The Memory of Death

 

a monoloque

While listening to a radio tune, suddenly a story that announcer introduced drew my attention.  It was about the traffic accident that I witnessed for the first time just few days ago.

I had witnessed the accident right in front of my eyes while I was waiting for a bus home at a bus stop. Without hesitation of any second I took out my cell phone to place a phone call to 911, but somehow something stopped me and I paused for a moment to watch other 50 witnesses. While I was not able to make decision, someone called 911. All the witnesses including myself couldn't do anything but looking at the woman laid down under the bus with anxiety

The thought that it might cause bigger trouble once we decide to involve with the accident might prevent us from calling blocking my minds and bodies. On the way back home in the bus I had heavy heart feeling my fast heart beats for not staying the site till the all was over. It was when a man blabbered, "You can't involve in that kind of situation. You could be a victim taking all the responsibility dumped upon you..." as if he was an experienced man or boasting his heroic stories Tears came to my eyes. Leaving the accident sited behind…

In the winter of my first year at the elementary school, my family was having serous financial difficulties. The house in a basement then has served me as a standard when I measure the degree of being poor or rich. At the night of Christmas day of the year, I lost my two sisters in the damp and cold room. It's still vivid in my memory. I did not fully understand what losing family members meant at the time. As the memory of their presence faded away, the less became the longing for them. Each every crack in the basement was taped with green duct tape to prevent letting in a draft. The green duct tape has become the only visual memory of the smelly room.

According to my memory of poor childhood, the green tape always saved so many moments in life; not only it is used for the cracks of window but also for the ripped vinyl flooring, for connecting smoky pipes sticking out of space heater, and even for the book cover that my father read. Green duct tape is meant some devise protecting or screening.

I recalled the green duct tape of the room where I lost two sisters and brought me a strange impulse that I want cover the woman who had an accident with the green tape.  

The voice on the radio delivered the story of the woman’s death and left me with another sad memory. I noticed couple of unusual things at the bus stop after the accident. One was the policeman controlling the lining up of buses on the street and the other was the white spray marking that indicated the shape of the dead woman lied on the road. As the white mark of accidental homicide fades away, people would start to forget the horrible moment till the next accident.

We never know when we going to meet our own death. In a sense we all are walking white marks of car accident. No matter how horrible it is to imagine, but this might be who we are.

(In Feb. 1999, Nam Hoon Kim)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Disappearance …

 

The word disappearance circles around in my head with the light feelings like a train of a woman’s skirt blowing on a mid summer day. Not only that I do not have control over the disappearance, but also I think the intentional disappearance is unnatural. The same as there are reasons in disappearance, new existence is to have its own cause.

The reason I am talking about disappearance now is because the restoration project of Chunggye Cheon raised some controversial issues in its course of demolishing over path, architectures and surroundings closely linked to the lives nearby. Is the aggravation over something disappears can be interpreted as some sort of expression of affection?  I asked the same question when I heard preservation and restoration of a national treasures. It is always difficult to measure the degree of appreciation on something that has a certain context of time and space different than mine. It does not mean that I consider its existence is trivial. I have bigger wish to find something meaningful from it within the present context. And to have meaning, it might be necessary for those artifacts to be changed in its quality and even to have some deterioration. I only wish that the city’s development projects such as Chunggye Cheon Restoration Project would aim not to destroy but to revive. If this project bound to clear the ground of lives, it should not be carried out as if it is cutting out rotten part of fruit, but executed in a way in which polluted area should be transformed in to an eco-friendly environment. The Project I did there was imposing temporary gesture caressing the void of the site once disappearance occured. Along with what disappears, I hope my work disappears as well.

When something disappears, it leaves infinite possibilities behind. And leaving green duct tape lines is a evidence disappearance….

(People Walking on the water-Chinggye Cheon Project -In June 2003 Nam Hoon Kim)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sea water reservoir 해주(海湊)

 

The first encounter with this old saltpan was when I moved to the town near by about a year ago. I had started to explore the neighborhood and learned that there is an old saltpan where became my turf later on. Imagining there only was intriguing enough to stimulate my curiosity.  When I finally hurried to the entrance with little nick knacks for my work, I was so excited and was not able to close my mouth. An ever expanding land that is abandoned …

This 200 million square meters of vast land was, if I quote a copy from a commercial film, a ‘no man’s land so empty that only a gust of wind passes by’ except indistinct apartment building at the edge of this land far away.  I passed the area that is hard to say whether it is dirt or mud with white flowers of salt crystals here and there. When I went along the dry reed bushes as tall as my height on the salty land, bunch of strange purple wild plants greeted me from the cracks of black tile grids made out of dirt that once used when this place was operated to make salt. All the traces people have left were tens of salt warehouses here and there creating wretched ambience. The saltpan facilities were empty and their equipments were half buried or thrown out. Only rain is filling up the reservoir originally for salt water instead. It was indeed the ruins after a warfare reminding of a scene from the movie, the Mad Max

As if the fate of nature relies upon whether human finds its usefulness, the nature turns into harbors to allow ships go in and out, saltpans are to face their abandonment, or becomes another redevelopment site when human finds its usefulness again. If I quote David Attenborough, the writer of Private Lives of the Plants, plants are leading very competitive lives day and night with a different pace that human wouldn’t be able to calculate; they are restlessly move, fight, multiply, hide from their enemies, take advantage of their neighbors, and do all other attempts to survive. I came crossed with hermit crab, Suaeda maritima, sea-blite, suaeda japonica, Dianthus japonicus, a gray mullet, javelin goby, etc. Numerous wild plants, seaweeds, fishes, and birds have survived relying only on sunlight and winds. While human have forgotten about the site because men did not find its usage, they kept recovering the ruins with their ability of self-purification. Men might be even thinking that they are putting their will to survive in a safe the same as they reserve the seawater in the reservoir.  As long as men do not ruin the nature to the level that their ability of self-purification can restore, these little creatures might have chance to survive. However, if we exceed the level, the nature no longer able to recover this polluted earth.  

What I did within the context was a discovery.  Sometimes I collect branches and reeds pressed by passing cars on the roads then used them to recreate spray markings of traffic accidents. Sometimes I remove tiles from walls, dig traps, and take dried surface off mud land in drought season to create figures. This can be so called, imposition of human activities there. I would like both human and nature to co-exist without losing the ability of self-purification. I also hope my work to be left on the border between them. After spending long period time, they adapt to the nature and learn to self-purify with the pace of nature.

(In July 2005 Nam Hoon Kim) 

p.s 

Long time ago this saltpan was a harbor where many ships come and go, and was a huge fish market numerous people gathered. However, when Japanese colonizers first established saltpan here in 1936, the look of noisy harbor could not be found any more. As the biggest saltpan in Korea at the time, it was used to ship salt to Japan and even to Manchuria not only as necessary goods for life but also as military supply. Suwon-Incheon line, called as Central East Line at the time, was constructed in order to transport the salt. Later Suwon-Yoeju line was also built for inland distribution.

Since free trade of natural sea salt law was established in 1996, this saltpan was not able to meet the both ends resulting in the close of the saltpan and has left abandoned for near 10 years.  Now, small fermented fish market still opens at Sorae port, though it is now turned into a touristy area full with cafes and sushi restaurants, Gunja saltpan into apartment complex, and Incheon South East district saltpan into a factory complex in which migrant workers are bustling in containers of small manufacturing businesses.

City of Shihung in Gyenggi Province sees its old saltpan as big as 6.6 million square-meters taking up 83 % of the city as the barrier of the city’s development plan and has been putting on many efforts to redevelop in futile because of central government’s development restriction area act. Despite the resistance by the environmentalists against the redevelopment, the city continues to seek professional consultation on utilizing this saltpan.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear uwoon :

 

First of all, I would like to say, labor issues for mass of people, non-productive labor activities opposed to the meaning of labor in Modernist sense, and not creating of surplus value within the economic system are the thematic matters in my art.  I have not directly incorporated issues of labor as thematic matter for this exhibition because it only allows me to focus on the labor of an artist, which is not recognized as labor per se. Within Korea’s state inclined to Modernism (where only concerns with scientific advancement, how to provide livelihood, and being the best), artist’s labor in the field only appears to be ‘meaningless’ gesture. The question that I usually get from the unidentified by passers while I am working outside studio is, “what are you doing now?” Even though it is only a matter of second I have to negotiate with myself in order to answer them with utmost considerate voice. Then I say, “I am making art.” Then most people shake their heads and treat me as a weirdo. It must be so hard to believe my actions are part of art making. For them, bandaging concrete structures with brand new duct tape must look, if I may borrow close artist friend’s saying, “not even worthy of eating meals for the day.” What is better? What is more productive?  When the moments in which thoughts like that make my actions into merely mediocre gesture, I feel emptiness. This defines my labor in the context of Korean situation. Less and less my art has fit as materialistic production, up to the speed, logical.  I might be trying to justify its incompleteness. My work has been developed from my most personal stories. Social format is immanent in individual, ‘I,’ and my personal and private narratives. In other word, private experiences are supposed to be social and already circulated. I collect images of spray marks of car accident. I remember moments when I realize the existence of wounds being inflicted on my body, fading away and leaving scars. Then I set up a trap here and there for communication with somebody hoping that I heal the floating wounds, give them meanings, recall the memories, and I transform into something else.

At the moment when this trap is found and noticed, the audience and I become connected with same code. It is ok whether you discover them but just pass by.  I can always wait for someone else to connect. At such moment of connection, in fact, production occurs. Cross referencing artist’s labor, practice, and leaving the art works in the field with the contemporary context of labor, I would like to reconsider the meaning of ‘value.’

(In Okt 2005 Nam Hoon Kim)