Project Update

 

I will take my sabbatical in Fall 2023 to produce a documentary in Seoul, South Korea. 

 

"Right to Forget and Duty to Remember" is about plastic recycling. 

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‘Trash' is the most precise measure of what human beings are in this society. Trash is classified as one of the most personal records of one's private life that one does not want to remember and, at the same time, a surplus that no one needs to remember. Therefore, the waste disposal system managed by the government is a service that anonymizes the emitter's 'externalized memory' and processes it inconspicuously so that everyday oblivion is repeatedly accomplished. Landfills and wastewater treatment plants are devices that activate collective amnesia and cessation of thought. Through this, the amnesia of the public becomes chronic, and it is possible to immerse in consumerist daily life easily. The waste problem is an ongoing catastrophe, but we take it incredibly complacent. (Im, Tae-Hoon, "Trash Disposal Techniques, Cultural Devices of Collective Amnesia and Mental Manipulation" Professor Newspaper 2022-09-14)

 

The pandemic has given us the indulgence of unlimited use of single-use waste for public health. Humanity will eventually overcome the pandemic, but the disposable masks and plastic containers thrown into our oblivion will leave a genetic mark on our minds and habits, which will come back to us later with a greater calamity. While individuals and societies focus only on the air, water, and food that enter our bodies, we forget that the things we emit are destroying individuals and society into an irreversible state.

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This documentary attempts to observe the problem of garbage not from a materialist point of view but as a discourse of mind and memory, relationship, and future. In particular, by focusing on recycling waste, the goal is to question and update the audience's current perception, which is merely an enlightening discourse on the economic benefits of circulating resources and the conservation of ecosystems.