Tongues of Fire

tongues of fire
single-channel video projection, 6 mirrors, 6 mins, with sound, dried desert branches, lavender, various flowers and herbs
17 ft x 9.6 ft (projection), 48 x 64.5 inches (mirrors)
installation view at Ballroom Marfa, TX, 2023

tongues of fire
2022-23,
1 min 9 seconds excerpt, full length 6:00 mins, with sound

close-up detail

tongues of fire
single-channel (3 scroll) video, with sound, mirrors
outdoor night video installation, on view after gallery hours

tongues of fire
installation view, 2023

Tongues of Fire
commissioned by Ballroom Marfa, 2022-23
6:00 mins, with sound, English, Spanish, Korean

In this moving image poem that meditates on language as a living body and spirit, Chun weaves together her video performance in the night desert, with footage filmed at the Blackwell School in Marfa, TX. The film draws from the school's haunting linguistic history, where a forced burial ceremony of non-English language(s) took place in 1959. Decades later, Blackwell's former youths gathered to collectively unbury their language in a symbolic ceremony; Tongues of Fire is inspired by their unearthing. The non-narrative film speaks through polyphony: multilingual fragments, lyrical soundscapes, and disrupted landscapes. Chun destabilizes the cinematic tropes of the Western and the American iconographies of the desert by fragmenting and unfixing the landscape: instead, making offerings onto the night desertscape with light, moving image projections, water, and mirror. Tongues of Fire invites alternate poetic trajectories for language(s) and their diasporas.

The film speaks inside / outside -- the indoor installation is on view during gallery hours / the outdoor installation is on view after gallery hours, until 11pm.
On view May 24 - September 16, 2023

*The title is an homage to and quote from Gloria E.Anzaldúa, from her letter/essay, Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers, 1980