Intervals, 2021-22
Sonic essay in audiovisual installation with 6-channel audio and 2-channel floor standing video projections with glass sheet, a white marble stone sulpture (800x600)
Dimensions variable. Duration: 43 mins

Installation view at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2021.

In the immersive 6-channel sound and video installation Intervals, Yujin Jung invites us to sit down together and join a 43-minute journey exploring the theoretical and poetic aspects of sound across different sonic worlds.

The starting point is the sound of her grandmother's burial garment being produced. We hear a group of women speaking about their lives and the labour involved in making the hemp burial garment sambe. Traditional Korean spiritual craft practices are social technologies: repeated cultural practices anchored in lives and places. These practices are slowly dying out in present-day Korea.

Jung recorded the production process, from sowing hemp seeds to harvesting, making the hemp into threads, and finally weaving the garment. It is believed that if you keep this burial cloth while still alive, you will have a long life and die in peace. In this sense, the burial garment becomes a spiritual travel technology guiding the last journey from life to death. Jung made a marble sculpture of wings and created CGI animation to signify this final journey.

Interlaced with the women's voices, we are placed in two futuristic sound labs at DTU. In the reverberation chamber, Jung gives sound a physical presence, where echoes travel indefinitely. In the anechoic chamber, complete quiet surrounds us as the room absorbs all sound. In supersonic travel, speed detaches sound from movement and from the body, as if the body loses its shadow. Through interweaving spatial acoustics and virtual imagery built upon the oscillating physical world, Jung reflects on memory, travel, and time.

In Intervals, the soundscape moves between temporalities and spaces, between the slowness of oral and craft traditions and the hyper-acceleration of a capitalist future. Jung asks us to sit together as bodies and listen, locating ourselves within what we care about in the present.

Curation and exhibition text by Vermilion Sands.

Left: Film still from projected film. Right: Installation view at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2021.

Installation view, Prologue: The Wish, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2021. Text digitally overlaid for legibility in documentation.

Detail views of the installation showing a marble sculpture and a glass sheet with applied holographic film.

From a marble sculpture to 3D scanning and CGI animation
The work explores speculative narration through material translation. Drawing on sambe, a Korean burial garment perceived as a spiritual travel technology guiding the passage from life to death, I carved marble into the form of an aeroplane wing and translated it into a 3D scan. In collaboration with Gabriel Bott, I developed CGI animations that figure this final journey as a mediated passage across material, temporal, and ontological thresholds.

Film stills from projected film.

Installation view of Afgang 21, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, photographed by Lou Mouw.

Epilogue text behind the screen, photographed by David Stjernholm.

Video documentation of the installation view; the video continues through the two overlapping screens.

Installation view at CANTINA, Aarhus, 2022. Photographed by Luna Lund Jensen.
Live sound-video performance in connection with Intervals, CANTINA

MFA essay (PDF):
Intervals; sonic essay

Camera assistant: Ellis Achong Karker
3D scan & CGI animation: Gabriel Bott Anderstedt
Colour grading: Fabian Wigren
Sound recording, designing, mixing: Yujin Jung
Video editing: Yujin Jung
Script advisor: Efren Fernandez Grande
Film locations: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet

Thanks to: The Weavers (Bok-In, Bun-Son, Geum-Nam, Jeom-Rye, Ok-Bun, Pil-Ja, Seon-Hwa, Son-Ja, Sun-Hee), Angela Melitopoulos, Ellis Achong Karker, Efren Fernandez Grande, Fabian Wigren, Franco Turchi, Gabriel Bott Anderstedt, George Koutsouris, Isabella Solar Villaseca, Jane Jin Kaisen, Jenny Gräf Sheppard, Julia Widdig, Luna Scales, Maria Lepistö, Stephen William McEvoy, Stina Marie Hasse Jorgensen, Yumin Jung.

Special thanks to my mum and grandmother.