Proposition 1: Hands contains a single-channel video and a handout, separately entitled Warming Hand Exercise that introduces each position of hand gestures (exercises) described in the video. This is a second video that is a part of Kang’s long-term research-creation on relational tensions and internal exchanges between anxiety, the uncertainty of the future and futuristic suggestions in light of overcoming the anxious-self since the first project entitled Intolerance of Uncertainty. This project borrows and utilizes a Korean children’s game called Make Electricity on Hands yet converts its underlying conception and arisen sensation from the act of the game into a form of massage therapy used for mental health and vice versa. By doing so, this work attempts to reveal the warm heart shared between two people interacting through this therapeutic game rather than to analyze anxiety and relieve it within the studies.

It de-rationalizes the universal notion about psychiatric treatment mostly developed from the western perspective; it addresses the audience and participants to the abstract realm of “therapy” and accept it as a temporary yet heart-warming moment. Thus, each instruction sentence in the video functions to be propositional means that poetically imagine momentary relief from anxiety. The audiences can pair up, perform each of the massage steps guided by the booklet, and feel the warmth emanating from one another. 

Ivetta Sunyoung Kang is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and writer currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal and Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. She studied film directing in South Korea and has obtained her MFA in Film Production at Concordia University in Canada. Her practice is concerned with cinematic thinking, video installations, text, and performative/participatory work that propose future-oriented and reparative perception and movement. By doing so, her work attempts to ease mental disorders exacerbated by the dominant life model in excessive urbanism and post-colonialism. She examines the common patterns of everyday objects, human behaviours, and relationships with the surroundings until their subversions in social contexts and usages become poetically therapeutic. She has internationally presented her work at film festivals and galleries, including Jeon-Ju International Film Festival, Leonard Bina Ellen Gallery, M.A.I, Arlington Arts Center, Xpace Cultural Center and etc. In 2016, She was shortlisted for the Simon Blais Award in Canada.