Gimhae: becoming a global city
Gimhae has never been a city frequently associated with Korean and international modern art; it is hard to say that the city is popular among artists either as a workplace or as a subject for arts. As was the case with the curator, who confessed that the first word coming up on her mind was “the Gimhae plain” upon hearing the word Gimhae, the place is still regarded by outsiders as the middle ground between the city and countryside. In reality, however, the current landscape of Gimhae is no longer as peaceful as a wide plain; as factories of large and small sizes started to be built around the region since 2000, the city has become a symbol of reckless development. Since the main street for a huge number of furniture manufacturers was established the strong presence of immigrant workers became hard to be ignored. The mayor of Gimhae announced the city’s roadmap towards a global city of history and culture to reflect its rapidly changing physical and cultural horizon.
Historically, Gimhae has not been the only city which emerged as a global city. In the short term, the immigrant workers flooding into the city is the result of the global economy accelerated by technological advances, and in the long term, the result of the continuous development of capitalism which has known no border searching for a cheaper labor force, a cheaper land, or more jobs. In this regard, the foreign workers, settled around the furniture factories, around large and small mosques, and around centers for immigrant workers remind us of the gloomy scenes of Paris and London during the mid-19th century, as well depicted in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859): namely, the physical, cultural, and political changes around cities after the Industrial Revolution.1) For instance, the situation in A Tale of Two Cities has implied, even 150 years later, the globalization has still spread its dark side, as well as its bright side; the boundaries between countries and between cultures have been blurred here in Gimhae. and the identity of the city is shifting when meeting new values.
Since 2014 going throughthe Nomadic Project 7 1/2 in Seoul, A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories held at Arko Art Center, Seoul in April, 2017, and forums held by Rujak Center for Urban Studies (RCUS) based on Jakarta, Indonesia in November 2017, and by Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA) in Yogyakarta, exhibition curator Oh Sun-young has researched for the last three years on how Korea and Indonesia, the two countries sharing the heartbreaking memories carved by Imperial Japan, has undergone similar modernization, urbanization, and industrialization, in chronological order.2) Hence, this exhibition is in line with the long-held research interest of the planner and is timely in that it sheds a new light on the identity and sense of place of Gimhae. As mentioned above, Gimhae started to be referred to as the global city of history and culture, a somewhat strange term, for the recent surge of immigrant workers.
Then, how have different cities gone through a similar path while differentiating itself from each other, as was the case with Paris and London of the 19th century, and the case with Seoul and Jakarta of the 20th century? In more precise terms, what tragedy happened and what was omitted in the modern history of the two countries? Lastly, why do we bring the forgotten history up again?
Middle-ground Place and History, an Object of the Project 7 1/2
First of all, let’s understand what the Project 7 1/2 has meant to be for the last three years. It was a project launched by independent exhibition planner Oh Sun-young, to organize exhibitions, which do not settle at a specific location but wander from here to there, into a series. In protest against the existing styles of exhibition planning which was controlled by art institutes, alternative places such as the residence came out in the late 1990s and independent planners started to move around places with their exhibitions. In addition, there came organizations or individuals like Oh Sun-young, bringing a number of plans together into one project for a long period of time. This is a smart strategic choice to make independent planning more powerful by joining forces of several planners or planning a series of exhibitions when there is less financial support for independent planners.
In the meantime, the fact that independent planners are not limited to certain places means that different places, even places in culture, now suffer similar social issues (or problems.) In this exhibition, it will be easily found that Seoul and Jakarta share the same environmental changes or issues of criticism. The globalized financial system and multinational enterprises have allowed constant exchanges of various resources over boundaries. As a result, social changes and problems are simultaneously spread to around the world. (Every day, accidents that take place in certain countries or regions are being shared online on social media by the world people, as well as on newspapers and TV news, which has an immediate impact on the offline community again.
The more international exchanges, the more sensitive the independent planners become to the worldwide changes in society and criticism. More jet-setters running their multinational business must increase the number of immigrant workers from Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal who are working in Gimhae, a culturally, linguistically and religiously unfamiliar city, but are underpaid compared to the jet set. The phenomenon that exhibition planners are now interested in stories of middle-ground people and places situated at cultural and national boundaries should come as no surprise where globalization is found everywhere in our daily lives and the surrounding environment.
Not surprisingly, A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories tells personal narratives which were ignored or omitted in Asian modern history. What was the end of people of the old days who crossed the national borders? Why did they leave their home country and how did they sustain their lives in a faraway land? What lesson can be taken from the old narratives? Or, why were the stories of strangers not included in recorded history? What is interesting is that the personal narratives of the strangers who led their lives in such unbelievably unexpected places are nothing but the microcosm of our modern history, the colonial history of the 20th century in particular.
The characters in the personal narratives were the people or things which drifted between different cultures or happened to fall in there like an alien, existed for some time and suddenly disappeared. Timoteus Anggawan Kusno’s Seriality, the Unknown, et cetera (2017) is the record of Yang Chil-seong (1919 – 1949), who was sent to Indonesia as part of the Imperial Japanese policy and died as a captive right after the defeat of Japan in World War II. Irwan Ahmett & Tita Salina’s Flower Currency (通花) takes Former President of North Korea Kim Il Sung’s Flower as the theme, a symbol of the friendly relationship between Former President Kim Il Sung and Founding Father of Indonesia Sukarno in the Cold War era of the 1970s.
Regarding this, we should understand how the Project 7 1/2 was named; planner Oh explained that she was inspired by the movie, Being John Malkovich (1999) when naming the project.3) In the movie, unemployed Craig Schwartz (starred by John Cusack) works at an office which is located at the 7 1/2 floor (between the 7th and 8th floor) in New York. One day, he happens to find a passage into the brain of famous actor John Malkovich behind the cabinet. With this as a context, the planner sees 7 1/2 as a middle-ground place or attitude which does not belong to any existing category. This is a “passage into a strange society, into an aesthetic world, and even into the brains of other people.” Her exhibition planning is also a process that takes out the stories of marginalized people, who don’t fall into any existing category and presents them to the audience.
Seoul – Jakarta – Gimhae
The characters in the narratives of this exhibition were ignored in the existing recorded history and any official records or traces of them have scattered away like fragments. The artists show fragments of the faint traces of the strangers to the audience and the audience is invited to imagine the lives of the strangers based on the partial archives. In Timoteus Anggawan Kusno’s Seriality, the Unknown, et cetera, Yang Chil-seong, a Korean captive taken to South East Asia as part of the Japanese Army, wrote this:
Before facing death, I was as good as living dead.
To survive such a period, I tried to recall my passionate times to feel warm…
My peaceful childhood memories in my hometown.4)
According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, historical narrative ultimately reveals nothing but the system of categorization around it. The reason why the record of Yang Chil-seong was excluded in the official historical category was attributed to the historical context that made him as an international missing person: while he was enrolled in the Japanese Army, he was a Korean; while he was sent to the faraway South East Asia as a Korean, he was taken as a Japanese captive at the defeat of the Allied powers. His life reflects the fluctuating period in Asian modern history of the 20th century. Sadly, however, since he did not belong to any specific country, culture or region, he was far from being included in the traditional historical category and system and thus, ended up being neglected in the recording and preservation of history.
Furthermore, the fact that the record of the Korean captive still remains unclear shows that our perspective towards the Koreans in Imperial Japan is still too narrow: for us, the history of resistance applies only to the Koreans living on the Korean Peninsula and we remain ignorant of how many more Koreans were forced out to unknown regions. For the very reason, we have to trace back the life of Yang Chil-seong from a new point of view. Moreover, through the life of the Korean captive whose life was the same as ours that has blurred national and cultural boundaries, we can for the first time question the existing historical narratives and perspectives.
The exhibition includes archiving works of characters like Yang Chil-seong or Huyung (His Korean name is unknown. The nearest guesses are Heoyeong, Haeyoung, Huyeong or Haeyung.) who had to wander between the two worlds in Imperial Japan, and as mentioned above, the history of exchange between Indonesia and North Korea in the Cold War era. The filming work of Flower Currency was kept secret from South Koreans by now since it talks about the history of Kim Il Sung’s Flower designated and spread across Indonesia to commemorate the former North Korean president. It is only recently that Indonesia forged an economic partnership with South East Asia; its relationship with North Korea in the 1960 – 70s was much closer. For this reason, how a historical truth is suppressed or exposed is more compelling than any historical truth about the relationship between the former North Korean president and the Founding Father of Indonesia. This is because what makes a certain truth included or concealed in historical narrative is, as the French philosopher explained, the perspective taken by a certain history or society that organizes, produces or conceals any record.
While major Indonesian artists focus on discovering the images of Koreans or Korea in their history, Archiving Resistance at RCUS and Mixplot, an workshop of Mixrice who newly participated in the exhibition in Gimhae, pay attention to the lives of the low class and laborers of cities who have been industrialized going through Jakarta, Seoul and Gimhae. Hanging pictures and materials at RCUS, which record how the people peacefully living on the countryside take apart due to rapid urbanization, remind us of the old days of Seoul that can be summarized with the three urban plannings: the Urban Planning of the 1970s; the Development of Gangnam of the 1980s; and the Satellite City Plan of the 1990s. Choi Sun-ah has selectively enlarged and arbitrarily relocated the land of Seoul that has been sectionalized and developed by the market principle: in Seoul 1:10,000, a project in Arko exhibitions, she enlarged the 25 districts (gu) and 424 administrative divisions (dong) of Seoul, printed them in A4-size blueprint, and attached each one of them next to each other to a wooden panel. On the new map, regional conflicts and gaps that lie between districts, such as between Gangbuk and Gangnam, no longer exist. As a result, Seoul comes as a strange but new place freed from any political or financial power, symbolically at least. The audience appreciates the square of each land as it is.
Like she enlarged and relocated the land of Seoul, Choi Sun-ah takes the land of Gimhae as an object for this exhibition, where large market chains and factories have completely changed the natural landscape of Gimhae. In Gaya Earthenware and Boundary(ies), she focuses on the traces of old relics buried in the ground of Gimhae. While Gaya earthenware so flourished that it was introduced to Japan in the approx. The 3rd century and had a direct influence on the creation of Sueki earthenware, it is now subject to being destroyed and buried due to reckless development. Considering this, the artist uses photogram of surrealism and makes objects look like an accident appearance on the photo film, to discover and reveal the traces of the past.
To sum up, An “expanded” Tales of Two Cities pays attention to the untold history in each workshop of artists and planners from Seoul and Jakarta, and after all, the history of exchange not recorded as history. From Imperialism to the Cold war Era, the history of exchange between Korea and Indonesia was not something intended for a shared growth but something both countries were forced to pursue amidst the gloomy period, Imperial Japan and the Cold War, respectively. In addition, the reality of the immigrant workers caused by globalization, demolition sites and sad memories due to rapid urbanization are part of the forgotten history that has been ignored in the history of international exchange.
Tracing back and reinterpreting the correlation of Indonesia and Korea in modern history is as incomplete and hard as it is to trace back the life of Yang Chil-seung, a stranger forgotten in the fragmented past. However, if what interests the planner of the Project 7 1/2 is the narratives of sympathy which have been hidden but still lied in our subconscious, not the major history of exchange remembered by Indonesians and Koreans, this will have a new aesthetic and historical value. It is so in that it brings to life the forgotten memories shared between us and the immigrant workers who are becoming part of Gimhae.
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[1] A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel written by Charles Dickens. It tells stories of couples traveling the modernized cities Paris and London from the late Eighteenth to the early Nineteenth Centuries after the Industrial Revolution. According to the curator, the Project 7 1/2 was named after Dickens’ novel written in the Nineteenth Century, yet it is not limited to particular two cities; it is used to designate any two cities in the minds of all immigrants. In other words, the term “two cities” refer to the flexible relationship between people and sense of place which is often used as an important indicator of personal identity. / Oh Sun-young, Email Interview with the Author, January 28, 2018
[2] Please refer to any information on forums at RCUS: www.facebook.com/projectsevenandahalf
[3] Oh Sun-young, in an interview, April 19, 2017.
[4] Part of Timoteus Anggawan Kusno’s Seriality, the Unknown, et cetera (2017)