Project 7½ (2017-2019): Seoul, Gimhae, Jakarta
 

A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories (Arko Art Center, Seoul, 2017) 

A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories (Yunseul Art Museum, Gimhae, 2018) 

A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories (National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, 2018) 

In 2016 I undertook a research visit to Indonesia. My aim primary was to gain an understanding of how Indonesian artist collectives were organized but I also started to research the modern history of both Korea and Indonesia and its relationship to contemporary art and social issues. On returning to Korea, I curated A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories (2017) at the Arko Art Center in Seoul (Fig. 68). This was selected as the best exhibition of the year 2017 by the Korea Arts Council. The exhibition was an extension of Project 7½’s site-specific projects in Itaewon, Mullae-dong and Jangsa-dong, Seoul (2014-201), and served as a bridgehead for connecting projects in Gimhae and Jakarta in 2018 (Figs. 69, 70). 

The theme of the exhibition was based on aspects of the comparative histories of the Korean and Indonesian people since 1945. The Netherlands ruled Indonesia for over three hundred years (1602-1908) and in the early 1940s, during World War II, Japan occupied and ruled Dutch Indonesia. In the case of Korea, its occupation by the Japanese was for a period of 35 years (1910-1945). The exhibition examined how the two countries have developed since their independence in August 1945, with a particular focus on the history of Seoul and Gimhae (Korea), and Jakarta and Jatiwangi (Indonesia) where associated events were held. The narratives of the exhibitions, communicated through artworks by participating artists expanded on that history, as did the booklets published to accompany the exhibition, which accompany my submission. After Seoul, the exhibition travelled to Gimhae (Korea) (Fig. 69) and Jakarta (Indonesia) (Fig. 70). As the exhibition moved from city to city, the participating artists, the artworks and other contents changed to some extent. 

Each iteration of the exhibition presented a collection of new works based on perceptions of ‘social history’ and ‘memory’ with the exhibitors including an urban research organization, architects, activists, journalists and artists from Korea and Indonesia. I aimed to capture the various perspectives and narratives of those who had experienced life in Korea and Indonesia in the 1980s and 1990s. 

The artworks included various media such as video, installation, and archive materials. Indonesian activists Watchdoc produced a documentary about the controversial repossession of 17 islands on the Northern Coast of Jakarta that were taken from a fishing community by the government to create a coastal housing development (Figs. 71, 72). An archive project, Archiving Resistance (2017), was by Marco Kusumawijaka and Rujak Center for Urban Studies (Fig. 73). There were also Indonesian propaganda films, dating from the 1940s and ‘50s, produced by Huyung, an individual who over the course of his life held three nationalities: Korean, Japanese, and Indonesian (Figs. 74, 75, 76). The different iterations of the exhibition provided an opportunity for the artists and me to gauge the public reception of the artworks and other exhibits. It offered the possibility to reflect on ways to develop or change the artworks, archive exhibits and their presentation, expand the aesthetic discourse, and improve the communicative effect of each subsequent exhibition. 

Among the new artworks that reflected on the modern and contemporary histories of Seoul was Bae Bae Young-whan’s video installation Please, Give Me Some Water (2016) (Fig. 77). This was set in the Sewoon Arcade and Jangsa-dong area of Seoul that led to the industrialization of Korea (where Project 7½ was held in 2016). Kiwan Sung, one of the artists who participated in Cryptographic Imagination (2016), appeared and sang in the film (Figs. 65, 66, 67). A particular sentimental yearning is captured in the popular songs of the 1970s in Korea, and ‘Give Me Some Water’ was a track on Han Dae Soo’s first album Long Long Way (1974) that expressed the unquenchable thirst experienced by people living under the dictatorship in one of Korea’s most turbulent periods; the song was forbidden by the government for being dissident. 

The alleys of watch shops in Jongno-gu, Yeji-dong, were established by merchants originally from Cheonggyecheon Stream, who moved into this area in the 1960s. Its heyday for selling jewellery and watches was during the 1970s and 1980s and the area is still famous for its watch shops. However, as trade was bound to be adversely affected by a redevelopment zone, many shops had been shutting down or relocating, leaving only the empty buildings and old signboards as reminders of the past and Bae documented the streetscapes of the area in 2017 as photographs and videos. His work The Past Also Lasts a Long Time (2017) reinterpreted the locality and allowed viewers to re-edit their memories of the area (Fig. 78).

Sunah Choi created an artistic interpretation of a 1:10,000 scale map of Seoul from 2003 (Fig. 79). In her work titled Seoul 1:10,000 (2017), the 25 districts(gu) and administrative areas (dong) were selectively enlarged and printed as A4-size blueprints. Each blueprint map was spliced together on a wooden panel, ultimately creating a completely subjective map of Seoul, where the actual geographical continuity of the areas is broken and disturbed, and the vicinity is newly defined. On this new map, regional conflicts and gaps between districts, such as between Northern and Southern Seoul, were hypothetically destroyed and resolved. During the process of creating the new map, the artist omitted specific sites of Seoul where significant events of modern history took place. Nonetheless, it was possible to infer or reconstruct the original sense of the ‘placeness’ of these areas marked in blue or white. Paradoxically, through her omissions and concealments, the sites became more emphasized and apparent. Although one noticed the information absent from the map when looking at it closely, it became a more cohesive form when seen at a distance; this is a moment when ‘information’ becomes ‘image’. A map is a symbol, an abstraction of the real world; it not only embodies space but also captures thoughts. A map carries information that can be a guide to understanding today’s society. Unlike a digital map that can be continuously updated, a paper map cannot instantly reflect the societal change and thus gains historical value as a momentary record of the era. For the Gimhae exhibition, Sunah Choi produced a new work titled Border(s)—Jakarta, Seoul, Gimhae (2018). This proposed a conceptual re-mapping and the linear connection of the administrative districts in Korea and Indonesia that either had hosted or would be hosting iterations of the exhibition (Fig. 80). .

The work of Indonesian artists indicated some points of contact between Korea and Indonesia. Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina’s Flower Currency (2017) (Figs. 81, 82, 84, 85) started with Flower Diplomacy (2017) (Figs. 81, 83) that refers to a diplomatic event between Indonesia and North Korea in the 1960s when Sukarno named an Indonesian flower species for Kim Il-Sung. Ahmett and Salina created a new flower species whose petals were formed by the injured hands of Indonesian immigrant workers residing in Korea. This work titled Flower Currency (2017) was dedicated to their sacrifices for South Korea; it offered hope and notions of relationships of the past, present, and raised the idea of an uncertain future. 

Timoteus Anggawan Kusno’s work Seriality, the Unknown, et cetera (2017) (Fig. 87) revealed the forgotten life story of Yang Chil-seong (1919-1949); Yang Chil-seong, AKA Sichisei Yanagawa and Komarudin was born in Wanju, Jeolla Province, Korea in 1919. He was commanded to guard the prisoner’s camp in Bandung, Indonesia by the Japanese army authorities in 1942. After a battle in Bandung, the PPP guerrilla group took five Japanese soldiers’ prisoner, one of whom was Yang Chil-seong (then called Sichisei Yanagawa). Later, during the Dutch Military Aggression (1947-1948), he joined the Indonesian National Army in Garut and became a naturalized Indonesian named Komarudin. He was buried in the National Heroes Cemetery Tenjolaya, Garut in 1975. The extraordinary life of Yang Chil-Seong seems like a work of fiction, begging the question if this could be the story of one man. Officially, the history we learn at school does not deal with lives such as that of Yang Chil-seong. Through his life story, it was possible to assume that many others may have had no choice but to live similar lives due to the times and circumstances they lived through. 

Based on his first work in Seoul, Timoteus Anggawan Kusno produced a new video work, Edelweiss (2018)(Figs. 88, 89), for the Gimhae exhibition. ‘Edelweiss’, in Indonesian culture refers to the imagination of ‘eternity’. Sometimes it’s called “Eternal Flower”. Ironically, this plant is considered at risk of extinction and now is categorized as protected species. Edelweiss is found in the mountainous regions of Java, southern Sumatra, southern Sulawesi, and Lombok (Whitten, T. & J., 1992). During WWII, edelweiss became the symbol of the anti-Nazi movement while, paradoxically, it was also the favourite flower of Hitler. Edelweiss was a poetic title for a film that captured the sensory experience of ‘trauma’ and the ‘return of the repressed’. It referred to the Indonesian experience post-dictatorship, as well as post-war trauma. 

In Sulki and Min’s Dinosaur (2017-2018), five stages of a story—exposition, rising action, crisis, climax, and resolution—was printed on five flags, standing lights, and walls in order. Each word contained a rich meaning and provided an incomplete reading experience for the audience. The short novel, Dinosaur (2017-2018), was written by Sulki and Min: ‘The dinosaur was still there when he was awake’ in Korean and Bahasa Indonesian.

For the exhibition in Jakarta, I invited the Korean artist collective mixrice and arranged for them to undertake a month’s residency programme in Jatiwangi to produce artworks with villagers. The resulting work Gosari (2017) is about ‘community’ and was based on a community dance originating in Korean agrarian society and known as Gang-Gang Suwol-le. It is a dance that involves the Hui (joy), Ro (anger), Ae (sadness), Lak (pleasure), Ae (love), Oh (hatred), Yuk (greed) of the Korean people. In Gosari, a part of the dance called ‘Gosari gungi’ (picking brackens) was recreated by mixrice with the Indonesian people, adapting it to their situation and to those participating in the project. Lair Music from the Jatiwangi village created the music and the deaf community Rumah Tuli Jatiwangi participated in the workshops and performance (Figs. 95-99).

Jatiwangi Art Factory participated in A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories (2018) in Gimhae and Jakarta. Majalengka, where Jatiwangi is located, and Gimhae cities resemble each other in many ways: Both cities are famous for their agricultural and industrial complexes and are locations of regional airports. Gimhae is famous for producing traditional pottery, while Majalengka is famous for producing traditional roof tiles. Started in 2005, Jatiwangi Art Factory was founded not in a large Indonesian city, such as Jakarta, Bandung or Yogyakarta, but to revitalize the village community and its economy by rural villages by a group of young people in Jatiwangi, rather than an artist group. However, they have developed into an internationally known artists’ collective. JaF invites artists from other areas of Indonesia and other countries to stay in the village for several weeks. They call it a JaF artist residency program, although it is different from usual residencies. JaF functions a mediator to make connections between artists and villagers; it is a way of bringing people together in solidarity to solve the social problems of Jatiwangi, Majalengka. In the exhibition in Gimhae, I introduced how JaF use art to form solidarity with the community and artists. It also included Village Video Festival, organized by Sunday Screen and based on Bandung artists’ collective (Figs. 100, 101); JaF TV, which was run by JaF with villagers and artists from other cities in Indonesia (Fig. 102); and the archive materials of Badan Kajian Pertanahan. For the exhibition in Jakarta, Jatiwangi art Factory and Badan Kajian Pertanahan produced a new work, Land Cultural Certificate (2017–2018) (Figs. 103, 104). In 2017 the Land Study Affair Agency (BKP) held an event to present an unofficial Land Cultural Certificate as a form of recognition and appreciation for the efforts of Hamlet Wates-Jatisura, a community whose land has been claimed by the Air Force since 1950. The community defends what should belong to them, including their land culture with inspiring cultural actions. Hence, the land becomes more valuable and dignified. The certificate was designed to resemble the Land Certificate issued by the National Land Agency (BPN) RI; what distinguishes it is the word ‘Culture’ between the word ‘certificate’ and ‘land.’ 85 people signed up to create the Land Culture Certificate, representing 85 families in the project. Badan Kajian Pertanahan (BKP), literally means Land Affair Study Agency (to mimic ‘National Land Affairs Agency’, a government institution), and is a cultural landscape research collective that conducts artistic research through art projects, residencies, and a minilab. Through this presentation, Jatiwangi art Factory raised the ownership of land issues in Indonesia within the art exhibition in Jakarta. And Villagers in Wates village talked about their situations to audiences by themselves.

After the final iteration of the exhibition at the National Gallery of Indonesia, an extension of the project, Elephant in the Room (2018-2019) took place at the Jakarta History Museum.