The Dorsoduro, Venice’s south-western quarter, has a completely different atmosphere from the hustle and bustle of the tourist areas around St Mark’s across the Grand Canal. It’s busy around the Peggy Guggenheim museum, but further west, beyond the Campo Santa Margherita, the crowds thin out. Here, alongside a narrow waterway on the Fondamenta del Soccorso is the peaceful Palazzo Zenobio, which boasts a quiet garden where sometimes plays are performed in the summer. This was the location chosen for Atta Kim’s Biennale Collateral Event ON-AIR – a venue shared with the Armenian contribution to the Biennale.

Atta Kim: ON-AIR Project, New York Series, 57th Street, 8 Hours (2005)

Kim’s exhibition is divided into three seemingly unrelated sections. In the first room are some interesting ultra-long exposure photographs of busy cities from Kim’s ON-AIR series. In an 8-hour exposure, any signs of human habitation, transient as they are in such a time span, are invisible: at most, there’s a grey blurring in the streets of Beijing where the pedestrians struggle to register on the film. The broad boulevards of Paris are deserted as even the slow-moving traffic fails to get captured in the exposure. Instead, streets and pavements appear deserted, leaving cities which are eerily empty of their human creators, as if mankind has been wiped out by some disaster.

Atta Kim: Monologue of Ice: Portrait of Mao (2006), installation view

In the second room, ice sculptures are captured on film, part of Kim’s Monologue of Ice series. A giant Parthenon, or a statue of Mao, in various stages of melting. These stills are in fact part of a larger project in which the monuments and historical figures are filmed as they decompose – signifying the transience of all human existence. Here’s the melting of the Parthenon, a period of a few days condensed into a couple of minutes:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the third room, upstairs, are four large framed grey rectangles, resulting from superimposing a 10,000 different 5 x 7 images of a particular city – Kim’s Indala series.

Atta Kim: 10,000. Paris. Or maybe New York

It has to be admitted that the big grey rectangle representing 10,000 superimposed photographs of Rome looks remarkably similar to the big grey rectangle representing 10,000 superimposed photographs of Paris which faces it across the room. And New York and Moscow could equally be Rome. These works initially seem less meaningful than the works in the rooms downstairs, but were the ones highlighted in the opening ceremony, in which the artist climbed a scaffolding tower and scattered 10,000 photographs to the winds:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wonder who had the job of picking them up again.

Atta Kim is described in the Biennale brochure as “a philoso­pher and a man of thought rather than an artist”.

He developed a unique view of the world through his own exceptional training for a long time. His photographs of cities capture the dichotomous natures of space, matter and time, hinting at a twilight reality into which everything will fade.

Presumably the Indala grey rectangles are that twilight reality. Regardless of each city’s unique characteristics, in time they will all melt to the same formlessness – just as the 10,000 photos were scattered into the ether. The three strands of the exhibition are therefore successfully intertwined, in a way that those in Korea’s national pavilion are not.

Atta Kim’s exhibition continues until 22 November.

Elizabeth Grace reports on Dr Stephen Epstein’s talk at Cambridge earlier this week

We are all too familiar with the Western media’s portrayal of North Korea as a rogue communist state, complete with an evil dictator whose regime is seen as an unrepentant member of the “axis of evil.” Although these one-sided portrayals are increasingly the subject of criticism from Western scholars of Korean history, there has been little work in the West on the nature of South Korean representations of the North in cultural productions. Through his thorough and enlightening examination of the evolving image of the DPRK in South Korean popular culture over the past decade, Dr Stephen Epstein poses a crucial question: is the South Korean imagination growing to encompass what he terms, “an inclusive but heterogeneous identity that accepts both parts of the divided nation?”

Love of North and South (남남북녀) (Jeong Cho-sin, 2003) Under the soft exterior...

To answer this question, Dr Epstein considered a wide range of sites where the South Korean imagination is expressed, ranging from advertisement campaigns and music to the frequently comical images of North Korean spies in South Korean popular cinema. Although he acknowledges a downturn in relations with the North since Lee Myung Bak’s inauguration, Dr Epstein notes that several key changes in South Korean demographics, such as increased labour migration and a rise in international marriages, as well as a decade of the Sunshine Policy, have had a considerable effect on southern representations of North Korea. Although prior to 1998 the DPRK was represented as a one-dimensional object of fear or disdain whose citizens were all villains brainwashed by an evil state, these negative, stereotypical portrayals have given way to a range of lighter images often produced through comedy or farce. In particular, Dr Epstein’s use of the liminal space of the DMZ as a fruitful site for artistic manipulation is effective in demonstrating just how far the South has come. The light-hearted depiction of the DMZ in music videos and film are part of a wider trend in South Korean popular culture, which leads Dr Epstein to suggest that freer representations of the North form part of a coping strategy that allows the DPRK to be seen as simply another country instead of as “an evil portion of the South Korean Self.”

The talk was both informative and entertaining, and as well as making us open our eyes to the images that surround us in popular culture, Dr Epstein left the audience with an interesting conundrum. If North Korea does become “just another country” in the psyche of the South, then what does this mean for Korean unity? What has “Korea” become in the southern imagination? As we surveyed the pained expression on the face of a North Korean official as he watched South Korean boy-band Shinhwa’s 2003 performance at the “Concert for Unification” (t’ongil ŭmakhoe) in Pyongyang (below), we realized that Dr Epstein was making an excellent point; perhaps the problem is not whether the South can ever fully accept North Korean identity, but rather, will the North ever be able to accept the South?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shinhwa in Pyongyang

Dr Epstein spoke at the Cambridge Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies on 2 November. He will be talking at SOAS today, 6 November. The full version of his talk is available at The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 10-2-09, March 7, 2009

“In South Korea, we are taught English, Maths, things like that. We are taught nothing about North Korea.” I was talking to a young South Korean after a meeting of the North Korean All-Party Parliamentary Group. She was visibly shocked at what she had just heard. Two North Korean refugees – Jung Guang-il and Lee Ok-suk, both former inmates of North Korea’s notorious prison camps – had just given testimony to a group of journalists, interested parties and rather too few MPs. The North Korean All-Party Parliamentary Group, chaired on this occasion by Baroness Cox, heard these testimonies in Portcullis House on 3 November 2009.

Vitit Muntarbhorn

Because of the excellent work of organisations such as Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International and Christian Solidarity Worldwide (who organised the 3 Nov meeting), and the ready availability of books such as Aquariums of Pyongyang, we assume that North Korea’s appalling human rights record is all too well-known. But there are always people who have no idea, and it takes these constant reminders to keep the issue in people’s minds.

Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN’s special rapporteur on North Korea, recently published an update on the situation [full pdf here on UNHCR website], and he pulled no punches:

The human rights situation in the country remains abysmal owing to the repressive nature of the power base: at once cloistered, controlled and callous. The array of violations cuts across civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. They are fuelled by the country’s stifling political environment and stultifying developmental process, compounded by a range of stupefying cruelties.

The language is extreme, and when presented with the testimony of survivors of the prison camp regime you know it is justified.

Jung’s crime was that, being a tradesman, he travelled to China and sometimes dealt with South Korean businessmen. He was therefore suspected of being a spy. Lee’s crime was converting to Christianity on meeting a pastor in China. On returning to North Korea, a neighbour ratted on her.

The pictures presented are consistent. Long hours of forced labour, beatings and poor standards of nutrition. Before being sent to the camps, both suffered a long period of interrogation and torture (four months for Mr Jung, twelve for Mrs Lee). Mrs Lee suffered fingernail and teeth extraction and near-suffocation by having chilli paste stuffed into her mouth and nose. Both Lee and Jung suffered the “Dove” or “Pigeon” torture, so called because of the shape of your chest during the process: hands tied behind your back, you are hung by your hands so that your feet cannot touch the ground. Mr Jung endured periods of 12 hours in such an agonising position. His weight halved during his period of interrogation.

At work in Yodok labour camp

Both lost track of time during their stay in the camps. In the labour camps, diet was a meagre ration of corn. Prisoners fought over dogshit to see if they could find any corn in it. New corpses were in plentiful supply (in one camp 30-40 people died per month), and prisoners would look in their mouths to see if they died with any food in them. The worst thing they had to endure? “We were told we weren’t human beings. Instead of doctors, what medical care we had was given by vets, because we were worse than animals.”

Typical prisoners in such camps are dangerous elements such as border-crossers, Christians, petty thieves and thought criminals (rolling a cigarette with a scrap of newspaper which has a photo of Kim Jong-il will qualify you for a labour camp).

The refugees had an arduous schedule while in London: in one afternoon, interviews with The Times and The Guardian, the Parliamentary meeting and a press conference with Chinese TV. But northing compared with what they had to endure in North Korea. Both of them left us with the message that they were providing a voice for the voiceless prisoners – over 200,000 – suffering in North Korea’s gulags.

Links:

• Summary of Vitit Muntarbhorn press conference, 22 Oct, and his full report dated 4 August 2009 entitled Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
• North Korea: the defectors’ tale, The Times, 4 November 2009
• North Korean defectors tell of torture and beatings, The Guardian, 4 November 2009
• All-Party British-North Korea Parliamentary Group
• Christian Solidarity Worldwide
• Anti-Slavery International
• Amnesty International

Jennifer Barclay, author of MEETING MR KIM: OR HOW I WENT TO KOREA AND LEARNED TO LOVE KIMCHI, reports from the Korean Cultural Centre on Dame Margaret Drabble’s lecture based on her novel THE RED QUEEN

Dame Margaret Drabble, CBE DBE, looks elegant with her hair in a natural bob and a touch of red lipstick. I read recently that she walks in the countryside a lot. She’s also wearing the cutest red shoes, flat and leather with bright green laces. For anyone who’s read The Red Queen, you instantly think of the scarlet knee-high socks Babs Haliwell finds in Seoul, and wonder if she saw them and longed for them in the same way.

Drabble’s novel The Red Queen takes you to the royal palace of eighteenth-century Korea through the eyes of the Crown Princess, and forward to contemporary Korea to a bedroom shared by two academics at a conference, one of whom finds her memoirs. It was called ‘utterly gripping’ by The Guardian and ‘witty, exhilarating’ by the Daily Telegraph. The Italian edition, she says, is packaged like a ghost story, and asks the question: ‘Can the dead speak to the living?’

Drabble has come to the Korean Cultural Centre to deliver a lecture, which as well as being deeply interesting and tightly plotted is delivered with a great sense of humour. Several years after the book’s first publication, she can address some issues it has raised, for example taking liberties with history. She dwells for a while on cultural appropriation, or ‘stepping on other people’s territory’, which interests her a lot, and universality – ‘is there anything we all have in common?’

The history that intrigued her enough to write about a country she knew so little about (‘I can’t even read my own name in Korean!’) came from a translation of the real eighteenth century memoir which she read, as she says in the preface, ‘sitting in the sunshine in a London garden’. To Drabble, it was ‘like reading Hamlet or Macbeth but without knowing the ending’ – all poisoning and politics, and a character who has odd tantrums ‘rather like King Lear’.

The Crown Princess wrote her memoirs for political reasons; she lived to the age of eighty in a dangerous, violent court by playing it safe in order to outlive her enemies. Drabble overlaid onto this her ‘western interpretation’ that the Crown Princess was also writing to defend her husband as he descended into madness; and she added narrative colour by bringing out emotions she found in the original, such as a longing for a red dress. She also simplified the story, leaving out lots of cousins and aunts.

Although she took the care to compare three different translations of the original, she later discovered details not in the text, for example that the wife and mistress of the Crown Prince would have been forbidden to talk. The discrepancy that arises in her novel doesn’t faze her in the least: ‘If they were forbidden, they were doing it all the time.’ Besides, authors like Dan Brown show that getting history wrong ‘doesn’t always cause you trouble’.

The mingling of cultures, she says, helps us all to see more clearly, and ‘gives us oxygen’. A novelist who borrows from another culture may risk being accused of ignorance, but books are ‘a place we can meet culturally without too much flying!’

The Red Queen is published by Penguin. Thanks to Eunjeong Shin of the KCC for the images.

Links

• The Red Queen at amazon.co.uk
• Korean Cultural Centre website

More detail on this Friday’s talk at SOAS:

Friday, November 6th, 5pm, room G50 (main building)
Dr. Stephen Epstein, Victoria University of Wellington
“Asia! Asia!” – South Korean Popular Culture and “Asia” in the New Millennium

Abstract:
In 2007, the number of foreign nationals in South Korea surpassed 1,000,000 for the first time: labour migration has risen substantially since the 1990s, and more significantly, the last decade has seen an extraordinary surge in international marriages, most notably between Korean men and women from China, Vietnam and the Phillipines, with the rate in some rural counties reaching 40%. This new migration is in fact especially remarkable for being widespread in the rural heartland, precisely in that sector of the nation where South Korean discourse most often holds that its version of the “real Korea” still resides, and the striking increase in international marriage is thus providing a challenge to Korean ethnic nationalism’s long-cherished notion of the Korean people sharing a unitary bloodline (tanil minjok). In addition to the aforementioned trends, growing travel for Koreans within the larger region and a popular discourse that celebrates the success of hallyu (The Korean Wave) across Asia are all reconfiguring Korea’s understanding of its relationship with the outside world, bringing into relief South Korea’s encounter with the larger Asian region, and contributing to the reification of “Asia” as a concept in the Korean imagination. Inevitably, this recalibrated understanding is also being reflected in popular media. This seminar will highlight popular culture’s growing accommodation of “Asia” and an Asian regional identity within the larger social fabric. We will discuss a series of Korean television productions that draw attention to Korea’s interactions with the “foreign” generally, and “Asia” more specifically.

Speaker Bio:
Stephen Epstein is the Director of the Asian Studies Programmae at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He has published widely on contemporary Korean society and literature and has also translated numerous works of Korean and Indonesian fiction, including a recent co-translation with Yu Young-nam of Who Ate Up All the Shinga? (Columbia University Press), an autobiographical novel by Park Wan-suh. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming Complicated Currents: Soft Power and Media Flows in East Asia (Monash University Press).

Haegue Yang: Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Voice and Wind

In a collection of National Pavilions which includes a big aluminium cage (France), some unfinished pine kitchen furniture (Germany) and a reconstruction of a celebrity gay swimming pool death (Nordic countries) the Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale is in good company in making you scratch your head a little bit. What is one to make of an installation of venetian blinds, artfully stirred every now and then by some giant fans? Fortunately, the doors to the pavilion are always open, thus reducing the risk that visitors fall prey to that most potent of Korean summertime killers, Fan Death. In the side room, another, smaller, installation featuring dangling light bulbs and bits of knitting which look like hair scrunchies is even more mystifying.

Haegue Yang: Sallim

This smaller work is entitled Sallim, and the brochure explains that it is “a full-size model of [the artist's] Berlin kitchen”. “Where does she do the cooking, then?” was the question asked by one very practical observer. Mind you, the same could be asked of the German pavilion next door. Yang herself admits the problem: her kitchen is “free from many of the things that are attributes of the ordinary concept of work in terms of social effectiveness/productivity”. Like a cooker, for example. Or a sink.

Haegue Yang’s overall concept is entitled Condensation. Maybe the giant air conditioner in the pavilion’s roof was part of the main installation, but I didn’t see any drips on the floor. There were apparently also scent emitters which “infuse the installation with moments of sensory experience”, but I’m afraid I missed those.

Haegue Yang: Studies for Doubles and Halves (Ahyun-dong)

On a side wall, there was a video projection of some backstreets of one of Seoul’s poorer neighbourhoods (Ahyun-dong) which didn’t seem to make much sense – particularly with the Italian language voiceover. But if you waited long enough, or were lucky in your timing, the English voiceover at least mentioned the title of the whole show. Something to do with marginalised people clinging together and then evaporating like so much condensation. The video essay is entitled Doubles and Halves – Events with Nameless Neighbours. While it is helpful to have a work which resonates the theme of the pavilion itself, and can thus justifiably be said to be a “cornerstone of the exhibition”, the video struggles to unify the venetian blind sculpture (entitled Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Voice and Wind) with the kitchen in the side room.

Haegue Yang: Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Domestics of Community

Things came together a bit more in the Arsenale. Here Yang has more installation space which she fills with more from her Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Domestics of Community, comprising dangling light bulbs, kitchen utensils and, yes, venetian blinds (but no fans) all in the same place.

Living and working between the distinct cultures of Europe and Asia, Haegue Yang often investigates small shifts of meaning and form through translation and dislocation. She looks for moments of divergence and abstraction, be it in a linguistic or formal sense, be it through photographs and videos or three-dimensional installations.

Back to the main exhibit, though, it probably was best not to think too hard. The interlocking planes in which the blinds were hung, the different angles and colours, the gentle rippling of the sculpture as the fans turned on and off, were all pleasing in their own right. And in uniting a well-known product from the host city with a well-known phobia from the artist’s home country, the exhibit was perhaps appropriate enough to be installed in a national pavilion.

Links:

• Official site of the Korean Pavilion

Beccy Kennedy introduces I-MYU’s exhibition for Asian Art in London week

Venue: Alon Zakaim Fine Art
30 Cork street, Mayfair, London, W1S 3NG

Time: 29th October to 7 November 2009
Late night opening: 2nd of November 6-9pm

The Future of Originality

The movement which came to be known as postmodernism drew our attention to the spaces where originality used to be. It took our sense of disappointment with the loss of tradition in everyday life and embodied it into something new-fangled, however mangled and mingled this became. Although a movement whose dialectical origins reside in Modernism, a Western phenomenon, the issues which postmodernism interrogated can be experienced worldwide. The small wooden houses seen amongst the mountains in Korean Literati style paintings would now be surburban settlements; the reapers in Van Gogh’s French hay fields have been replaced by tractors. The application of ink with Confucian vigour can now be replicated through tapping plastic buttons, generating contours for animation. The layered and rigorous strokes of oil on canvas may just as readily be acrylic splattered against a gallery wall – fleeting gestures caught as concepts, the attentiveness in the reasoning or the record, not in the intensity of industriousness. These changes in the production of industry, art and knowledge have become subject to transnational ventures, mediated global experiences; in South Korea the expediency of these processes is palpable. Artists Lee Leenam and Lee Gilwoo explore these changes in the perceptions of art when they challenge and juxtapose style, medium and iconographic expectations, without compromising their artistic assiduousness. They appear to ask the question: what has postmodernism done for us?

Lee Lee-nam: Kumgang Mountain Tanballyong pass Video, 5min 30secs

Lee Leenam brings to our attention the aesthetic beauty of historically celebrated paintings of ‘traditional’ landscapes and portraits by breathing fresh life into them with the use of digital animation; adding movement and narrative to the existing motifs. In doing this he implies more generally that post modernist perspective, combined with processes of globalisation, has encouraged flexibility of spirit when it comes to viewing, utilising and creating works of art. The critical concepts of deconstructionism have brought the viewer’s awareness to the historicism of culture, encouraging artists to challenge or engage with ‘masterpieces’ and works of iconic cultural significance. Lee’s animated screens allow Van Gogh’s self portrait to smoke from a pipe, or Chong Son’s 18thC Korean true-view landscape, ‘After Rain at Mount Inwangsan,’ to be illuminated by the florescent window light of the house on the hill – no longer a lone dwelling, as the skyscrapers of Seoul glisten in the distance. Some would say that the depicted intervention of prefabricated concrete to the revered mountain-scape is discourteous, others would say ingenious, topical or realistic. And ‘postmodernism’ does this; it catalyses these questions. And Lee does this with postmodernism.

Lee Gilwoo: Dancer in nature (2009) Korean paper, soldering iron, indian ink, coloring, paste, coating. 135X170 cm

Lee Gilwoo, like Lee Leenam, interculturates genres, media, and icons between sites of history and fabrication, creating something new and pertinent within this fusion. His ‘Irrelevant Answers’ series take mass produced images of, often Western, idols and superimposes them with a layer of pointillist style dots which themselves form vistas of historical ‘Oriental’ iconography. They look like double image holograms which appear to move when you change your angle and perspective. Both of the image layers of Lee Gilwoo’s pictures confront the global audience’s expectations and preconceptions of ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ culture; they are different but they are also congruous in terms of their generated meaning. It is the two images interacting simultaneously which creates the meaning, which teases the questions concerning identities in the twenty first century and which constitutes an original aesthetic product in itself. Curiously, Lee Gilwoo combines Indian ink, colouring paste and a soldering technique to make his marks on Korean paper. There is something irreversible about this process, this branding onto the surface of the image, like Lee is claiming his ownership of Western-centric mass produced iconography whilst imprinting his own identity formations upon them. Both Lees create something inimitable, not just in the end product of their art works as they sit pretty in the gallery space but also in the meticulousness of their created process, from their ideation, through their accomplishment. There is nothing new in conceptual art or in craftsmanship but there is something exciting in these artists’ aptitude to combine the two, to encourage the viewer to re-experience and question original images within dissonant new contexts.

Featured events

• The London Korean Film Festival comes to the Barbican from 5 November, dovetailing and sometimes clashing with a Bong Joon-ho retrospective (1-14 Nov) at the South Bank. If you’re a BFI member you might have got tickets for the Q&A with Director Bong. If not, tough luck. [Update: more tickets now released]
• The London festival tours to Manchester (7-9 Nov) and Nottingham (16-18 Nov). More details on http://www.koreanfilm.co.uk/
• Nottingham Trent University is holding a series of Korean events in November – a concert on 1 November, and an exhibition of antique Korean maps till 22 November. If you want to catch up with Director Bong, he will be doing a Q&A in Nottingham on 16 November
• JUMP! returns to the Peacock, 3 – 21 November

Sport

• South Korea play Serbia at Craven Cottage (Fulham FC) at 2:30 on 18 November. Tickets from £12. Daehan Minguk.

Visual arts / antiques

• It’s Asian Art in London week till 7 November. Expect to find a lot of the oriental galleries pulling out all the stops to bring ceramics and screens to market.
• I-MYU opens up in the West End for the week, with a show of work by Lee Lee-nam and Lee Gil-woo at Alon Zakaim Fine Art
• SaLon gallery shows work by Dorothy Yoon till 22 November.
• The Earth Alert exhibition continues at the KCC until 28 November. Some great photos of Saemangeum, for those who have been following that particular issue.

Music

• Younee comes to the end of her tour with gigs at the Vortex (1 Nov) and 606 Club (8 Nov)
• Kim Duk-soo performs in Cambridge, 7-8 November

Cookery

• Kiejo Sarsfield is giving two of her fun cookery classes on 14 and 28 November

Talks

• Stephen Epstein talks about Images of North Korea in South Korean Pop Culture in Cambridge on 2 November, Between Some (Korean!) Rocks and a Large Place: Japan, China, and South Korean Popular Media in Oxford on 4 November and then South Korean Popular Culture and “Asia” in the New Millennium at SOAS on 6 November. (Choose between the latter and Kim Ki-duk’s Bi-mong at the Barbican)
• North Korean refugees talk about their experiences on 3 November in Portcullis House
• Dan Martin introduces the films of Yu Hyun-mok at the Korean Film Festival before the double-bill on 10 November
• The Korean Spirit and Culture Promotion Project will be holding an evening entitled Innovative Korea — From Past to Present at the KCC on 18 November
• Martine Robeets talks at SOAS on Korean and the Transeurasian languages: similarities that make a difference on 20 November
• James Grayson talks at the KCC on Ch’udo yebae: Christian Accommodation to Korean Ancestral Rites on 24 November
• Shin Wookhee talks at SOAS on US-North Korean Relations and the Peace System in the Korean Peninsula: A Historical Inquiry on 27 November (for a complete list of this season of SOAS seminars click here)

Further ahead

• Yi Chul-jin is back in town, and will be performing authentic Korean traditional dance at Roehampton on 2 December

Nottingham Trent University has been developing an increasing range of collaborative activities with Korean government organisations. As a consequence of this, in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Centre UK, NTU are hosting in November 2009 an exhibition of Korean art (2nd – 22nd of November 2009), together with Broadway Cinema (Nottingham), a Korean Film festival (16th – 18th of November 2009) and Korean Music concert at the Royal Centre on 1st of November 2009.

Korean Music Concert

Title: Korea’s 21st Century Music: There and Now
Venue: The Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
Concert: 5:00pm – 7:30pm Sunday 1November
Tickets: Adult £15, Student £10, Children £5
Ticket enquires:
Tel: 0115 989 5555
Fax: 0115 950 3476
Email: tickets@royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
Address:
The Royal Concert Hall
Theatre Square, Nottingham NG1 5ND

Korean Artists Exhibition

with Antique Korean Maps
Title: Mind Map, Mind the Gap
Venue: Waverley 1851 Gallery, Nottingham
Exhibition: Monday 2 November – Friday 20 November 2009
Opening times: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm
Admission: Free
Contact:
Tel: +44 (0)115 848 8234
Email: boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk
Address:
Nottingham Trent University
Waverley building, City site, Nottingham NG1 4BU

Korean Film Festival

Venue: Broadway Cinema, Nottingham
Screening dates and times:

Mother – Monday 16 November at 5.30PM, with Q&A with Director Bong Joon-ho, 7.45PM – 8.45PM
Breathless – Tuesday 17 November at 6.15PM
Dream – Wednesday 18 November at 5.45PM

Ticket enquires:
Box office: 0115 952 6611
Email: info@broadway.org.uk

Address: Broadway 14 – 18 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG1 3AL

Sponsored by
Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
Broadway Cinema, Nottingham
Korean Cultural Centre
Gugak Broadcasting System
Nottingham Trent University
LG Electronics UK

Details of November’s Global Korea Lecture at the Cultural Centre:

Tuesday 24th November 2009, 6.30pm

Subject: Ch’udo yebae: Christian Accommodation to Korean Ancestral Rites
Speaker: Professor James H. Grayson (School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield)
Venue: Multi-purpose Hall, Korean Cultural Centre

According to the 2005 Korean Household and Population Census, Christians now represent nearly 30 per cent of the Korean national population. How do we account for this rapid development from the beginnings of the Church? One major stumbling block to the acceptance of Christianity was the Christian view that Confucian ancestral rituals were idolatrous. Consequently Christians could not participate in them. Korean Protestant Christians, within 10 years of the beginning of missionary activity, had developed their own unique response – a Christian ritual substituting for Confucian rites. Prof. Grayson will give an illustrated talk describing the creation and development of this substitute rite.

Email to eunjeong.shin@kccuk.org.uk to reserve your place
Please note advanced registration is required but will not be acknowledged

The Korean Spirit and Culture Promotion Project present an evening introducing Korea’s long-standing innovation:

Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world

Date: 18th November 2009
Time: 6.15 for 6.30 pm
Location: Korean Cultural Centre UK
Grand Buildings, Northumberland Avenue, London, WC2N 5BW

Programme
A short talk will precede three documentary films, covering three representative pieces of Korean culture,
and a detailed overview of Korea’s innovative industries today:

• The Sarira Reliquary
• Sokkuram Grotto
• Koryo Buddhist Paintings
• Korea Today

The programme will finish at 8.00pm, and will be followed by traditional Korean food and beverages.

Admission to the event is free.
Booking is not required, but please RSVP to matthew.jackson@kscpp.net.

for further information please contact: 07920 713 206 / 0787 212 8611

Having being forced to think about issues concerning the presentation of Korean culture in London for the recent seminar at I-MYU, here are some additional thoughts, with maybe some more to come.

Dr Yoon Sook-ja of the Institute of Traditional Korean Food at the Thames Festival this year. But who knew she was going to be there?

The current exhibition at the Cultural Centre provides a stimulating and thought-provoking panorama of environmental issues. Present at the opening reception were two of the photographers responsible for some of the stunning and provocative images. It was a shame that the audience had no advance notice that any of the artists were going to be present, if so which, and what was important about their particular contributions.

A manhwa artist with Stephanie Kim at the Manhwa 100 opening reception. He was probably quite famous

It seems now to be almost standard practice for organisers of these events to make the investment flying artists, authors, celebrity chefs, holders of intangible cultural properties, photographers and other generators of cultural content to London to attend the opening reception. This is entirely to be encouraged. What better way of understanding what is being presented than to speak to the artist? But if an audience is not told that one of the artists will be present, they can’t prepare. And an organiser is asking a lot of an audience to come fresh to an opening, take in the work presented, marry up which work has been executed by which visiting artist, and come up with an intelligent question which contributes to the understanding of the exhibition for everyone present. Surely it is not too much to ask that, in the pre-publicity for events of this nature, the potential audience is told which artist / VIPs are going to be there and why they are important, so that we have half a chance of doing a bit of preparation beforehand and maybe, just maybe, of asking them some reasonably informed questions about their work?

Alternatively, why not ship the artists over a week after the opening event so that the audience has had a chance to digest the work a little bit and respond accordingly?

Apart from the current stimulating photography exhibition, here are some other recent examples where celebrities and eminent personages have appeared at events unannounced or with too little advance warning to permit maximum impact:

• Pansori singer and film star Oh Jeong-hae at the Food Celebration in the Banqueting House: maybe it’s part of the celebrity culture with which we are all infected, but I’m sure I would have enjoyed her performance more if I had known it was her before the performance instead of at the end of the evening;
• Korean food expert Dr Yoon Sook-ja at the Thames Festival, handing out rice cakes so graciously, who could have been the kitchen maid as far as 99.9% of the punters knew;
• The artist who attended the opening of the Manhwa 100 show, creator of the manhwa whose title I can’t remember because it wasn’t in the pre-show publicity material;
• The many eminent craftspeople who attended the opening of the Living Heritage show: they might just as well have been unemployed actors in costume, because no-one was well-enough informed to ask them sensible questions about the intangible cultural property of which they were holder.

All of these occasions, enjoyable and informative as they were, represented missed opportunities, where audience appreciation and cross-cultural understanding could have been enhanced by a few extra well-chosen words in the press release, or by a minor re-jigging of schedules to allow for a bit of preparation by the audience.

It’s always a nice surprise to see an artist or VIP at an event, and it always adds to the occasion. But it seems a shame to spend money and generate carbon emissions flying artists 5,519 miles from Seoul to London, and not make the most of that investment. There are various intangible paybacks from having the artist physically present: providing the audience with a photo opportunity, providing a brief explanation of the work, and providing an opportunity for proper engagement and discussion. All these paybacks are enhanced if the audience is prepared.

Much of this comes down to communication, a subject to which I might return in the future.

I was puzzled when I learned that Koreans regard the time bomb as a proud addition to their list of inventions. This is because I associate the time bomb with incidents involving James Bond and MacGyver, in which the emphasis is on defusing the bomb and foiling the plans of an evil terrorist.

Although it has been used by terrorists in recent times, the time bomb was not originally a terrorist weapon. It was developed during the Imjin War (the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592 – 1598) and projected into enemy camps and formations by catapult.

Yi Chang-son was the technician who devised the Pigyok Chinchollae (literally ’shaking the heavens with lightning and thunder’). The following account, written by the Prime Minister of Korea after the war, tells how it was used in the recapture of Kyungju castle.

The bomb landed on the ground in front of the enemy tent, and not knowing what it was, the enemy soldiers pressed forward in order to gain a closer look. Some moments later, the bomb exploded. There was a huge sound as the explosion shook the earth, and metal shrapnel scattered in all directions. 30 were killed instantly, and many collapsed with shock. When the survivors came back to their senses, still unable understand how it had been done, they claimed it was the doing of evil spirits. On the following morning, the enemy abandoned the castle and fled.

The Implements of War, published in Japan, also documented the power of the bomb.

During the Imjin War, cannons were used extensively by the Korean army, who poured explosives upon us and inflicted great damage. At the time, our army had only just become acquainted with cannons, and we could not match the enemy.

Here, ‘explosives’ refers to the Pigyok Chincholloe and ‘cannons’ to the Wangu mortar used to fire the bomb.

In Korea, you can see the Pigyok Chincholloe at several museums, including the Yonsei University Museum, Jinju National Museum, and The War Memorial of Korea. If you, like me, are not in Korea, here is a description.

The Pigyok Chincholloe weighed about 12kg, and was cast using pig iron. Gunpowder and metal shrapnel were placed inside. The ignition device differed from regular explosives. It consisted of a bamboo cylinder with grooves carved in a spiral fashion, and the detonating fuse wound around the indentations. The time-delay before detonation was determined by the length of the fuse: the fuse was wound 10 times for a swift explosion, and 15 times if a longer delay was required.

(Left) Pigyok Chincholloe, 16th century, The War Memorial of Korea
(Right) Diagram of the Pigyok Chincholloe

It sounds to me like the sort of thing that MacGyver would have been proud to build.

Sharp-eyed fans of the BBC TV comedy news quiz Have I Got News For You will have spotted a still from Nanta just before the closing credits in the show which aired on 17 October.

Just after the final “caption competition”, the presenter is allowed two final illustrated one-liners. And the show’s researchers had unearthed a scene from the hit Korean stage show Nanta, which played in the Rose Theatre Kingston earlier this summer.

And the quip which went with it?

And I leave you with news that during an episode of Kitchen Nightmares the head chef of the Cantonese Garden regrets a heated exchange with Gordon Ramsay.

Clearly the First Lady’s ambition to put Korean cuisine on the global map has a way to go yet.

Notice of a solo exhibition by Dorothy Yoon at SaLon gallery:

Dorothy Yoon:
“8 Of Heroines”
14th October – 22nd November 2009
SaLon Gallery, 82 Westbourne Grove London W2 5RT
http://salongallery.co.uk/

SaLon Gallery presents Dorothy Yoon’s London debut solo exhibition entitled ‘8 Of Heroines’ featuring the latest series of Yoon’s photographic work and a premier of an artist film entitled ‘Fantastic Peach Island’ from 14 October until 22 November 2009.

Growing up in Korea, Yoon dreamed of being one of the blonde haired, blue-eyed beauties she admired on the covers of Western magazines. As an attempt to live out her fantasy she creates light-hearted and heavily stylised images of young Asian girls enhanced to fit these criteria. By combining the extremely different Eastern and Western cultures in her art she attempts to make her audience question their preconceptions. In addition, Yoon’s work is intricate in detail with many layers of meaning. Months of research into every aspect ensure that nothing you see is without significance.

Yoon presents us with eight blonde fairy tale heroines from the stories of the Brother’s Grimm, including the characters: Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Frog Prince, and Rumplestiltskin. Yoon specifically chose the number eight because in the Taoist faith it is seen to represent rebirth and relaxation as God rested on the eighth day after creating the world. This mixing of Western culture and Eastern religion is the axis of Yoon’s work.

The landscape of the series is based upon an old Korean painting dating back to 1447 representing a Utopian peach forest as seen in a dream by a Korean Prince, an ideal setting for the heroines of our Western Fairytales. It was created on the complex 3D Max computer programme onto which each story is layered on top. Within the panorama we are taken on many journeys, for example, through the seasons (spring to spring) and a single day (morning to evening). Also geographically as we start with a simple village and are led through mountain ranges, oceans and finally settle in a Utopian futuristic city.

All of the costumes were designed by Yoon and are based on traditional Korean dress and fashioned from authentic fabric. As with every aspect of her work each tiny detail has been thought about and holds its own meaning; for example, each earring is symbolic to each model, Gretel has a gingerbread house and Rapunzel the Eiffel Tower.

Eagle eyed viewers will notice tiny aeroplanes worked into the accessories of each girl. Yoon explains that as a child she was fascinated with planes as they were the key to making dreams come true; flying was a way to access unexplored worlds where her blonde haired blue-eyed fantasies were reality. Each character is surrounded by miniature images of the secondary characters from their specific tale. Yoon has fun with these giving them masks to add to the drama, for example the Little Mermaid’s prince is Prince William while Rapunzel’s parents are David and Victoria Beckham.

Even the animals are utilized in this fashion, Red Riding Hood’s wolves are wearing Pokemon outfits and the three little pigs are presented as Charlie’s Angels. Again, Yoon is morphing together the popular culture of the two worlds.

Nature is a prominent feature in Yoon’s work, mainly through beautifully detailed flowers. But nothing is arbitrary as each single blossom holds its own meaning. For example, a peony flowers in spring but also its luscious layers of petals signify the bringing of wealth. In addition, the lotus flower is important within Buddhism as it shows that beauty can be born out of dirty water. Artwork of European Old Masters from the French palace of Fontainebleau (c.1528) was also of great inspiration to Yoon. Months of research into the significance of posture and hand gestures within these paintings are evident in the characters of her work.

“It’s not my kind of thing. Why don’t you have a listen?” So said a well-connected jazz buff to me a couple of months ago. He happened to have a promotional copy of Younee’s debut Western album. “She’s coming to London later this year to do some gigs at Pizza Express.” I was happy to get advance notice of a Korean musician coming to London, and to hear what she might sound like. So he sent it to me, before it appeared on Amazon.

The album was True to You. I put the disk in the CD player as soon as it arrived, and immediately knew what he meant. I wasn’t sure it was my kind of thing either. I didn’t know what to make of it. “Jazz-infused pop” is how it is described on one website. I couldn’t put it in a particular box. There was pop, rock, some jazz, a bit of boogie woogie thrown in… I had it on in the background while I was at my computer and when it finished I was happy to continue blogging in silence.

Then something strange started happening.

The tunes kept going through my head. And the tunes were clever, sometimes doing things you didn’t expect, like seeming to cut the final four bar phrase a bar short, or inserting a quirky chord.

My interest was piqued. And as this was a Korean artist I thought I’d go the extra mile and listen to the album again.

Whereas with some disks you listen to it again and still you don’t connect, with this one you are converted, and the songs felt like they had been part of me for ages. It’s strange how if you can’t put things in a box, can’t link it to something you’ve heard before, sometimes you’re not prepared to give it a try. With this disk, it’s worth a second go, and much more.

What strikes one most about the collection of songs is the way they radiate warmth. So many songs today seem to be written in the minor key, but in this collection the major is equally prominent. Even the slower ballad Home to You, written after a break-up with a lover, has a poignant nostalgia rather than mawkish sentimentality – and combines the use of major and minor keys.

Younee performing True to You with solo keyboard

This is an international album, designed for an international audience (Younee already has a domestic name for herself back home), and has an international line-up: a Korean on keyboard and vocals, and a range of UK-based musicians including Richard Niles on guitar, who has worked with a number of the big names in pop and jazz. The album was composed over a long series of Skype calls, with Younee in Seoul and Niles in London, and this spirit of collaboration adds to the sense that something special is happening here.

The results are, in the publicity jargon, “beyond category”, but will appeal to a wide audience. These are tunes which stick in your mind without driving you out of your mind.

Some might find the album very occasionally over-engineered, with twirls and tweaks of instrumentation which detract from the music itself. But this is a matter of personal preference having heard some of the numbers performed just with solo keyboard. The disk drops marks for an occasional lyric which would be better off in a Chas n Dave number (“Things were going pear-shaped”) and its one use (in East-West) of the “it’s-the-last-verse-so-let’s-shift-it-up-a-key” cliché that bedevils so many third rate Eurovision and Korean R&B compositions. The Kwak / Niles combination is better than that. But these are minor quibbles which do not detract from the quality of the collection as a whole.

True to You is officially launched at Pizza Express Soho tonight. I wish I could be there, but I’ve suggested to the well-connected jazz buff in question that he might want to go along instead. Having seen Younee perform with just a keyboard in both formal and informal settings, I know she’s gonna be a blast with a live band.

Jennifer Barclay, author of Meeting Mr Kim, reviews Gong Myoung at the Chichester Festival Theatre, 12 October 2009

He enters the stage wearing an oversized orange hat and sunglasses, carrying a toolbox and a walking stick. From the toolbox he takes out a saw and a drill, saws off the end of the walking stick, drills holes in it, and hey presto, it’s a flute – which he plays beautifully. He invites a woman from the audience to dance, then puts a rose in the end of the flute before handing it to her.

The lively Gong Myoung sign CDs after the Chichester gig

Gong Myoung, Korea’s latest musical export, are four good-looking young guys in jeans, two with spiky hair, two with flicky fringes, all with great smiles and itchy fingers.

If you can bash it and make a noise, you can bet Gong Myoung will make it sing. They create mood and harmony hitting a stone block with hollow bamboo pipes, or playing an empty water cooler as a drum. They have the humour and high energy of Noridan, who also recycled unlikely objects to make a fabulous beat at the Dano Festival in Trafalgar Square last year. I’m hearing a South American dance beat as guitar meets maracas and pan pipes. Horns and a didgeridoo conjure wild horses. Then the tempo slows right down with guitar and flute.

These are highly skilled and versatile musicians. Anyone who’s seen Dulsori will remember the two-ended drum, and Gong Myoung show breathtaking timing, speed, passion, stamina and almost terrifying force when they play the seoljanggu, recreating the ebb and flow of a storm, their hands flying from one end of the drum to the other in a blur as they reach the climax.

Gong Myoung play janggu

But don’t worry if you don’t know a thing about Korean music, if you don’t know your jing from your janggu. In case you hadn’t gathered, Gong Myoung mix traditional music with innovative, contemporary sounds to create a style that’s highly entertaining. They encourage plenty of clapping along from the audience, and their love of music and sense of fun is totally infectious.

Koreans have been perfecting the art of non-verbal shows, such as Jump, which tour New York and London with no language difficulties. But a few words always help connection with the audience, and Gong Myoung stole our hearts with ‘Hello! Thank you! I love you!’ before giving an exhilarating encore. This tour of seven cities in southeast England was Gong Myoung’s first UK visit, thanks to Roots Around the World, but they already wowed audiences in Spain during Seville’s Womad festival last year, so let’s hope they’ll be back before long.

Notice of a solo show by Kwon Kisoo, whose work was recently seen at the Moon Generation exhibition.

KWON KISOO “From Deep Black”
Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ
8 – 31 October 2009
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-2

Born in 1972, Kwon Kisoo trained in classical Korean painting at Hongik University. His paintings – graphic fantasias hatched with technicolor wands of bamboo, popping with plum blossoms, or expanses of brilliant monochrome – are inhabited by a modern icon of his own creation: an alter ego named Dongguri.

A line-drawn figure with an invariable expression, Dongguri has neither gender nor identity and often appears with an ‘emoticon’ army of similarly ambivalent smiley-faced clones. Kwon frequently places this comic-like protagonist within scenes that, though exploiting a graphic lexicon and characterised by pared-down parameters, are discernible to the viewer as traditional Korean landscapes. In creating this temporal confusion, Kwon instigates a dialogue between tradition and modernity, alluding at once to his characters’ historical displacement and the impossibility of contextual and cultural erasure.

Though Dongguri appears as a simple motif, the character’s allusions to the prevailing hegemonies of globalised commercial society, pictured by Kwon as a community of identikit subjects where the difference is flattened out and aberrations expunged, bestow complex narratives on the work.

Line drawing manifests a particular economy of form, and in depicting his character in this way, Kwon enters Dongguri into an inventory of signs. As citizens of a global community built upon the great bastion of branding, we expect signs to deliver a fundamental utilitarian correctness. The desire to rationalise the human form has preoccupied artists for generations, and Kwon carries forward this enterprise by blurring the line (though never literally) between art and mass production, the animate figure and the abstracted signified.

The artist’s experiments with codes and the conventions of representation are deeply saturated by the influence of his culture. Whist the branch of linguistics know as semiotics is considered to be a Western invention, Asian cultures have long exploited the activity of condensing meanings, textual or otherwise, into singular symbols or hieroglyphs. As a pictogram of Global mis-identity, Dongguri’s rudimentary form is loaded with the disclosures of difference: the icon of an artist fluent in the language of profound simplicity.

Kwon Kisoo lives and works in Soeul. He had participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, the Busan Biennale and the 5th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. The show at Flowers is his first European solo exhibition to date.

• I find I’ve won a prize in a B-boy competition, without even entering. Bet you never knew I was a top popper #
• @tawalker A final polish, and another 140 words, and it will probably scrape a 2:2. I've sent it in now. Too late to do anything more. in reply to tawalker #
• Don't forget the Bong Joon-ho retrospective at the BFI, early November. Barking Dogs is a classic. Q&A already sold out http://bit.ly/10lmmi #
• Thoroughly civilised evening with Margaret Drabble at the KCC last night. And Nice to see Jen Barclay back from her travels #
• Yellow Earth Theatre: wAve by Sung Rno at Greenwich Theatre, 21-24 October. “a generously inventive play” (NY Times): http://bit.ly/CTgdn #
• At the Venice Biennale: Koo Jeong-a's installations are so "imperceptible" that I can't see them. Maybe she has uninstalled them #
• Very appropriate that Haegue Yang's work in the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is a room full of – errr – Venetian blinds. And fans. #
• RT @Indiefulrok Yup, that's me in the HeraldBiz. In a hanbok a bit too small while drinking tea the traditional Korean way. http://u8grq.tk #

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There is a story that when the nascent Korean shipping industry was attempting to raise capital, Barclays asked what the Koreans could provide in the way of security for the loan. The Korean executive is said to have taken a 500 won bill from his pocket, which featured the turtle ship of Yi Sun-sin, and offered it as proof that the venture would be a success. The rest, as they say, is history.

Anyone who has spent some time in Korea will probably have seen a model of the ‘Kobukson’, known as the world’s first ironclad warship.

Although the most feted aspect of Yi Sun-sin’s defensive campaign against the Japanese invaders, it is only a detail, albeit a crucial one. His campaign was waged without a single defeat, or the loss of a single ship. He had to contend with great odds in battles, at one stage faced with over three hundred enemy vessels, compared to his own fleet of thirteen. Not only this, but his enemies at home eventually succeeded in having him imprisoned and tortured for treason. Throughout all, he maintained a steady course.

His stability was based on the fact that his actions were for his country, rather than his own career. But to succeed in such adverse conditions required ingenuity as well as bravery. At one time, when short of funds, he boiled sea water and sold the salt to merchants. The Turtle Ship is perhaps the most spectacular expression of this ingenuity. It was not the sole invention of Yi – a number of people contributed to it.

What made the ‘Turtle Ship’ such an important weapon? There were two reasons: superior fire-power and structural design.

The roof was covered with iron spikes to prevent the enemy from boarding.
Cannons were placed at every angle on the ship, and the ‘dragon’s head’ emitted smoke to provide cover and distraction.
The ship was well-suited for ramming, as it was sturdier than the enemy ships thanks to the red pine timber and the use of wooden nails which expanded as they absorbed seawater.
The enhanced structural integrity also enabled it to carry heavier cannons than the enemy, with greater range.

As with other Korean traditions, innovation on the sea has carried through to the modern age, with Korean shipbuilders currently leading the world market, both in construction of vessels, where they account for 40% of the total market and over 70% in the high-end sectors (LNG carriers, drillships etc.) and also naval constructions such as floating and ‘on ground’ docks.