GYOPO produced a live marathon reading enlivening internationally renowned artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s genre-bending magnum-opus Dictee (1982) into spoken word, American Sign Language, and visually accessible text staged on TV monitors. Dictee is widely taught across fields including literary studies, arts-based practice, American studies, ethnic studies, and gender and sexuality studies.

The collective reading was performed and attended by a community of Deaf and Hearing artists, academics, activists, and a few members of Cha’s family at the University of Southern California. Co-presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative, the reading commemorated the 70th anniversary of Cha’s birth and included an exhibition of a selection of Cha’s video work.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982) was born in Busan, Korea, and grew up in Korea, Hawaii, and Northern California. She received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and did postgraduate work in Paris. Her studies in literature, theory, performance art, and filmmaking influenced her diverse and prolific output as an artist. In 1982, Cha was murdered by a stranger in New York City, just a few days after the original publication of Dictee.