Facilitated by members of the Han Group, “Re-Enacting Han” is an interactive exploration of han: an untranslatable form of Korean embodiment, passed down intergenerationally. This workshop invites the participants into how the Han Group uses performance to make han visible.

Han Group is a collective of multidisciplinary femme artists of the Korean diaspora using performance as a vehicle for reenactment, ritual, and catharsis. Together, they share strategies for embodiment and revolution in a hegemonic world. Participants will get a window into Han Group’s rhizomatic collaboration as well as their individual performance practices through this workshop.

The “Re-Enacting Han” workshop will begin with an opening invocation that brings us into the space of “han.” Through a series of interactive performance experiments, the Han Group will invite the participants into how they use performance to process, heal and connect. The participants will experience how the artists use performance strategies to make space for future and ancestral selves. Artists will introduce performance vocabularies and tools inspired by Korean shamanism, healing practices, collaborative writing, and participatory performance. The workshop will close with a conversation around how the artists draw from indigenous Korean spiritual and artistic practices to create contemporary rituals that reflect their diasporic experiences. How can we forge empowering narratives through re-enacting history in the contemporary diasporic context?

This workshop unpacks the multidimensional relationship between han, ritual, and diaspora through the lens of performance: both the day-to-day performances the artists engage in for survival, as well as performance in the context of art.