Theresa Hak Kyung Cha as a re-mediating theoretician-artist: Apparatus (1981), Maya Deren, and the genealogy of women’s media art

Abstract

This paper reexamines Theresa Hak Kyung Cha as a theoretician-artist whose work exemplifies a post-medium condition that redefines the relationship between theory, medium, and artistic practice. Focusing on her editorial project Apparatus (1981), this study investigates how Cha absorbed and transformed 1970s apparatus theory into a trans-medial form of theorization that mediates in-between language, image, and performance. In dialogue with Maya Deren’s ‘An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film,’ this paper explores Cha’s ‘ritualistic art’ as a mode that reactivates the sensory and affective dimensions of media beyond the limits of medium specificity. Through close readings of Deren’s writing and Cha’s works, Dictée, Exilée, and White Dust from Mongolia, alongside the 2024 exhibition Tongue of Rain, this paper traces how Cha’s ritualistic and intermedial practices generate a genealogy of women’s media art that continues to challenge the boundaries of cinematic and theoretical forms.