MAGO 마고 Performance
Directed, written, created, and visualized by Caroline Yoo
in collaboration with Davine Byon
Performers: Davine Byon & Caroline Yoo
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 Yoo’s matriarchal lineage. 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 oral historical truth. As Yoo 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.