SPACE April 2024 (No. 677)
Installation view of Traveling of Gap by Seo Minjeong
Locality and glocal. These words point to a problem that has been recognised for a long time, but are they just words without either a clear policy or a plan for change? It seems that these words do not adequately represent the lofty dreams and expectations that were set in motion when they first appeared. The exhibition ‘This Is Not Just Local: Tactical Practices’ held at Busan Museum of Contemporary Art raises awareness of this issue and asks the question of what local is, and what we might be doing wrong. Each of the seven subtopics is called a ‘tactic’, which implies that it is a technique that utilises gaps and blind spots while accepting existing discourses. The exhibition captures a mindset of moving forward, reflecting on the past journey of locality while striving for new directions. Under this mindset, various artists based in Busan participated, each attempting to explore and redefine the meaning of locality in their own way.
The exhibition saw 51 artists (teams) participating, with diverse formats such as game media, painting, film, and performance. Immanence, the work of Yang Jazoo, has both elements of painting and sculpture, while the installation work Traveling of Gap, by Seo Minjeong, encourages audience participation. ‘Tactics 2: Embodied memory’ is about the interaction between memory and place. Memory is depicted as a chaotic collection of fragments intertwined with the past, present, and future, while place can be expressed through various senses. Immanence, in this section, is a work that involves transferring various traces collected from the streets, such as peels from the exterior of buildings, wallpaper from vacant houses, interior materials, and worn mosquito nets cut from the windows of random houses, onto canvas. To minimise the manipulation of the traces from the streets according to the artist’s intentions, a method of solidifying with resin was chosen. The artist steps back and allows the objects to become the subjects, thus making the connections between objects, memories, and places more distinct.
Seo Minjeong’s Traveling of Gap, featured in ‘Tactics 5: Anxiety–Coordination–Coexistence’, is an artwork that consists of four swing chairs suspended from a 10m-high ceiling by chains. The installed swing chairs face different directions, allowing anyone to sit and swing easily, but it is challenging to move around, with the other chairs blocking the way. Proper coordination between those on the swings is necessary. This swinging symbolises locality. Without any action, one cannot swing. Even if one moves alone, the other cannot swing. There must be a collective coordination in order to make swinging possible. Movement and the attempt to coordinate induces stress and entails risks, but swinging is an essential action. The artist emphasises the acceptance of conflicts by individual subjects and highlights the locality created through coordination with the surroundings. According to this perspective, locality does not belong to any single entity, but is a coexistent one, and that is the direction we should pursue. The exhibition continues until July 7.
Exhibition view ‘This Is Not Just Local: Tactical Practices’
