Seeds of Control
Seeds of Control is a three channel video work centering around the themes of diaspora, Korean history, and ecology. The piece is about how landscapes and nature are clearly shaped through politics. In this specific context I explore how trees and forests are used as political instruments to oppress marginalized peoples in Korea throughout different power structures whilst investigating its cyclical form of hierarchical power. When one group leaves power and another enters, often the same tactics are used again and again. The ruling power's decision on how to manage forests and nature reflects one of these tactics.
Seeds of Control from Jonathan Lee on Vimeo.
Artist Bio:
I investigate themes of family, heritage, and god through audiovisual language in video art and film.
The goal of my work is to understand how the divine and spiritual are entrenched in the personal. I seek to create new cinematic images that continue in the line of filmmakers like Andrey Tarkovsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Eduardo Williams, informed by my own personal history coming from an immigrant family from Korea to Argentina and eventually to the US. These cross cultural threads are integral parts in my work, represented through language, landscapes, and folk tales which I draw from as source material.