SPACE August 2023 (No. 669)
‘Museum is Everywhere’ is a public art project that highlights valuable places in the city of Hwaseongsi. While it’s common for public projects like this to be led by local governments, ‘Museum is Everywhere’ is led by Museum SODA, a private art museum in Hwaseong-si. Why would a private art museum lead a public project? This interview with Chang Dongsun (principal, Museum SODA) explores the motivations, processes, and methods behind ‘Museum is Everywhere’.
Installation view of Faraway: man made, nature made by Diagonal Thoughts
interview Chang Dongsun business director, Museum SODA × Park Jiyoun
Park Jiyoun (Park): ‘Museum is Everywhere’ (2021 –) is similar to ‘Seoul is a Museum’ (2016 –), a public art project in Seoul, in so far as content and pavilions have added to a specific site. However, this project is distinctive as the theme is travel.
Chang Dongsun (Chang): This reflects the characteristics of Hwaseong-si. To the east of Hwaseong-si is the Dongtan new town, and it is rare for citizens of Dongtan to travel to the west. As one way of solving problems such as division in the community, we chose the theme of traveling while planning ‘Museum is Everywhere’. By selecting travel-worthy places in both the west and east, the museum encourages interaction between local citizens. For visitors to enjoy the venue and its surroundings as if they were traveling, the Notion (online document management application) page for ‘Museum is Everywhere’ also recommends other travel destinations and cultural spaces such as restaurants and bookstores close to the site.
Park: ‘Museum is Everywhere’ highlights nine places, including Gojeong-ri Dinosaur Egg Fossil Field, Uemdo, and the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang. Accommodating such a wide range of historical, natural, and architectural sites, what were your selection criteria?
Chang: There were a lot of internal discussions and recommendations from an advisory board of geologists, ecologists, historians, local architects, and museum curators. Places with historical narratives or local significance were prioritised, but it was important that they had valuable content.
Park: What was the reason for including E Ilhoon’s Silence of Mercy Religious House, which is closed to the public?
Chang: Originally, sites that would be open to the public were included, but the Silence of Mercy Religious House was an exception. This was due to our desire to make Hwaseong-si aware of E Ilhoon’s work. When a site is publicly owned, it is easier to coordinate a visit, but when it is privately owned, like the Silence of Mercy Religious House, it can be difficult because the owner’s decision must be respected. In some cases, they are removed from the list of sites as it’s too difficult to negotiate with the owners. The Silence of Mercy Religious House is the only instance whereby we were permitted to introduce it to the public but not to open it to visitors.
Park: ‘Museum is Everywhere’ sometimes plays a relatively passive role, introducing the sites, and sometimes plays more of an active role, introducing interventions such as setting up pavilions. It seems to approach each location with a different attitude.
Chang: There are places where the discovery alone is enough, and there are places where the synergy of involving artists can be fruitful. Uemdo was the latter. Uemdo has its value to be designated as a geopark, but it didn’t have many points of interest. So, we added a pavilion. We think about how we can provide different experiences of space in a friendly way. That is the reason for the collaboration with Hwaseong Ecotour. Originally, Hwaseong Ecotour was conducting a guided tour of Uemdo, so we planned to guide the pavilion as well. The architect personally explained the pavilion to the guide, and now the guide introduces the pavilion to visitors.
Park: Not only did Hwaseong Ecotour, but also Hwaseong-si Council for Sustainable Development, collaborate here. The fact that the citizens of Hwaseong-si participate in the project is in line with the purpose of ‘Museum is Everywhere’, powered by the intention to connect local citizens.
Chang: Public art is linked with visitor participation, and there is a limit to which we can encourage participation in the preparation of everything and requiring visitors to watch. It’s also possible to guide a participation naturally by using a format of engaging people with each other, but we normally prefer the format by which artists and citizens create things together. Rather than one-dimensional participation, I thought it would be better for citizens to participate in line their own wishes and expertise, perhaps sharing something they are good at.Hwaseong Ecotour and Hwaseong-si Council for Sustainable Development conduct city tours by guiding visitors through areas of ecological interest and planning travel programmes, respectively. Being a guide is a way of demonstrating their expertise. In addition, there are cases where art is perceived as unfriendly to the general public, and I think we have helped them to feel more familiar with the art and architecture by engaging citizens in a new way and introducing art to them in their own language.
Park: In 2021, when just began, the sites were introduced by guided tours and audio guides. In 2022, pavilions were installed. What was the reason for the change in presentation?
Chang: Pandemic broke when we were conducting guided tours, so we switched to audio guides as they did not necessitate any physical contact or proximity to others. Then, in 2022, we were supported by Arko Public Arts Project (hereinafter Arko), which allowed us to conceive of the pavilions. Pavilions are in free and flexible forms that do not have specific functions or purposes. Its ambiguity opens up a variety of artistic interpretations, inviting serendipitous discoveries, different behaviors, and communication. We were confident in our ability to handle the pavilion project, as we had worked on many of them at Museum SODA.
Installation views of Resting Place like Trains and Carriages by Kiljong Sangga
Park: The first pavilion is Kiljong Sangga’s Resting Place like Trains and Carriages (2022), which traveled to three urban parks in Dongtan for three days. What was the reason for choosing parks in Dongtan for the first pavilion, rather than the sites of ‘Museum is Everywhere’?
Chang: Resting Place Like Trains and Carriages is more of a prequel to the pavilion project. It was meant to promote the pavilion project ‘Museum is Everywhere’. Dongtan is the most populous neighbourhood in Hwaseong-si, and parks are the places where people gather. What’s interesting about Dongtan is that people only move around their apartment buildings. For example, when they go to the park, they only go to the park in front of their apartment. When thinking about how to create more interaction in this situation, the idea of a mobile pavilion came up. The idea is to move around the park and to intentionally create a new flow. Because it was mobile, we approached a team that deals with products and furniture rather than architecture. To move it, it had to be small enough to fit in a car, light enough to move, and combinable enough to look slightly different in each park. We ended up working with Kiljong Sangga, who understood these needs.
Park: Then, Faraway: man made, nature made (2023, hereinafter Faraway) by Diagonal Thoughts (principal, Kim Sara) in Uemdo and KOON-NI by NAMELESS Architecture (co-principals, Na Unchung, Yoo Sorae) in Koon-ni Memorial Garden in front of Maehyang-ri Peace Memorial Hall were installed. What requests were made to the architects beforehand, and how was it realised?
Chang: Essentially, we asked them to reflect the local landscape and the historical narrative. Uemdo was named because the strong winds were like a cow’s mooing, and Faraway built there allows people to immerse themselves in the sound and experience the vastness of nature acoustically. Koonni is an old name for Maehyang-ri, which means a friendly and harmonious village. NAMELESS Architecture planned the pavilion as an open linear structure with water circulating through it and organised it in such a way that you can walk around it or sit down to rest, evoking the atmosphere of the village of the past. The pavilion is adjacent to the Maehyang-ri Peace Memorial Hall, also designed by Mario Botta, so it is characterized by a complementary yet distinctive sculptural form.
Installation view of Faraway: man made, nature made by Diagonal Thoughts / ©cultureplate
Park: You have been working with the architect Kwon Soonyup in a design studio called SOAP and have participated as an artist in pavilions such as Water Walk (2018) on Jebudo Island, Gungpyeong art pavilion OSOL (2019). What role do you think small-scale architecture can play in a city?
Chang: Large-scale buildings are difficult to manage and take a long time to be realised because of the many interventions and interests involved. Especially if it’s a public project, the public officials in charge also feel overwhelmed because a project of a big size and budget comes with a lot of responsibility. Building roads, stations, and other infrastructure to connect cities is the most direct, but also the most risky. These are called hard infrastructure, while pavilions are soft infrastructure. They’re relatively easy to put up in a number of places, and while they’re gone when you take them down, they create a ripple effect that changes the neighbourhood. These small-scale structures make a difference in a permeable way and are as strategic as they are practical.
Park: Another thing that distinguishes ‘Museum is Everywhere’ from ‘Seoul is a Museum’ is that it is organised by a private art museum and not a local government. Why would a private art museum take the lead on a public project?
Chang: I think it’s a combination of what we do as a local art museums and what we need to do to make our institution sustainable. First of all, museums, whether private or public, fulfill a public role to some extent. In this regard, Museum SODA aims to make art accessible to more people. However, the Museum SODA is located in the old downtown and is not very accessible, so we decided to go beyond the walls of the museum and work in a physically wider area. We also realised that we needed to continue to provide meaningful content in order to maintain our institution. We’ve been running the museum for nine years now, and I think few museums in the local area are able to operate on admission fees alone. While ‘Museum is Everywhere’ is not a way to help the museum directly, it is a way to realise our ideal goal of keeping the museum sustainable in the long run.
Park: Arko’s grant ends this year. What will happen to ‘Museum is Everywhere’?
Chang: Before receiving funding from Arko, ‘Museum is Everywhere’ was first proposed to the Hwaseong City Cultural Foundation and the local government of Gyeonggi Province. However, none of them accepted the proposal. Even though we worked hard to prepare visual materials such as diagrams and texts, the person in charge said that they couldn’t imagine it. There were questions such as ‘so, how are you going to do it?’ I thought that if I implemented it in a small way, there would naturally be a next step. We haven’t decided on a specific plan yet, but I think the best direction is for local government to take over the project. Cities and provinces can spend a lot of money on art, so it’s much more sustainable than progressing in an organisation like ours. Hwaseong-si benefits the most from ‘Museum is Everywhere’. Local governments talk about the city of selfrespect and attachment in an administrative and political way. We just put artistic narratives to it.
Installation views of KOON-NI by NAMELESS Architecture
You can see more information on the SPACE No. 669 (August 2023).
