Disease Dispersion and Invasion via Historical IOW Maritime Routes-⎽__⎽⎽__⎽--⎻⎺⎺⎻-Clara Sukyoung Jo

This lecture-performance draws from Clara Sukyoung Jo’s previous moving-image work around zoonotic outbreak and viral surveillance, feeding into new research on disease dispersion and its political entanglements embedded in the Indian Ocean World. Jo traces the origins of disease transmission via Dutch VOC maritime routes, in which ships facilitated the diffusion of both human and nonhuman cargo as vectors and viruses. This history of mercantile travel and medical histories has impacted the way the modern mind reads and distinguishes between disease and illness, and the privilege that it entails.
Clara Sukyoung Jo is a graduate of Bard College, New York and the Institut für Raumexperimente / UdK Berlin. She is currently the 2021-22 Vroman Fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and opened a solo show at the Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, Germany in 2022. Jo has exhibited and screened her work at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Institute for Contemporary Arts, London; Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof, Neue Nationalgalerie, Museum für Fotografie), Berlin; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin; Akademie der Künste Berlin and the Alliance Ethio-Française d’Addis-Abeba.