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``Discoplan'' by Kim Sang-don comprises of photographs and videos of the Dongducheon community. / Courtesy of Insa Art Space
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By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
After a run at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York last May, the ``Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision'' returns to Seoul.
The Dongducheon project, organized by Insa Art Space of the Arts Council Korea, is an artistic and critical look at the military camp town of the same name located in Gyeonggi Province.
Dongducheon is where several U.S. military bases such as Camp Casey and Camp Hovey are located. It is seen as a ``place where complex and contradictory national characteristics of modern Korea, concomitant with the political and economic changes are condensed.''
The Dongducheon project is composed of an exhibition, workshop, symposium, lecture and film screenings at the Insa Art Space. It features 12 new works of four artists, Kim Sang-don, Koh Seung-wook, Rho Jae-oon and siren eun young jung, that were created over a two-year period.
Originally shown as part of ``Museum as a Hub'' program of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York from May 8-July 6, the exhibit will be shown in Seoul for the first time this month.
``As the first attempt to locate Dongducheon in the structure of art production and cultural discourses, this project wishes to evoke diverse perspectives and discussions on similar `neighborhood' regions, and support local awareness and will to envision the future of Dongducheon,'' Insa Art Space said.
The artists visited Dongducheon several times over the last two years, as they tried to get a deeper sense of the community, its people and the issues confronting it today.
As someone who has always been interested in women's issues, siren eun young jung decided to delve into the plight of foreign women working in night clubs around Dongducheon.
In an interview with The Korea Times, Jung said most of the women were from the Philippines, and usually misled into working as entertainers but end up in clubs as sex workers. These women are reportedly preferred by the American soldiers because they can speak English.
 In her work ``The Narrow Sorrow,'' the main image shows a small and narrow doorway, in between two night clubs, that leads to the club workers' lodgings. She recorded the haunting sounds of the Filipino club workers chattering in the streets, singing in bars and praying in a local Catholic church. These sounds are a symbol of ``defying will, resistance and survival'' of these women.
``Discoplan,'' which features videos and photographs, is the culmination of Kim's research-based and community-oriented project in Dongducheon. Kim's works operate at the intersection of art and cultural activism, as he uses the workshop as a platform to provoke dialogue about the issues within the community.
On the other hand, Rho's ``Bite The Bullet'' is a web-publishing project where he used images and sound from the web, and appropriated these into his own narrative. The title refers to an expression used by military surgeons to soldiers who had to undergo operations without anesthesia during the war.
Koh's ``Driveling Mouth'' is a fascinating video based on photo archives and literary texts. He addresses ``issue of the nation-state's desire to project a certain collective narrative onto forming and representing its identity and as an individual's attempt to escape from its grip.''
Insa Art Space is the visual arts institution managed by the Arts Council Korea, the largest public agency supporting arts and culture in the country. It is located near Changdeokgung Palace.
The exhibit runs through Aug. 24. Visit www.insaartspace.or.kr or www.arko.or.kr.
cathy@koreatimes.co.kr
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한국과 일본 국가부도위험 비슷해졌다
