Ani, Nan DooKKeobiga Anigo Geobuk-ee Yo! (No, I am not a toad, I am a turtle!)

South Korea/China, 16mm transferred to Video, color, sound, 50min, 2012

Sharing a name, the publication and the film No, I am Not a Toad I am a Turtle! go back to a three year long artistic research project on the Korean song form of pansori.

Shot in 16mm, the film journeys through the streets of small towns and wooded mountains, along minor trade and busy shipping channels among China and South Korea. As it looks at the divide between the traditional and the modern, it is an exploration into the boundaries between humans, animals and things.

Usually images are perceived as in need of a discourse that can only be provided by text, mostly commentary or interviews. The further an image is removed from the viewer, the more references are necessary. The film No, I am Not a Toad, I am a Turtle! ensures that the images remain unreconciled, as it leaves the erotic experience of a superman with a couple of tigers in uncertainty.

If we compare the modern order of things, where everything is separate and distinct, with that of pansori, we realize that the narrator entangles and switches in a pre-modern manner between different characters. The “I” and “you” are bounced in one single entity, that overrules human, non-human, gender and age specifiers. By this pansori travels beyond the 'form/content' distinctions, and traverses in extra-linguistic, non-human, aesthetical or biological domains, and sweeps in an ensemble of heterogeneous, expressive materials. But these expressive, linguistic and non-linguistic substances are installed in the discursive chains of the song. In doing so the singer and the drummer fuse and establish new virtualities. Similar to object/subject fusions we know from higher cognitive processes, like trance and hypnosis.

The publication about the film, includes contributions by Anselm Franke, Lee Bo Hyung, Fredrik Svensk, Elke Marhöfer, Monica Fernandez, Maebelle Ruth Brines, Oh Eunja and Go Eulseang is produced by Archive Books Berlin (Continuous Cinema Serie) 2012.

Continuous Cinema is a new series of books, each of which focuses on a single film. Its aim is to reflect on art and moving image and to present the readers with a meticulous overview of a single work. Over the course of the series, several works will be presented through the most appropriate editorial choices. Each book includes a DVD of the film on which the book is based. Continuous Cinema is edited by Paolo Caffoni.

Elke Marhöfer / No, I am not a toad, I am a turtle
Berlin: March 2012
Language: English
Softcover: 128 pages including a DVD, 20,5 x 29,7, full-color
ISBN 978-3-943620-00-9
Editor: Elke Marhöfer and Paolo Caffoni
Publisher: Archive Books
Series: Continuous Cinema #1
Price: 22,00 EUR

http://www.archivebooks.org