DATE: 21 October 2023
TIME: 6pm to 8:30 KST (10am-12.30pm UK)
ONLINE: Artist presentations & discussion; screenings
A map is a story too.
The line on your hand which is split into three forks – are also known as terminals.
They speak less of having to decide between pathways, but that they will converge.
We may go above, forward and below, all at once.
In the dark, I see them – the mountain, elephant, fish, bug, seed and a winking star.
This is a story we can only tell, if we tell it together.
Stories also make a map – stories unfold across the histories of land, of movements of peoples, and recount the ways we seek to re-orientate ourselves. As queer-feminist writer, Sara Ahmed, asks, ”What does it mean to be oriented? How do we begin to know or feel where we are, or even where we are going, by lining ourselves up with the features of the grounds we inhabit, the sky that surrounds us, or the imaginary lines [or lives] that cut through maps? How do we know which way to turn to reach our destination?”
Storytelling, thus, is also wayfinding – and co-created stories offer tentative trails towards hopeful vistas for new ways of living and thriving together.
Beyond the conventional expectations of maps to offer clarity or veracity in relation to terrain, and the engaging with questions of ownership, boundaries, power and negotiation, this satellite programme curated in response to the 12th Seoul Mediacity Bienniale’s theme of “This too, is a map” charts an imaginary topology interwoven from the lived experiences and artistic practices of its artist contributors of Korean heritage and Asian diaspora working across Global Asias, Europe and the USA.
Drawing upon the disrupted coordinates and reflecting on the colonial narratives behind cross-cultural adoption into European contexts, and refugeehood due to genocide, the first session of presentations and conversation from artists Anida Yoeu Ali, Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) and Yong Sun Gullach explore the liminal and productive spaces in ‘the impossibility of return” through practices that explore human/non-human subjectivity and relations, against a refracted and expansive mystical/other worldly cosmology.
In the second session, with artists Beatrice Glow, Mooni Perry and Youngsook Choi, the programme considers the historical interweaving of botany as a resource in colonialist and capitalist enterprise across the Asia-Pacific, to redraw indigenous and interspecies relations as part of contemplating the ongoing challenges of ecological grief and regeneration.
Rundown
6.00 Introduction
6.05 Presentation by Anida Yoeu Ali
6.20 Presentation by Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide)
6.35 Presentation by Yong Sun Gullach
6.50 Q&A
7.10 Break
7.20 Presentation by Mooni Perry
7.35 Presentation by Beatrice Glow
7.50 Presentation by Youngsook Choi
8.05 Q&A
8.25 Final Reflections
8.30 End
Screening Programme
Beyond (Criticism and Praise)
Duration: 5 min 12s
An experimental collaborative piece between multidisciplinary artist, Yong Sun Gullach and The Gori Project, which acknowledged the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Denmark and South Korea, and brings together renowned traditional South Korean musicians and Denmark’s most established jazz performers. Led by Danish bassist & composer Torben Westergaard, with the driving jazz-pop-sensibilities of Jacob Andersen, traditional Korean music specialist, Byunggil Choi, Nordic trumpeter René Damsbak and traditional zither-like gayagum playing from Eunhee Choi.
The Buddhist Bug: Into the Night
Duration: 7:00 minutes
In a series of social encounters in locations around Phnom Penh, Anida Yoeu Ali’s Buddhist Bug impassively occupies central stage among communities, schools, cinemas, restaurants, bars and urban and rural landscapes undergoing rapid change and development. Its lengthy coils wrap around tables, are poised with grace and improbability on a bicycle, and infiltrate karaoke bars. Her video for APT8 documents these engagements with Phnom Penh at night time, staging the nocturnal bug as a ‘powerful place for encounter, habitation and reinvention’.
Read the full program here: https://mediacityseoul.kr/2023/events/a-map-is-a-story-too
Sign up for the event here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdBjlONaBvOpa-qChtiZEm_kQJUAkwmzLvycTpcwRy6OMsDNw/viewform