We (Still) Have Things to Remember

In the post-war period, at the height of the Cold War, the people of the Korean Peninsula experienced many hardships, including the Gwangju Uprising of the 1980s. Gwangju has become a stage for people’s resistance against power, and thus many precious lives have been lost in this place. In relation to the uprising, it must not be forgotten that U.S. expansionist policies and the Korean military dictatorship during the Cold War, which resulted in the massacre of a large number of civilians, were a chain-like continuation of Japanese colonialism in the wartime

period. Against this historical background, Gwangju has inherited a spirit of never being silent toward the hegemonic forces of the time. However, the voices of those who broke the silence were often suppressed by the authorities. Most of these voices were marginalized in history and forced to be silenced once again.

Voices deprived of voice, silence trapped in a prison of silence.Many voices, many silences. The word han, which forms an integral part of traditional Korean culture, does not simply mean “resentment,” although it uses the same Chinese character in Japanese, but also contains a conception of “a voice that cannot be articulated as a voice.” A sensitivity to the invisible presence of voices and silences – we who live in today’s world are required to cultivate such a sensitivity. Park Lae-gun, following in the

footsteps of his younger brother who burned himself to death in protest against the oblivion of the Gwangju Uprising, authored We Have Things to Remember. In this book, those who lost their lives in the struggle against power are set as the main characters.

The book was translated by Yuko Manabe, a specialist in Korean studies, and was widely read in Japan.

Inviting Akiko Utsumi and Terue Yamauchi, this pavilion will be organized around the theme of “Remembering (Plural) Voices and Silences.” While listening to the myriad voices and silences historically embedded in Gwangju through the creation of art, the pavilion also aims to open a circuit connecting to current global phenomena, as there are still small voices being drowned out by the ongoing chain of violence around the world.Furthermore, while resisting the oblivion of national histories and the trans-national histories that their entanglement constitutes,

it also attempts to present a vision of a post-national future –namely, “hope in the darkness” (Rebecca Solnit) – evoked by the artistic imagination.

Using the method of installation, Akiko Utsumi has produced a space of images embracing temporality. Through her works, Utsumi intervenes in the viewer’s perception and experience,generating a landscape that encourages the viewer to recall past and future times connected with the present. For this pavilion,Utsumi focuses on “sound” and “chain” to create an installation in which metal rods of varying lengths rotate and touch each other in a chain, spinning out sounds that resonate in the space.

In ancient times, the Korean people used, for instance, musical instruments to make sounds to draw people’s attention to

their own voices when they wanted to be heard. Such voices transcended time and space to form a collective chain, and at

times became the driving force that made significant changes.On the other hand, the countless voices that went unheard were

drowned out in chains of violence,constituting a chain of han that quietly accumulated in the strata of history. What Utsumi represents in this work is the ambivalent and elusive aspects of “sound” and “chain” in history.

Terue Yamauchi’s artistic practice involves “being together with” a place and its inhabitants as an indispensable element.

Taking the singularity of these places and people as a starting point, Yamauchi represents the world that emerges by way of

the artist’s unique perspective, mainly through the use of video.

Yamauchi often begins the process of creation without a specific subject in mind, and by becoming a kind of “vessel” herself, she seizes the peculiar, yet invisible,atmosphere that flows through

a particular place. In this pavilion, Yamauchi tries to capture the voiceless voice of silence. Instead of giving words to silence,Yamauchi attempts to make silence exist as it is in her work.Yamauchi says that she feels a strange connection with the character for “light” in her first name, which is the same as in

“Gwangju.” In this work, Yamauchi listens to the life that speaks in a voiceless voice, and attempts to foreground the fluctuation and

reversal of light and darkness, which are inextricably linked, as well as the disappearance of the boundary between them.

National, transnational, and post-national histories and the past,present, and future events that occur within them – still, there are

things left for us to remember.

Curator

Hiroki Yamamoto