Video art explores freedom

Clemens von Wedemeyer's "Metropolis — Report from China" (2004-2006)
/ Courtesy of Utopian Days and the artist

By Kwon Mee-yoo

A group of 24 international artists express their thoughts and ideas on freedom at "Utopian Days," a video art festival at the Totla Museum of Contemporary Art in Pyeongchang-dong, Seoul.

Curated by Haily Grenet, Martin Schulze and Yang Jeong-sun, video art displays explore the subject of freedom in various ways, starting from a footage of an artist dancing in front of a blank billboard (Filippo Minelli's "You might call it a crisis but i's silence to me") to another artist burning his clothes until he gets naked (He Yunchang's "Nirvana Flesh").

Grenet said they picked the theme "freedom" because it is not something definitive, but a food for thought. "We don't provide answer, but seek and research about freedom," the French curator said.

The exhibition is packed with neat ideas from young curators. Instead of old-fashioned name plate, they placed QR codes next to each artist's work, connecting to the website introducing the artist.

Some of the notable works in the exhibit includes Ham Yang-ah's "Tourism in Communism," which documents a touristic visit to North Korea's Mt. Geumgang, when it was opened for South Korean visitors in the early 2000s, in a poetic way.

French artist Cyprien Gaillard presented his 2007 work "Desniansky Raion." In this video, Gaillard captured a happening at a parking lot in St. Petersburg, Russia. Two groups of people in red and blue shirts each clashi in flurry of fists, but their movements are rather rhythmical with raw energy.

Andres Serrano's "Signs of the Time" (2013)
/ Courtesy of Utopian Days and the artist

"Welcome to Xijing ― Xijing Olympics" is a comedic derision to the international fever for the Olympics. The 36-minute video, created by Xijing Men, a project group of Gim Hong-sok from Korea, Chen Shaoxiong from China and Tsuyoshi Ozawa from Japan, introduces a fictional city of Xijing through peculiar games such as football using watermelon or boxing match at a massage parlour.

Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh's "One Year Performance" shows the artist's dedication to the work, in which he clocked in at every single hour, 24 times a day, throughout a whole year. It means the artist could not leave the sign-in machine over an hour during the year under extreme psychophysical stress.

Kacey Wong's "The Real Culture Bureau" offers an interesting view to corrupt government officials in Hong Kong and China. The artist organized an imaginary Pink Party and gave away fake money on the street as bribe. Visitors can take fake Hong Kong art dollars displayed with the video.

The last piece on display is Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed's "The Sea," in which the artist writes the phrase "politically correct" on a floating board on the sea. "I think it represents artists in this contemporary society and why they exist," Grenet said.

Utopian Days ― Freedom at the Total Museum wraps up this weekend, but Grenet and her colleagues want to make it more than one-time event. "Ultimately, we want to make it a traveling exhibition. The second edition of Utopian Days might be offered at a different location and we are open for collaboration with other institutions," Grenet said.

For more information, visit www.utopiandays.com.

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