FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

A tastefully decorated bunker

A tastefully decorated bunker

Art blossoms at exhibition in South Korea's demilitarised zone

Mount Soisan, a lowly hill just metres across from a three-storey building constructed by North Korea in 1946 as the Communist Party Headquarters, had a US Army barracks and several secret bunkers that were used during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. Until 2001, civilians were prohibited from climbing the mountain as it was in the civilian control area adjacent to the demilitarised zone.
“Underneath where you stand are bunkers used during the war. This mountain is a bunker site,” says an official from Gangwon Province’s Cheorwon district office.
Noted for its well-preserved nature, the 362-metre mountain recently turned into an art platform for the Real DMZ Project. The peak is now occupied by Cambodian-American artist Albert Samreth’s installations – a small temporary basketball court and acrylic structures. He was also set to conduct a dance performance with local residents.
The installation, opened yesterday, commands a breathtaking view of vast rice fields on the South Korean side as well as rolling mountains that were once fierce battlegrounds. North Korea is on the distant horizon.
The bunker, which served as a situation room for South Korean soldiers, has transformed into an exhibition space featuring artist Koo Jeong-a’s fictional jumping character that imagines a “post-bunker Korea”.
“It is nothing like other exhibitions, given its format. It takes place in a public space, not within the safe boundaries of a museum. It deals with tension between two things: military politics and the everyday lives of farmers,” says Nikolaus Hirsch, a German architect who co-curated the project with South Korean Kim Sun-jung.
Artworks now also fill once-restricted areas such as military bunkers or places that are manifestations of peace rhetoric such as the DMZ Peace Plaza and the Cheorwon Peace Observatory.
Starting this year, an artist residency programme began in the farming village Yangji-ri. The village, founded in the 1970s as a propaganda settlement in the buffer zone, is now a temporary residence for artists, including Argentinean Adrian Villar Rojas, whose works explore the relationship between the place and local residents.
“I absolutely fell in love with the place. I decided to use it as a big theatre,” Rojas says. His temporary house exhibits installations made with objects he found during his stay.
The emergency shelter, built in the event of North Korean bombardment, will be filled with an installation by German sound artist Florian Hecker.
Argentinean artist Tomas Saraceno installed new binoculars in the Cheorwon Peace Observatory, a site where tourists come to get a glimpse into the restricted demilitarised zone and are briefed with war stories.
While the existing coin-operated binoculars stand right in front of the window that offers a limited view of the zone, Saraceno’s binoculars, which rotate 360 degrees from left to right and up and down, is a few steps behind it, allowing viewers more angles. And, it doesn’t require coins.
“His work gives freedom to the view looking over the DMZ and the North Korean territory,” Hirsch explains.
Aside from artworks, a chapter of an upcoming novel by German writer Ingo Niermann on North and South Korea unification will be read in Korean and English on the tour bus on the way to Cheorwon from Seoul. Titled “De-Mechanised Zone”, the book envisages a situation in which North and South Koreans live together without machines, leading primitive lives.
 
KOREAN HOLIDAY
The Real DMZ Project runs until September 27. The guided tour runs once a day except Tuesdays and during the September 8 Chuseok holiday.
The tour bus departs at 8.30am from Art Sonje Centre in Seoul. The cost is 30,000 won (Bt945), which includes transportation, lunch, entrance fee and a monorail ride to the observatory.
For more information, visit www.RealDMZ.org.
 
nationthailand