South Korea; d. 1982, New York City) emigrated to the United States in 1962, settling first in Hawaii and then moving to San Francisco in 1964. The Bay Area remained Cha's home for most of her life. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received four undergraduate and graduate degrees in comparative literature and art. In 1980, Cha moved to New York City, where she worked as an editor and writer for Tanam Press, producing two important works: Dictée, a book-form collage of poetry, found text, and images; and Apparatus, an anthology of writings on the film apparatus. In 1982, Cha was awarded an artist's residence at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and was preparing for an upcoming exhibition at Artists Space, New York City. Cha’s work has been included in recent exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale: This Too, Is a Map (2023), Seoul Museum of Art; Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept, Whitney Museum, New York City; and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Audience Distant Relative, Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2022). In 1990, BAMPFA organized the artist’s first solo exhibition as part of its MATRIX series of contemporary art, followed by her first retrospective in 2001 (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Dream of the Audience). The exhibition traveled to seven venues, including University of California, Irvine; Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Henry Art Gallery at University of Washington, Seattle; Ssamzie Space, Seoul; Generali Foundation, Vienna; and Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona. In 1992, Cha’s family donated the entirety of her artworks and archives to BAMPFA, where they form the cornerstone of the museum’s Conceptual Art Study Center and continue to be accessible to researchers today.

Lead exhibition support at Artists Space is provided by Arison Art Foundation and Teiger Foundation.

The exhibition is made possible through lead support from Teiger Foundation. Major support is provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Korea Foundation, the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund, and the R.J. Bertero Family Fund. Additional support is provided by E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Jay DeFeo Foundation, Alexandra Bowes, Stephen Cheng, Miyoung Lee, and Robin Wright.

Support for Artists Space exhibitions and programs is provided by Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, The Keith Haring Foundation, I.A. O'Shaughnessy Foundation, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The David Rockefeller Fund, and the Friends of Artists Space.

    Black-and-white photograph of a figure standing in front of a projected image of a movie theatre.
    Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Other Things Seen, Other Things Heard (Ailleurs), 1978. Documentation of performance at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo: James H. Cha. [Black-and-white photograph of a figure standing in front of a projected image of a movie theatre.]