Rusty Odyssey - I 

Experimental Documentary Film / 14’25” / 2020

Rusty Odyssey depicts the colonial faces of three copper coins (VOC Duit, Japanese Sen, and Euro coin) tracing their guilty chronicle from the 18th century till the present day in the Netherlands, Japan, and Korea.
Transcending time and territories, the film cuts the temporal dimension of the geographies where the coins were born and follows the transformation of the monetary material as vitalized by capital. Rusty Odyssey reveals the colonial phantom behind the faces of the coins through the sites in which history is staged. The fluctuating heartbeat of copper—an inheritor of colonial capitalism—still lives on.


<Rusty Odyssey>는 18세기부터 현재까지의 네덜란드, 일본, 한국으로 이어지는 세 동(銅) 동전 (동인도무역회사의 Duit, 일본의 센, 유로 코인)의 죄악의 연대기를 추적하며 그들의 식민 초상을 그려낸다. 필름은 시공을 초월하며 동(銅) 동전이 태어난 공간의 시간적 단면을 조명하고, 자본에 의해 살아 숨쉬는 물질의 변이를 쫓는다. <Rusty Odyssey>는 왜곡된 역사의 장소들을 통해 그의 이면에 감춰진 식민 유령의 민낯을 밝혀내고자 한다. 격동하는 동(銅)의 심장 소리는 식민 자본주의의 후계자로서, 오늘 날까지 울려 퍼진다.




Related Links:
(Research Paper) Rusty Odyssey: The colonial trajectory of copper across the Atlantic ︎
(Project) Rusty Odyssey - II ︎
(Featured Link) Research program “Matter” by Het Nieuwe Instituut ︎

Directed, Produced, Researched, Written, Edited, and Visual Design by: Yeon Sung
Camera: Yeon Yoon, Yeon Sung
3D Modeling Advisor: Jeongsik Kim
Sound Design:  Jack Bardwell
Exhibition Production Design: Heejung (Kimmy) Kim
Project Advisors: Ruber Pater, Agata Jaworska, Michel Hoogervorst, Jan Robert Leegte
Photo: Yeon Yoon, Daniela Roșca, Céline Hurka








Solo-Exhibition “Rusty Odyssey,” Cyart Gallery, Seoul, 14-28 January 2020






Graduation Show at The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 04-11 July 2019