Translation_EN

Thank you sincerely for attending this exhibition, "Space, Story, Transportation." 

As the title suggests, this exhibit showcases the works of five contemporary Korean artists, all revolving around the themes of space, story, and transportation.

In our modern society, people, information, and capital move incessantly on a global scale. We find ourselves both narrating our own stories and consuming the narratives of others.

Now, having overcome the pandemic that restricted our movements and interactions, we find ourselves hurriedly venturing into new places, almost as if trying to reclaim lost time. We are constantly broadcasting words and images through social networks. These activities bring vitality to our lives, but the relentless whirl of information can also wear us down.

In this exhibition, the artists express their thoughts on space, story, and transportation through various forms of art, such as photography, video, and installations. They draw inspiration from diverse sources, be it ancient oral traditions, the story of a Japanese woman who migrated to the US, or reflections on what is lost amidst urban development.

We encourage you to connect with the energy, inquiries, and messages these artists convey. They hail from our neighboring country, Korea, a nation with many similarities to, and differences from, Japan.

Organizer: Minami Goto

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Photography is allowed in this exhibition.
Please share your thoughts/comments on various social media platforms using the hashtag #sst_kyoto.

In "Floating Stories," the author reflects on the numerous pitch sessions that have occurred on streets where filmmakers congregate, such as Hollywood in the United States, Daiei-dori in Japan, and Chungmu-ro in South Korea. Consider the fate of stories that failed to navigate the logic of capitalism. Perhaps those unrealized narratives are still floating around somewhere. In this exhibition, two works are exhibited; one from Daiei-dori in Kyoto and the other from Chumgmu-ro in South Korea.

"#1. Chicken Soup" (Installation - Printed on T-Shirt, Tote bag)
"#2. Book" (Installation - Printed on Postcard)

This  is a reinterpretation of the early oral tradition of storytelling. 

In this series, Han divides and prints a short fairytale-like story on various moving supports such as T-shirts, bags, and postcards. Han has also established a rule that prevents anyone from owning the entire story. Consequently, completing the segmented story, as it moves with its support, relies on the audience's memory. Much like the way old tales spread through oral traditions, undergoing distortions and recreations, it is encouraged for the audience to actively participate in the process of recreating the story.

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"#2. Book" is a form of participatory art. 

As you take the postcards home, fragments of the story disperse, almost as if you're experiencing the process of story recreation from ancient oral traditions in a unique way.

The work shifts from the perspective of the main character, who becomes Mrs. Killeen in Yoshiko (Part 1), to that of the artist, who is an observer and narrator (Part 2). It follows the experiences and memories of war and the individual, immigration and trauma, isolation and prejudice, illness and family, and death and homing. Choosing the grammar of documentary, the "facts" on Part 1 drift in and out of existence in Mrs. Killeen's daily routine at the mall. 

This exhibition presents a portion of Part 1 reconstructed as four images: Yoshiko (a photograph of Yoshiko's past), Mrs. Killeen (a portrait of Mrs. Killeen), Days of Our Lives (Mrs. Killeen and Yoshiko's room), and The Oath (The Boston Globe Tuesday, July 19th, 1960) that opens up the beginning of a photo-novel. 

The journey to look for the deceased Yoshiko’s hometown of Okinawa as Part 2 is ongoing.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

A series of events (The Oath) in which an eccentric old lady (Mrs. Killeen), who is called ‘the Mall Queen’, and her story (Yoshiko), which has been floating around as a lie, are proved to be a record of facts (Days of Our Lives). 

It shifts the viewer's perspective dramatically to the confrontation between the visible photograph and the invisible story. The term "photo-novel" refers to a phenomenon in which the one's actual experiences and memories are transformed into a third memory through the artist's intervention, which reflects the artist's intention to redefine the concept of "facts as they are" in documentary photography.

8th dance film in Poong Jung.Gak (風精.刻) series presents a landscape of Cheongpa (靑坡)-dong, or "blue hill" neighborhood. Located on the hill from which one could get an entire view of Seoul Station-the destination and the departure point of the City of Seoul, this neighborhood is left with the traces of Jeoksangaok, or former Japanese villages during the colonial era, the 600-year-old maidenhair tree, and the 42 steps of a stairway built during the Korean War, all of which testifies to the history of their time. 
Additionally, the neighborhood is crowded with residential buildings in various architectural styles, including urban hanok, Western-style residential buildings for commoners, multi-household residential buildings, small apartments, and textile factories with residential quarters. The film attempts to narrate and archive today's Cheongpa-dong in corporeal gestures. In each corner of Cheongpa-dong, houses with different temporal layers are cluttered together, where endangered narratives create consonance in discordance and move about in a lively manner. When looking down from Cheongpa hill, one gets an entire view of the forest of skyscrapers and newly built Seoullo-7017, adorned with colorful streetlights. Across from this landscape of massive metropolis, what will be portrayed in corporeal gestures are the temporal-space of Cheongpa-dong, traces of life, and the landscape of the neighborhood located on the blue hill, soon to be disappeared in the sweep of urban redevelopment.

SYNOPSIS

Hongseok from Taejinsa textile factory and Youngsun from Sunhong supermarket spend their day roaming about in the neighborhood. From Taejinsa, past the barber shop and textile factory to the 600-year-old maidenhair tree, they hop over empty houses on the hill that have been inhabited at one point. All the places in this neighborhood are their playground and life's temporal-space at the same time, ranging from the corner from which trains can be seen, the intersection between the hanok area, Western-style house area, and the apartment complex, and the stairway where dead bodies were stacked during the Korean War to the clothes line on Youngsun's rooftop. In their journey on Cheongpa Hill, a neighborhood sentenced to death in the name of urban redevelopment, Youngsun, Hongseok, and traces of life glimmer. 

Drawing from poet Choi Seung-ja's "Do You Remember Cheongpa-dong," Youngsun and Hongseok sing in bodily gestures to the city light down the hill.

"And now, like worn-out shoes without an owner / When I wander aimlessly in the field / Do you remember Cheongpa- dong // The winter from a few centuries ago / When we lay ourselves on top of each other like flower petals / Drifting away in the snow-clad dream"

-excerpt from "Do you Remember Cheongpa-dong" (1981)

The first few notes in the introduction become the motivation for the entire piece and develop throughout the piece in a fluid manner, and this fluidity is distributed as the electronic sound evolves according to the movement of the trumpet. By substituting Seokguram Grotto's proportional beauty into the unit form and composition of music, Korean proportional beauty and harmony rather than Korean sounds were applied to the musical composition and form.
IRCAM Resonance Festival 2002 The revised version of 'Dispersion Flue', which was newly revised and dedicated to Professor Jae-chang Sung after its world premiere by trumpet player Laurent Bômont at the Pompidou Center concert, was premiered this time with Professor Jae-chang Sung's performance.

Video production: Wontae Seo