Nathalie Boseul SHIN

Joon HO JEON
Kira KIM
Tae Jung KIM
Riyas KOMU
Yongbaek LEE
Ligyung
MOON Hyungmin
Sun Tag NOH
Jae Oon RHO
Yangachi

Nathalie Boseul SHIN developed her contribution to the exhibition in co-operation with the MIDDLE COREA project, a newly founded group of visual artists and curators. Starting from the reality of a divided Korea, the project focuses on the fiction of an alternative, ideal state space. The demilitarised zone (DMZ), two kilometres wide on each of the two divided Korean state territories, serves as a model: as an unpopulated, supposedly ideology-free and ecologically intact space, the DMZ appears to be a tabula rasa and ideal projection point for such a new draft. In the form of videos, digital photographs and online works there evolve artistic visions of MIDDLE COREA, that transform this border region – effaced from official consciousness – into a utopian living space.

Works and Projects

Joon Ho JEON, The White House, 2005, Computer animation

Hardly any other currency in the world is identified as strongly with its country of origin and all the projections of freedom, individuality and prosperity as the American dollar. This equation is the starting point of JEON’s animation, that furnishes an ironic commentary on the hypocritical self-perception of the USA as the origin of freedom and democracy.

Ligyung, MIDDLE COREA Flag, 2005 - 2006

The flag of MIDDLE COREA sees itself as a changeable, open image of the representation of a virtual territory. Currently, the emblem is based among other things on a photo of the sky of the DMZ (demilitarized zone). At each new presentation of MIDDLE COREA in future, the sky of the previous exhibition site will appear on the flag.

MOON Hyungmin, Unknown City, 2005 – 2006, Digital C-prints

The series of photos titled Unknown City is based on pictures from such cities as Tokyo, San Francisco and New York, from which all elements of writing (advertising slogans and brand names on advertising boards, street names, etc.) have been removed by means of digital image processing. We see places that are, on the one hand, free of ideological messages but in which, on the other hand, it is practically impossible to get one’s bearings. This ambivalent emptiness raises the question to what extent “neutral” ideology-free territories are possible and conceivable.

Tae Joon KIM, Nathalie Boseul SHIN and others, MIDDLE COREA Manual, 2005

The MIDDLE COREA project was created in 2005 on the basis of discussions between philosophers, artists and theorists regarding the division of Korea. This led to the idea of conceiving an alternative state model. The MIDDLE COREA manual sees itself as an offer to transfer this model to other contexts, even though it was created against the background of a very specific local situation.

Riyas KOMU, People, 2005 – 2006, Oil on fabric

Riyas KOMU presents fictitious portraits of citizens of MIDDLE COREA. Their ethnicity and origin is deliberately ambiguous and thus underlines the flexibility and openness of the nationality concept of MIDDLE COREA.

Yongbaek LEE, Angel Soldier, 2005, Multimedia installation

In a variety of media, the installation deals with forms of presence. The principle of military camouflage is inverted into a play of overlapping levels of representation and reality. By combining seemingly irreconcilable sign systems – of art, computer technology and the military – the installation proposes a new definition of artistic practices: in the sense of a strategic process that replicates and ramifies itself in infinite processes of reproduction and transformation. Like the soldiers who disappear almost completely in their camouflage as artificial flowers, MIDDLE COREA also sees itself as a utopian model that ultimately disappears in its gradual ramifications within real life worlds.

Sun Tag NOH, Smells like the division of the Korean peninsula, Pigment print, 2003

The USA is called Mi-Kuk in South Korea, which means “beautiful country”. In reality, the role and perception of the USA in South Korea is far more ambivalent than this name would suggest. First welcomed as liberators from Japanese dependence, the USA subsequently above all pursued its own strategic intentions with its military presence during the Korea War. As a result, North and South Korea became pawns of the ideologies of the USA and the UDSSR in the 1950s. Even today, 10,000 US soldiers have been stationed in South Korea. Murder and rape by US soldiers have led to numerous demonstrations opposing their presence.
Sun Tag NOH’s photos convey the ambivalence of the Korean-American relationship.

Jae Oon RHO

– 3Open Up (Factory/Fire/E-3 Sentry AEW), 2001, Internet

3Open Up consists of three picture stories that focus on the division of Korea and the resultant unconscious fears and projections. The pictures show everyday scenes full of latent menace. The view of a Korean farm, for example, awakens associations of war and the atomic bomb. The view through the telescope on a viewing platform suggests an omnipresent fire. The star on the U.S. Air Force fighter plane is suggestive of the national flag of North Korea. A secret conspiracy?

– 3Stand Up (North/South/Future), 2004, Internet

3Stand Up presents views of three similar groups of buildings located at different sites in North and South Korea and in the USA. One is an uninhabited artificial town built in North Korea on the border to South Korea, one is a factory site in the South Korean town of Hasung, and one is a picture found on the Internet of Pikes Peak Park in Colorado Springs from the 1970s.

– Evil's Hearts, 2005, Internet

In his work, RHO plays with architectural metaphors of “evil” – from Albert Speer’s design for the Reich Chancellery to a stadium erected under General Park Jung Hee (President of South Korea after a military putsch in 1961), to the Death Star from the science fiction film Star Wars. The virtual journey into these buildings is at the same time an immersion in the psychology of totalitarian power.

Yangachi

– MIDDLE COREA - Website, 2005, http://www.middlecorea.net

Official website of the virtual state of MIDDLE COREA with background information on the history, territory and inhabitants.

– MIDDLE COREA Pass, 2005 - 2006, Internet

MIDDLE COREAN nationality is not awarded but can be freely adopted. On this website, anyone can register as an official citizen of MIDDLE COREA and immediately print out his/her passport.

Yangachi

– South Korea Robot, 2005, 13 digital photographs

The series of photos is based on pictures of construction cranes in the centre of Seoul, that the artist subsequently heavily manipulated so as to make them appear as robotic creatures. The “boomtown” Seoul is a constant building site. Cranes are so omnipresent that people hardly even notice them any more – just as little as the social changes caused by the ideologies of boundless expansion.