Lecture & Talk: “Dolls, Dreams, and Drives: Sexual Subjectivity in the Films of Kim Kyung-Mook”

Thu 09 Jul 2015, 7 pm
Nha San Collective

From Nha San Collective and Queer Forever:

Queer Forever and Nhà Sàn Collective are excited to invite you to a lecture and talk with Prof. Earl Jackson, Jr.:

“Dolls, Dreams, and Drives:
Sexual Subjectivity in the Films of Kim Kyung-Mook.”

Earl Jackson, Jr.
National Chiao Tung University
Trans-Asian Screen Cultures Institute

Any description of the films of Kim Kyung-Mook must be immediately qualified. His films emanate from an unapologetically “gay” perspective, yet their significance extends beyond an identity politics. One of recurrent motifs in his films involve the attempt of a young gay man to find sexual and emotional fulfillment from an older married man only partially available. Yet the films are neither a lament nor a victimology. Instead, these situations contribute to a more extensive understanding of a sexual scenario as a structural disequilibrium. Furthermore, desire is not an urge to be quelled either by physiological satisfaction or the closure of a psychological narrative; instead, desire remains an open question – destabilizing in its constitutive effects and affects.

This paper will examine Kim’s films to draw out the inscription of sexual subjectivity and the self-constitution of the subject as object of the other’s desire. Although the primary focus is on male-male sexuality outside of an identity politics, the struggles for recognition within a given pairing as well as within a subject’s self-understanding illustrate viscerally that sexuality itself is inherently political – here in its adjudication of submission, dominance, accommodation and resistance.

Communication partner: Hanoi Grapevine

Nhà Sàn COLLECTIVE is not a museum, a gallery or an international culture institute where completed work are presented by established artists. Just like Nhà Sàn Studio before, it is a working studio to nurture where artists can create, collaborate, be given advices, critiques, and have chances to meet with international artists, curators. Works that are presented at open studio every month could be finished or not, but the process of developing idea and working to improve the quality of the art work for local artists is what Nhà Sàn COLLECTIVE focus on.

If you are interest and curious about experimental art, and want to have conversation with the working artists, please visit

Nha San COLLECTIVE 2nd floor, 24 Ly Quoc Su, Hanoi Website: www.nhasanstudio.org Email: [email protected]