Baeknyeongdo, 2014, 2-channel video, color, sound, 7min 13sec
The Incheon Art Platform, an affiliated organization of the Incheon Culture and Arts Center, began a “Peace Arts Residency Project” in 2014. And one of the big projects was to turn Baeknyeong Hospital, the only private medical facility on Baeknyeong Island, a border area for over 50 years, into a complex art space to heal the pain of division. Baeknyeong Hospital is also where the bodies of some soldiers were placed during the sinking of the Cheonan warship.
I stayed at the Baeknyeong Island Peace Arts Residency for about a month in the summer of 2014 During that time I met grandmother Yeongsook, who lives in the neighborhood of Baeknyeong Hospital. Her husband worked as a spy for the South when he was young. He was a man of national merit, and after he passed away, the spouse can live as a man of national merit. The Memorial Day was a very big event on Baeknyeong Island, and Yeongsook asked me to go along. As the wreath-laying ceremony was almost over, a man in shabby clothes appeared and went to offer wreaths, and the government officials present seemed very nervous. Yeongsook told me, “He is a famous war-hero (aka. Baeknyeong Ghost), but he has lived a difficult life because his leg was injured in battle.” I asked him to tell me something about that time, but he kept saying nothing so I could hear nothing from him.
Actually, there is no word as nationalistic as “peace”. What is “nation” to the grandmothers of Baeknyeong Island? The video Beaknyeong Island depicts the daily lives, memories, and longings that the grandmothers have not let go of as the weft. They live dealing with the wounds inflicted by an unknown entity called the state, and cannot be healed for the rest of their lives. The warp depicts a scene in which I assumes the grandmother's body and performs a ritual. I created a self-contained video work.
** process
1) By gently touching the bodies of the grandmothers through hair dyeing, foot massage, and facial makeup, we provide an opportunity for the bodies to directly understand and empathize with each other.
2) We ask the grandmothers to bring or take pictures of items that can show their stories, or organize the images they take during their visit so that they can be included in the video work.
3) Overall, the video I represented on behalf of the grandmother and the images shown directly by the grandmothers are in sync with each other to form a series.
4) The process in which I and the grandmothers go through a ritual together is carefully captured and reconstructed.
Grandma's words - subtitle
It's close. The boats come in faster from here.
But this is just a place where everything goes into the north, including the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh.
So, when the armistice was signed, Baeknyeong Island was guided and fed, and there were many islands, even small ones, and I gave them all up to work.
Now, you take all the ragweed leaves and sleep on them, dig a hole there, and when water comes out of it, you use it to cook with, so you eat and sleep in the mountains at night, and then you go to the neighborhood and spy again, and it takes 40 days, and the beginning of the 40th day they came in. They spent 40 days in the mountains.
If you shoot a gun, you shoot from far away, so people who work in the fields died while they come in and ate, and the people's army dies while they stay there, and if you bomb them with an airplane, they die, so everyone dies, and if you meet people within 10 miles or 5 miles, then there is peace. In the old days, there were a couple of people living in Dumujin, Baekryeongdo. They all died.