Meet Jiwoo Shin | Filmmaker, visual artist, writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jiwoo Shin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jiwoo, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
From a very young age, I felt like it was too late.

I turned 24 in April this year. When I left California to Korea, because of the pandemic two years ago, I was 21; I’ve never truly ‘liked’ my birthday after the 21st one, because that meant that I was running out of time… to join the ‘27 club’ —so my death would mean something; I NEEDE it to mean something so I’d have a ‘purpose’ of ‘why’ I was born. I’ve been obsessing over my age ever since I can remember and whatever I did/do that was reckless (suicidal), it was ‘now or never’. What’s funny is that in Korea when someone is 25, people would often call you ‘half 50’. And when you’re half 50, you’re half 100. Which is absolutely true, but I find it… absolutely unnecessary.

When I turned 21 in 2019, I kept repeating this quote from a Japanese film, ‘Memories of Matsuko’ : “生まれてすみません” (umarete sumimasen) which directly translates to “I’m sorry I was born.” (It actually derives from Dazai Osamu). —I could not figure out why I was born, how I could ‘keep calm and carry on’ when life itself… was so sadistic. And there was guilt. Oh, so much guilt. And a lot of that guilt comes from being untruthful to yourself, and your beliefs. There’s also jealousy. Jealousy is so so foul, and I was foul. Well, I guess I ‘felt’ like I was a foul person (I’m trying to change the way I describe myself). Or maybe I was actually a foul person at some point, I don’t know! However, if I viewed the world as sadistic, it only indicates that I was masochistic. I chose pain and death to be my opponent, my running mate.

I was a very, very curious infant/child; adults would often tell me that I was a ‘sponge’ because I absorbed everything I (read/saw/heard/smelt/tasted:) felt. She was right: I remember every. thing.

And that’s why all along, existence was nothing but pain. Pain is an understatement, it was agonizing suicide; It’s easy to indulge in self-pity —Like Leonard (Cohen) wrote, “… It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple. (The Favorite Game, 1963).

Instant gratifications and external solutions can only get you so far. I knew this, I KNOW this, as I’ve been told all along growing up as “clever” and “mature for my age”, and that absorbed arrogance justified destructing myself following a dark path, and let’s face it; it was self harm. Being an adult means that you are supposed to be your own protector and you can’t afford to have any more slits on your wrist; and you fall in love with the illusion of freedom (of options) to harm/hurt/ kill yourself, to get closer to god, closer to death, closer to heaven (to me however, heaven wasn’t a plausible option. I was probably gonna go to hell, or be stuck in purgatory for at least 10k years). Oh my god, I just realized that I’m finally recovering from my eating disorder — I was only able to finally even ‘try to’ recover after more than 10 years of realizing that it wasn’t my fault from the beginning.

We’re all f*cking hurt and damaged and broken, however we try to cover up our mistakes by lying and being untruthful to the Self and indulging in your personal choice of self-prescribed medications to numb the mind and you eventually get addicted to your lies and the fabrication of reality and that is what f*cking kills you in the end. I kept chasing death to make sense out of the pain and guilt and THE Shame… but I guess that wasn’t very ‘clever’ or ‘mature for my age’.

It’s fear and guilt and shame and maybe rage, that tricks you to give up.

Quite frankly, probably like so many others who went through a traumatic adolescence, I wandered on the edge of the trails of life, waiting to die. I genuinely didn’t think that I’d still be alive at this point and age. When I was in Korea last year, I read my journals from just a little over 10 years ago and it reminded me of what I viewed my life as: “I’m gonna end up killing someone or myself.” That’s what I believed because it was all I ever known and felt. Just to make it clear though, I’m not a malicious person to others (at least I hope not in the way I think of), just to myself, and yeah, I was bullied pretty severely when I was 13, which I used to feel so much shame in exposing/sharing because I didn’t want people to define me or use it for myself as an excuse to justify my actions for ‘the way I am’… But secretly/truthfully I was using it as an excuse to hurt those who loved and cared for me. In these entries of thoughts it said something along the lines of “I’m fine” and “It’s all my fault” and word-by-word, “How can you love anyone including yourself when you’re ugly…… I have so much love and hate for everything and I can’t get enough and I hate everything……. I’m a bad person and I need to be punished.”

And you know who I thought was my friend/savior at that time? Tumblr. All those damned rib cage worshipping fools (me) and the freakin irrational romanticization of Effy Stonem from Skins and Dolores Haze (or should I say “Lo-lee-ta”). Thank god I’m a HOARDER of my emotions, hence I would have stayed in that hellhole that’s called my mind. I chased an illusion of perfection, and to me, they were perfect — I’ve become Effy and Lo at many stages in life… I could dress the way they did and do what they did and no one would call me ugly or fat… and/so what? I was still f*cking miserable. People telling me I was ‘too skinny’ didn’t feel as good when my soul was actually rotting. No one’s called me fat since that guy in middle school who said I wasn’t allowed to call him off on his bullshit because I was fat! (I was literally 112 pounds at that time).

I was a goddamn fool! I really thought I “knew it all”… and I rejected all those who would prove me otherwise. Basically everyone who made me tried to prove life was worth ‘living’’. Including (exclusively) my family, and friends — I could not trust that they would love me for who I actually am, a damaged, broken, shattered, ‘foul’ person— I was okay with being despised from THAT (not the foul part though), but what I did/could NOT accept was being called… stupid. My ‘cleverness’ was the ego that devoted itself into arrogance that led to violence and eventually, fear and shame and guilt. I’ve been acting so pathetic and pretending to be ignorant for 10 years of my life, and oh my god, it’s killed/killing me. It’s killing me right now, right here in the heart, it hurts right here in my meow meow! By deliberately making choices to harm myself, I was harming those who are actually willing to stay with me until the end… Hence I realize that death is not the end… as Nick Cave and Bob Dylan both cried out about.

To answer the ‘question’ — funnily enough — the desire for a glorious death was what kept me ‘going’ for the past decade. Now, I do not want to repeat the same mistakes — that’s what I decided to choose to keep me going. But to actually be truthful in a non-self-deprecating way, I had the belief that I was a good person with a good heart, and that by hurting myself, there is no actual ‘harm’ in hurting those who actually ‘love’ you and is willing to stay. And I really want to make things ‘right’, whatever that is. I guess it’s my job to figure out what ‘right’ means to me because the world (and obviously it’s not their fault) is very dedicated to viewing “things” as black or white. After I came back to Calarts, I realized that Life is what keeps me going — I know that sounds STUPID and CRAZY, but to me, Life is equivalent to Learning. As I said, I was a curious child, and that child is still who I am now, in which, to not “reject” my True Self and “identity”, means that I’m a curious person. I wanted to understand those who hurt me, because… why? Why are you doing this? Why WOULD you do this? Who hurt you? No one can answer that for you but yourself, and it wasn’t easy. You’re gonna want to die (which to most is ‘giving up’, but to some is the only Hope/Light), it will rip you apart from inside and out, you will feel like the pain is unbearable. The Pain IS/was unbearable. It was/is agonizing. It killed me countless times. But I’m still here( physically at the very least), aren’t I? I’m surviving and I need to tell myself I’m doing a good job (or something). I will choose to believe I’m worthy of love… and/because that’s the only thing/all I have left.

Hatred and regret, and the choice to neglect those feelings, will (and it did) fire back at you. I mean, not to be THAT person, but to quote Nietzche, “ …if you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you…”.

All of these thoughts became clearer to me through finally utilizing/acknowledging my brain/psyche with the help of the utmost greatest artists/teachers who really, thankfully, trusted/believed me, not only through this semester but my many stages of “failure”; I would really like to use this platform to thank John Mandel, Ernest Hardy, Irina Leimbacher, Alan Poma, Nina Menkes, Sam Durant, Gloria Galvez this year for, not to be dramatic (but to be dramatic), not giving up on me (as the ‘bad’ student)! But really, they’ve made quite a big difference in my life, and I don’t want to understand those who hurt me anymore but rather wanted to become one of them, someone who listens and won’t judge.. Obviously I’ve only mentioned my mentors since this year to not be ~‘melodramatic’~, but/because I remember every single one of my instructors/teachers/professors since the day I was born (that includes my parents and their parents and their parents… although I can’t say they were ‘good’ teachers)

And of course, Cinema. Is. My. Savior. Forever and always. This is the one True belief that I know/knew won’t get tainted nor annihilated by something other than the Self.

But in a bigger sense, it’s art; Art has saved me numerous times, and I did not appreciate nor took proper care of them/her/him— and that kills me because they means/meant everything to me, I realized I value honesty (just as my mother does) and art, the ones that truly spoke/listened to me, has never, ever lied to me. My art was/has been always truthful, if not only. What keeps me alive as of the moment, is that perhaps through my work, it can help whomever in need of acknowledging what they’re feeling isn’t irrational.

For those who got this far, I’m going to have a mid residency project/exhibition in November, and I’m finally ready to ‘be honest’ again, and I’m making a movie that I will make worth sharing…To share with whomever is willing to listen and connect. And if you don’t/can’t… sucks to suck dunnit bruv! But you will eventually. I’m also working on a play. I want to paint, I want to learn, I want to write. I want to feel everything —I guess I want to live. Perhaps not a want, but a need. And jeez, is that scary. Life/Death is my biggest fear! But…

Eradicate your fears, cease the pain, let go. —Is this year’s quote. Written by me!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Professionally, I actually don’t think I have any kind of experience that comes from the top of my head that deems “worthy” of sharing just yet. I don’t even know what it means to be a ‘professional’ artist. What going through two art school in California has taught me is that, I’m too skilled to be an “artist” and I lack the resilience and patience to be a “painter”. In critiques, I’ve always been told my paintings look like a film. In film classes they’d say my movies (I can’t call them films yet) look like paintings. I don’t have to give up one in order to pursue the other. It’s like asking a child if you love your mother or father more.

As I mentioned, I was ready to die because I wanted to live so badly. Well, I wanted to live a “perfect” life or it would not count A lot of Darren Aronofsky’s characters exterminate themselves by chasing that illusion of perfection. The perfect life,… or the perfect death?

To be born means that you’re forced to be in a relationship with yourself. Why didn’t anyone tell me this? There needs to be a better way than to carefully disguise that fact into simply telling others to “love yourself:)”. I never understood what that meant, until I had to learn the hard way through, quite literally, my blood and flesh and soul. And dying over and over. I still have F, A, and T, carved just below the upper vein on my left wrist. I genuinely thought it’d be gone by now if I just left it be. I sought out pain and danger and I received. It was fun in the moment but the duration of the wickedness of the booze starts wearing off quicker and quicker until you are forced to face your ugliest Self. And the cycle continues. I can’t create until I feel something… Now I can feel things a bit too clearly and I’m ready to move on from the past and share and connect.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would literally take them to Gallery Night at Calarts… whoever I connected through the art we experienced through these drunken nights will understand.

The chances of seeing the ‘superficial-ness/mess’ of ‘modern’ ‘contemporary’ art are very low (from first hand experience!).

]Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
All I can as of now for sure is that family and friends (who are your ‘chosen family’) which means love, which means the world to me.

I do want to especially thank John, who basically called me out on my bullshit the first day of critique, and I really needed to hear that — but only because what my art was saying was different from what was coming out of my mouth to describe it. Of course, there’s much more that what I can fathom to describe only in this paragraph, but I can confidently say that his words has saved me… beyond words! —(And from myself). John listened, or rather, taught me to trust that he is willing to listen, even when I wasn’t ready to speak. These very brief, but, dense interactions inspired me to write again, to understand myself, and ask “Who hurt you?”; How many people have I neglected who were willing to understand, to care, because they’ve faced death stabbing through their eye socket every moment of their sober mind? The arrogance baffles me; Because I was drowning in my fears, guilt, and shame… I couldn’t see above the water. The sea is awfully deep and the sky too high. I forgot/unlearned how to swim just for the slightest chance that I miraculously got thrown into the water without my knowledge and this particular death would have meant ‘something’ because at least they could say it was an accident.

I just really think there should be some kind of system (or even propaganda) that money, power, glory isn’t what Life is about. That’s what Hubert Shelby Jr. has been saying all along… especially in ‘Requiem for a Dream’. It’s a powerful illusion but it’s not The Dream. You may think that the Vision is clear, that the crack in the darkness is that Light ( =/= Vision), but… are your intentions clean? Who are with you to walk alongside you through your vulnerability… are their intentions clean?

There is no shame in feeling pain. Everyone feels shame. Everyone feels pain.
To cut off those feelings doesn’t make you a god, it merely makes you lesser than what you actually are.

Oh, and my 1 year old dog Elio! He is the definition of Love to me. And he would never give up on me. Just like my mother and father. I know that now.

Instagram: @1stpsychogf @6abydiabla @rivvrphoenix

Other: jiwooshin@alum.calarts.edu