How to Drive Home, 2025
Performance: domestic objects, printed map, single channel video (1hour), interview audio, improv music, electric guitar, Zhong ruan, Saeng Hwang, Piri, Taepyoungso, Gong.
Approximately 1 hour.
Created by Woohee Cho
Commissioned by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) MOHN grant
Organized by curator-at-large Bryan Barcena, Irina Gusin
Performers: Woohee Cho, Kai-luen Liang, gamin, Coffee Kang
Movement consultant: Mao
Interviewee: Jisoo Chung, jinseok choi
For this performance, Cho drove with two former roommates to their previous residences in Los Angeles, recording conversations about immigration, housing, and belonging. Developed with musicians Kai-Luen Liang and gamin, these recordings were transformed into a musical score performed with traditional Korean instruments such as 피리, 생황, 태평소. During the performance, Cho live-translates the recordings and activates domestic objects left behind by former roommates as sound-making devices, creating a portrait of diasporic life shaped by precarity, memory, and home-making. The work was performed at Koreatown Plaza, a landmark gathering place for Korean immigrants in Los Angeles since 1988, situating these personal narratives within a broader history of migration and community formation.
Photo by Gina Clyne