We are pleased to participate in a duo-show at the Jeju International Peace Center in Korea with the work Allegoria Sacra.
Asia has experienced continuous ups and downs throughout its history of ‘modernization by others’. Our history, encompassing colonization, ideological conflicts, religions strife, and the Korean War, cannot simply written in a one-sided perspective. The past is not entirely closed off. Rather, the past remains in the present – it lives on. Today, the historicization of Asia by others is being reorganized. The rise of far more autonomous and multi-faceted perspectives on contemporary Asia was concurrent with economic and cultural growth of the regions.
We are on the threshold of a new era in which our imagination can extend itself to infinity between reality and illusion. Advances in digital technologies have given us chances to escape the politics or capitalist hegemony and express individual voices beyond the limits of writing or speaking.
The exhibition Media Utopia at International Peace Center Jeju presents two contemporary artist collectives who restructure the multi-dimensional experiences in history of Korea and Asia. AES+F, the Moscow-based collective of four artists, and the Korean artist collective, Kim Kira x Kim Hyungkyu, utilize new technologies as mediums to re-imagine history.
Two groups of multimedia artists in this exhibition invite viewers to reflect on personal autonomy, namely independence, instead of an objectified perspective imposed by external authority, for recreating our past and present. Blurring the lines between phenomenon and delusion, objectivity and subjectivity, and imitation and creation, the artists infuse imaginations and new values into our society.
The exhibition features two video installations. The 2-channel video installation by Kim Kira x Kim Hyungkyu borrows the form of music video as a means of communication in today’s visual culture. The work titled Floating Village_The Song of Wi Jaeryang embodies many of the issues related to conflict across generations, classes, and ideologies in the past and the present of Korea. The multi-channel video installation by AES+F creates a utopian vision of the present and future of Asia. Allegoria Sacra shows an ideal society without conflicts between nations, races, and religions.
Media Utopia features multi-channel moving images. Pioneered by Nam June Paik, video art has expanded across media borders and developed into moving images along with advances in digital technology. Today’s projection technique has been infinitely transforming the flat exteriors of a screen into a three-dimensional space. The exhibition will highlight such expansion of video in contemporary art and provide a multisensory experience for the viewer.