Gimhae must be a bizarre region to an insensitive onlooker. A jet is flying carelessly above the tomb of Geumgwan Gaya. An anachronistic contrast seems unfamiliar, and the metallic roar distresses a sleep.
Gimhae is usually associated with Gaya, but the irrelevance is found soon when it looked closely. It is evident that the objects placed in the old Gaya territories such as street sculptures, museums, and ancient tombs made in recent times. The Gimhae National Museum, established during the Kim Dae-jung administration, displays plentiful traces of Gaya, but the period stops at the Iron Age because Gaya was annexed by Silla 1500 years ago. The current residents of Gimhae are not the Gaya migrants. The 550,000 citizens of Gimhae are outsiders who had arrived in this region with the entry of factories. The number of foreign laborers is growing and takes a large portion of the Gimhae population. They are settled on the plain that cleaned during the Japanese colonial era, not on the old Gaya land on the foot of a mountain. Thus, it is correct to say that the original Gimhae-si formed after the Japanese colonial era. The keywords are reclamation, airfield, factory, and migrant. Gimhae is a sample of history that is yet to record.
<A Tale of Two Cities II>(Gimhae Arts and Sports Center, March 8th~29th, 2018) once held at the Arko Art Center in Daehak-ro, Seoul under the same title between July 21st~September 3rd, 2017. Technically, the exhibition in Gimhae-si only takes the same theme as the exhibition held in Seoul, but these two exhibitions are distinct in their contents and formats. The point is the placeness. It is to see how the exhibition has changed in different places, which causes such changes, and what the curator aims with these exhibitions.
<A Tale of Two Cities II> was not planned to be held at first. It is why a serial number does not follow the at the Arko Art Center. After the exhibition ended, some works such as moving images and video works among the exhibited works returned to the artists, and the flat works and installations discarded. It all happened as was selected as one of the ‘exhibitions of the year’ by the Arts Council Korea, for which the chosen exhibitions receive a fund for their encores. <A Tale of Two Cities II> was invited by the Gimhae Arts and Sports Center.
Let us look closely at the Gimhae version of.
First, the participating artists include Sulki & Min, Choi Suna, mixrice that represent one of the two cities Seoul, and Marco Kusumawijaya & Rujak Center for Urban Studies, Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina, Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, Forum Lenteng, Jatiwangi Art Factory & Village Video Festival for the other part of the two cities Jatiwangi. Aside from this, the immigrant workers (Chandra Bahadur Tamang, Shrestha Lumes, Hari Adhikari, Dipendra Adhikari, Selpa Yangchiling) participated as artists from the public. The Jatiwangi Art Factory & Village Video Festival and the immigrant worker artists replaced Bae Young-whan and Lim Jongup of at the Arko Art Center.
What about its frame? If the Seoul exhibition juxtaposed the capital of Korea Seoul and that of Indonesia Jakarta, then the Gimhae exhibition juxtaposes the capital of Korea Seoul, Gimhae-si of Korea, and a small town of Indonesia Jatiwangi. It corresponds to the way of replacing artists. The replaced artists (Bae Young-whan and Lim Jongup) are more or less suitable for the Seoul exhibition, and the replacing artists are the extension for the Gimhae exhibition. It almost seems that the exhibition is patched up with the immigrant workers as much as the color of Seoul taken from it. Moreover, it invites the Jatiwangi village as an Indonesian counterpart of Gimhae. As a result, the bridge posts of the Gimhae exhibition doubled from those of the Seoul exhibition, which makes it twice as strong.
What about its content?
The shortest novel in the world by Sulki & Min kept its content as was presented at the Seoul exhibition, but they changed the way it performed. Indonesian migrant workers and Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina partly complemented but similar to the previous works. But they worked on a workshop with the Gimhae Migrant House before the exhibition, and they newly presented the outcome of the workshop. Forum Lenteng presented Huyung’s early film archive, who settled in Indonesia through Japan as a Korean during the Japanese colonial era. Choi Suna who showed a flat work using the image of the administrative area of Seoul in the Seoul exhibition transformed it into a sculptural installation by adding Jakarta and Gimhae and presented a new flatwork using the Gaya pottery and traditional Indonesian motifs. Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, who showed an installation work based on the story of Yang Chil-seong continued the new video work with the same subject in the Gimhae exhibition. Yang Chil-seong had been drafted into the Japanese army during the Japanese colonial era to fight in Indonesia and captured, and when Indonesia was fighting the Netherlands, he fought in Indonesian military uniform and became a hero of Indonesia by contributing. It fantastically reproduced the border situation that a stateless man Yang Chil-seong had to face where the Missing Sheep had to face. The work of Marco Kusumawijaya & Rujak Center for Urban Studies seems identical to the work in the Seoul exhibition at first glance in a way that based on the archive, but they recast it by changing the idea of showing. The photographs and books related to Jakarta redevelopment displayed in the Seoul exhibition, but the Gimhae exhibition presented an installation work made with the texts and notebooks written by Marco Kusumawijaya who has been an architect for a long time. Audiences can have a unique experience of going through text-projected translucent plastic screens, and the negative film with the flashlight can remind of the Indonesian traditional shadow play. His brilliant skill sublimated the sources, which would just have been an archive if they translated into Korean, into a spectacular work.
The new participants Jatiwangi Art Factory & Village Video Festival produced archives and video works. Jatiwangi is an almost collapsed rural village in Indonesia as young people have moved into the city. Jatiwangi has invited domestic and international artists to create video works for its project by which Jatiwangi has promoted itself as an art village. The residents are curators. It is similar to Gimhae that has an airport in a way that it is in the process of constructing a new airport. People can drink coffee while they are seeing curator certificates, badges, stamps, and video works. People can also sing the story of the people who had lost their land that made into songs for Karaoke. There is a video work made by five immigrant workers. This work, based on the episodes of working as factory workers, shows an amateur quality, but it is the highlight of this exhibition. Their stories, such as the reality of the immigrant workers who separated from their families and conflicted with the Korean employers recorded from their perspectives. It is meaningful that Gimhae’s exotic aspect formed by immigrant workers has recorded as it is.
Irwin Ahmett & Tita Salina’s video admires the spirits of the immigrant workers who came to Korea with the Korean Dream and died. The requiem unfolding in Daeseong-dong tomb ruins is poignant. The realities contrast that while Heo Hwang-ok who emigrated from India and set up the Gaya together with a Korean of Gaya in ancient times, the migrant labor failed in modern times. A new participant mixrice explores the senses and perceptions of the two countries through the fruit survey for Koreans and immigrant workers. Kim, Hwon-ju’s essay replaces Seoul Lim Jongup.
It said that the Gimhae exhibition unexpectedly initiated, but unexpectedness means the coincidence. Since most of the artworks in the Seoul exhibition discarded, the works had to recreate for the Gimhae exhibition. Most artworks were supplemented or newly produced. It only attributed to the curator Oh Sun-young personality and her curatorship that it appeared as a new exhibition without repeating the works from the Seoul exhibition.
<A Tale of Two Cities II> is intended to compare the modern history of two countries through two cities in Korea and Indonesia, so that the audience can read our current position and direction. This exhibition mixes artworks and archives to think about the boundaries between art and non-art. Seoul and Gimhae exhibitions are the same in this respect.
The most significant difference is the location of the exhibitions. Why is the same thing repeated? It is the story of the curator Oh Sun-young. Since she quit Kim Sun-jung’s Art Sonje Center, she has always been an outsider. Artworks that are commercialized by the gallery exhibitions, and the curators who gain the power… She was forced to stay on the edge of the system, distorted by the twisted reality of the art world. The places where she moved include the ironworks village in Mullae-dong, Guro-gu, and the Uljiro alley. She was willing to accept the nomadic life, and the artists who participated in her exhibitions were friends with the same mind as her. Her exhibition has been a reminder of the reality of the current art world, and her remarks refined in different places. The theme and location chosen by are on its extension.
It is the first time in Gimhae for Oh Sun-young. While Seoul has accumulated history from prehistoric times to modern times, she may have noticed that the history of Gimhae is blank between the period from ancient times to the Gaya dynasty and the period from the Japanese colonial era to modern times. The surreal scene of Gimhae where the jet flies over the Gaya tomb mentioned at the beginning will not be different from the situation of Gimhae that she had learned from experience. It is evident that it might seem unpleasing the exhibition tells a long story about Seoul and Jakarta in Gimhae where a considerable part of its historical record is left blank. The curator should notice this. It is inevitable that Jatiwangi has brought to Gimhae as an Indonesia equivalence, and the color of Seoul has reduced. Is it coincidence or fate? The curator, Oh Sun-young, had joined the Jatiwangi project in November 2016 before and collaborated with the resident curators. The network that built during the process played a significant role in inviting Jatiwangi to Gimhae. As a result, the story of Seoul-Jakarta was able to move its focus to the account of Gimhae-Jatiwangi smoothly.
The consecutive accomplishment shows that the exhibition can be synonymous with the frame. The exhibition as a frame can be opened anywhere, moving around places. If juxtapositions of Seoul-Jakarta, Gimhae-Jatiwangi are possible, they must work with Incheon-Shanghai and Yongjeong-Osaka. Furthermore, the juxtapositions of Incheon-Nampo and Pohang-Hamheung are also possible. The pairing is the heart of the exhibition. If the content crosses the border between art and non-art, local procurement and disposal will be easy and natural. The curator Oh Sun-young may want to say that the exhibition and the work should be easy to open and fold. It is not a big deal even if airfield and reclamation are missing from the four keywords of Gimhae.
Lim Jongup (Senior Journalist, Hankyoreh)