MAGO 마고 Performance
Directed, written, created, and visualized by C. Ryu
in collaboration with Davine Byon
Performers: Davine Byon & C. Ryu
25 Minutes
November 11, 2023
Kelly Strayhorn Theater Pittsburgh, PA
Curated by FailSafe (Angela Washko, Scott Andrew, Jesse Stiles)
Photos by Rebecca Shapass & Alente Giovanni
MAGO uses the erased Korean mythology of the goddess Mago as the anchor point to process lost histories in Ryu’s matriarchal lineage. MAGO is the ALL MOTHER 대모 of Korea and is first written in the Budoji, an ancient text of the Silla Empire, 57 BCE - 935 CE, and orally passed down through generations. Mago was erased during the last empire of Korea, the Joseon Era, replacing her story with a patriarchal origin fable. Mago was feared by those that believed a woman’s role was only daughter, wife, or an unmarked grave.
Conversing with hauntings political and psychological MAGO uses thermal and night vision technology to depict the violences of only believing with sight in tension with mythological and oral historical truth. As Ryu combats the violence of technology, war, and loss with embodied words, acknowledging her own part in colonizing herself and her family's knowledge, Davine Byon performs behind a clear plastic structure, writing a secret message to her own mother in Korean. However the message is written in cold water that is heated up in contact with her body temperature as time continues. Her message is only visible to the audience by the infrared livestream at the beginning of the piece and as the water warms, her body heat overpowers the contrast of the water temperature, rendering her words invisible even to the thermal technology.