Beyond Pomp & Circumstance to the Problems of our Time
Student Works
Katniss
This essay is a short musing about how and why I went from a fan of dystopian novels to a main character in a dystopia (so I thought anyways) and back to a fan again.
Fiction of The Wired: Loneliness and the Limits of the Internet
The general idea is an interrogation of interpersonal and professional life post-grad /currently COVID and more specifically who we are and who we are capable of being as presented through the internet. I’m going to work particularly with the 1998 anime Serial Experiments Lain and comparing its alternative reality The Wire with the early internet on which it was originally based as well as the internet of today. The written text essay will serve as a basis for the script of the video essay and is meant to be read separately.
(The) Rest Didn’t Come
During lockdown, I’ve expressed an increased interest in family history. Discussing with my elders, I am coming to understand how my parents and grandparents grew up and became themselves, including the ways their parents and their worlds met and failed to meet their spiritual and emotional needs, and the expanses and limits to their imaginations. On a recent phone call, my grandmother chronicled the uncles and aunts who stayed in the Old World: "the rest didn’t come." I combined clips from this conversation with music I performed on cello, drum set, and bass guitar.
We the (Black) People
In a historic moment demanding dismantling the existing system to bring about something better for everyone, one of the things that must be addressed is the way that we discuss history. Black history is American history just as Black people are equally American. So, I am looking to the often disregarded and misunderstood history of Black people in America in conversations with experts and friends as a way to examine the present and illuminate the future. The opening episode seeks to center enslaved people in the story of their own emancipation, citizenship, and right to vote. Emancipation would not have been the end of the Civil War without the work of hundreds of thousands of slaves who fled plantations throughout the war and declared themselves free. This is the story of the Black people who freed themselves, changed the course of the Civil War, and forced Lincoln to proclaim emancipation. More detailed notes about this episode as well as the next episodes of We the (Black) People can be found at wetheblackpeople.captivate.fm .
PRIMAL: A MONOLOGUE FOR OUR TIMES
This is "PRIMAL": A MONOLOGUE FOR OUR TIMES. It was originally written as part of a prompt to write a play a day for 5 days. PRIMAL was written specifically for a Zoom environment, and borrows heavily from Neo-Futurist style of theater (Neo-Futurism, invented by Greg Allen and popularized by the Neo-Futurists with the show Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind and its successor The Infinite Wrench, is theater performed and set in the current moment – the performer is always telling the truth, and always playing themselves). This performance of PRIMAL was recorded on July 31, 2020, and was directed by Sophie Sam as part of a Monologue Festival through the National Theater Institute's Theatermakers Summer Intensive. PRIMAL is available to be performed for free: the script can be downloaded on my website ( kenjirolee.com ).
To The Leadership
“To The Leadership" was made in response to a summer’s long dialogue between myself and the museum in an attempt to enact change. While efforts and support were present, the stifling collar of bureaucracy, higher ups, and a responsibility to the invisible donor left a hollow shell of what was at first filled with radical imagination and change. Taking our original manifesto and blacking out the radical, “To The Leadership” provides a catch-all that all museums can use as a statement of generalized support without tangible action. “To The Leadership” hints at something more, but bars the viewer from ever knowing what once was, forcing the viewer to use their own labor and imagination to fill in the gaps of what could be.
Core Values
A page-long epic poem relating to the four-year experience in the Core at UChicago.
Little Spaces to Go
The themes for this piece are the study of small spaces—confined spaces, how expansion can nevertheless be implied by/fitted into small spaces—and the study of developing worldviews (hence the imagery of the infant child studying the mobile) to which I want to add political poetics.
Postcards from Quarantine (A Spring 2020 Diary Comic)
A serial-based comic structured around different journal entries I wrote during COVID, to be released one installment (1-2 pages) at a time.
Rush Hour, 2020: Internet Traffic Trends
This short video incorporates images of the sky, nature, and other pleasant scenes overlaid with a disturbing warehouse on fire, glitching and ebbing in and out from view. The lullaby tune in the background plays but is increasingly interrupted with harsh clicking sounds. As the images on the screen are manipulated and moved about with a cursor, a list of popular internet searches (according to Google Trends data from January through November 2020) in America scrolls onscreen. This video was meant to elicit some of the discomfort that 2020 has brought to our attention, if it was not there before. The internet has been a safe space for many to gather resources, information, and inspiration throughout quarantine, but also has been the source of stress and uncertainty. By manipulating this digital environment, I aim to mimic the juxtaposition of emotions that I often feel when scrolling through the news or social media—fear of uncertainty along with a relief that I am gradually becoming more informed.
Run
The piece is called "Run" and it consists of a song I wrote and composed plus an accompanying video. Since I can't perform this year live-in-person, I thought it would be fun to create a silly/experimental 'visual performance' to go with my music. Both the song and video are meant to evoke the rapid twists and turns of 2020, particularly the paranoia and unexpected nature of the year.