John Seung-Hwan Lee

International Exercise is a performance video in rejection to nationalism and the individual identities bound to nationalist sentiments. The face is painted with mixed symbols in Korean and American flag. The color white, often representing “innocence and purity” is diverted to black, accentuating bipolar American racial politics. Kookmin Chejo was the national recreational exercise distributed to public schools of South Korea by Park Junghee regime in 1977. As Kookmin Chejo is being performed in burlesque movement sourced to hip-hop for 99 mins, sweat dissolves and erases the facial symbols. The original soundtrack to the exercise is also disrupted by asynchronous percussion often featured in the breaks of Soul and Funk music. In return to the body as the material basis and individual contour, questions of politics and identities concerning nationality are raised.