P.S I♥U

p Taxi ptoject-DMZ

                                         
                                                                   p Taxi ptoject-DMZ
                                                        2013 Mixed Media, Dimension variable

p Taxi ptoject-DMZ

2013 Single channel video, 25' 00''

Artist Hong Won-seok‘s “Captain Hong’s Art Taxi Project”

I will always turn on the engine for my journey with you

 

Artist Hong Won-seok‘s “Captain Hong’s Art Taxi Project”

 

 

 

 

1

 

Daejeon Museum of Art holds an exhibition that reviews art projects conducted outside studios, and four artists take part in it. They each create their work considering the public using a different method. One of them, Hong Won-seok carried out a peculiar project that used painting, a genre he has originally pursued, and video concurrently. He is originally a painter. From 2006, he has made paintings by endlessly reconstructing his memories with his father and grandfather, who were taxi drivers when he was young, and with his experiences as an ambulance driver in the army and as a driver to making a living. To him, driving is a vague memory and a means to earn money in life. At the same time, it is an element that makes him feel uneasy and the only passage that allows him to escape from uneasiness. While he described his experiences in his early pieces with his imagination, the pieces that he has made since 2010 contain social issues. Standing in front of real painful situations, he has focused on shedding light on the dark impulses inherent in society.

 

His piece “Light Pollution,” shows his curiosity about why the McDonald’s chain leaves its lights on for 24 hours, while another piece, “Yongsan Mystery,” shows a destroyed site in Yongsan, which he sketched with tension. He speaks about the events breaking out in our lives as a witness of his time.

 

Such a change in his work is not a simple flow. It is based on the experiences that he obtained through affluence and frustration during the 21st century. The taxi driver, which he thought as the best occupation during his childhood, came to be regarded as an insignificant job. As he went through the bubble phenomenon of our society and the fall of the art market as an artist, he came to see through the system that actuates social desires, and to more keenly recognize the problems in which individuals are victimized by the system. He is an artist who communicates with people using the medium of driving. In the aspect in which he makes his works not by the knowledge learned with his brain but by the knowledge learned with his body, his progress is persuasive.

 

He, who used to draw cars in his canvases, came to focus on real life. As he worked as a resident artist in Cheongju Art Studio in 2010, he naturally came to pay attention to an independent living center near his studio. Along with the disabled at the center, he carried out “Driver Hong’s Art Project.” The project was not a one-sided assistance but a cooperative activity. Through it, they conducted together what they wanted, as well as shared knowledge and love.

 

Starting from the “Driver Hong’s Art Project,” he tried to carry out another project, “Captain Hong’s Art Taxi Project-Art Taxi Departing from Gasiri,” as a resident artist in the Gasiri Creation Center in Jeju-island in 2011. He bought a used car with his money and drove it regularly and freely from Gasiri to Pyoseonmyeon during the time slot when buses were not running. While he drove the residents to their destinations, he talked with them, and recording their conversations on video. In addition, he carried out a “Captain Hong’s Jeju Culture Trip” that guided the residents to travel to places on the island whose beauty they hadn’t quite realized, even though they live there. And the project was recently succeeded by “Captain Hong’s Art Taxi Project-Art Automobile ‘Wind’” in Gasangri, Youngcheon-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do.

 

 

 

 

 

2

 

By the way, what is the unbearable lightness seen from this young artist’s pieces? This question contains three doubts about his projects at the same time. The art of the taxi is very natural to him. Part of his life was driving, but for this reason, are such projects too easy for him? When an artist creates community art based on a local community, he generally leads the residents of the community to directly take part in his work, deeply examining its historical, political, and cultural context. However, Hong Won-seok seemed not to be interested in the issues of the two villages where he stayed, Gasiri in Jeju-island and Gasangri in Yongcheon-si, and the videos he filmed in the two villages look as similar as the names of the two villages. Why do these two specific villages look like common rural villages where only old men and women live lonely lives? In addition, beyond whether it was a joke or not, why did he mention that maybe because he did not date for a long time he was strangely attracted to a girl in junior high school and to an old woman?

 

He mentioned that even though he had a long experience of driving, he did not enjoy it because he must have been nervous while driving. And he added that it was not easy to give rides to village elders because he had to be responsible for their safety while they were in his car. He seems to think that the two words, elders and driving, always connote death. Generally, elders living in the country go to town to visit clinics, and there are usually only four times in a day that a bus passes the rural villages on their way to town. The children of the rural elders, who must take their parents to clinics in town, left the villages a long time ago. The abnormal urban concentration in Korea has caused a rural fragmentation.

 

In fact, many public arts receive public funds for regionally balanced development and regional culture cultivation, claiming their political justification that they take care of alienated communities. However, many of them are used to hiding the contradiction of social systems and to publicize the regions related with public art projects. However, if there is no deep reflection on why a community has been alienated, the purposes of public art ―activation of a community and revival of a region―can be easily blurred by the irresponsibility and ignorance of artists and the collective selfishness, which comes to the surface more frequently in an alienated community. Hong Won-seok was not able to realize a long-term project with a center for the disabled in Cheongju-si because of the rejection by the center’s managers. And the project conducted in Gasiri in Jeju-island became an incomplete one because he was not able to hold an exhibition as the last step of the project. It is not that these projects were ceased by frictions with the participating residents. He still maintains close personal relationships with them, but he failed to communicate with the administrators operating the communities when he tried to work beyond the border of the residents.

 

There is a point that I must make clearly: Korea too easily accepts ‘the fact of living together’ as ‘a community.’ In particular, the word ‘we’ is abnormally used. In Korea, the word ‘we,’ which is another name for family or race, has oppressed the independence of an individual and interrupted an individual’s true encounter with other people. However, in Hong Won-seok’s projects, I can find a clue of hope wriggling in the ruins of our community. That is, a discovery about you and me. To him, the girl in junior high school and the old woman, mentioned as charming figures in his video, are concretized figures as a clue of hope.

 

 

 

3

 

Hong won-seok focused on ‘the discovery of an individual’ in Gasangri, Youngcheon-si. It might be a more proper expression that he rather skipped off the ‘bluff of art.’ He drove a taxi when the village residents needed him. He believed that to the residents, driving a taxi was substantially more helpful than making something for them. Besides giving them rides, he visited their houses and talked with them. The point standing out in his work is his identity. He is not ashamed of revealing himself frankly. In his video, he is still a son who makes his parents worried, and a youth who heaves a sigh lying on the floor in his room. And people he met have spread rumors about his clumsy mistakes all over the village and burst out laughing at his vocal mimicry.

 

There is an important thing in the encounter of you and me: ‘feeling.’ Feeling is a vague sense that is difficult to share with other people, but at the same time is an essential sense in communication. An indispensable requisite to share a feeling is that you must be together with other people at a certain site at a certain moment. In Hong Won-seok’s work, ‘laughter’ is not a simple emotional reaction. In terms of feeling together, laughter is ‘a feeling that confirms solidarity.’ In his work, the meaning of art is to form a relation and to share a feeling. Thus, he does not place the viewers as simple observers of his projects. For this reason, he does not place in his exhibition the guest book in his taxi or the items of the residents that are shown in his video. Appearing in his video as the interviewer, he speaks his thoughts frankly and laughs with the viewers. Thanks to these points, I can comment that his project has evolved into ‘an esthetic of contact.’ And I hope that the laughter sounding his exhibition will be accepted as a simple and sincere public art.

 

Now, let’s look over his paintings. The theme of Hong Won-seok’s work is going together with you and me. Strange guests appearing in his early pieces are another of his selves. Later, as he paid attention to the people who did not belong to a group of social power, the darkness in his canvas was brightened and the light of his car, a defense mechanism against fear, was weakened. The element of unstableness described in his entire canvas recovered its stableness. This is not because he lost his awareness as a witness of his time. Rather, he came to be confident that other people are not far away, but are rather close to him and that he lives together with them. In this exhibition, his piece “Shot ~ 2” shows a pig falling into a hole, recalling the crisis of the foot-and-mouth disease in Korea. In “The Nightmare before Christmas,” Santa Claus, a symbol of hope, falls into a hole. Social interest and individual happiness are basic problems in human life and two axes for Hong Won-seok’s work. I thought the pig and Santa Claus might be one body originally. Furthermore, they might be one body with the holes that frustrate them. In the endless flow of time, humans and nature, conflict and healing, and death and life dream of the recovery of a united energy that was at the beginning of the universe. We can find its clue in his project videos. The two phrases in the frame seen behind him as he was interviewing the residents catch the viewer’s eye: ‘Being careful while night driving’ and ‘I’m not lonely.’ These two keywords are naturally connected with his painting and project.

 

However, there is a risk when we connect his painting and project as a flow. Hong Won-seok has said that while he conducted his project, he came to want to make a painting. This means that he will do his personal work in his personal studio. On the other hand, he has said that it was uncomfortable that he was evaluated as a kind artist who does good things. And he confessed that through conversations with people, he stole their ideas and that he put a statement regarding the transfer of portrait rights in the guest book in his taxi to use their portraits for his video, like the advertisements for high interest loans written in small characters. However, it is not that he has accepted that he used a community as a means for his art but that he has reflected on whether his work wears the mask of public art. In other words, he has considered the complexity of the term public art on the term’s basic contradiction. In fact, rather than the problem in that personal and social work can be divided, it is more important that one endlessly examines and reflects one’s self as an artist who produces social meaning. So his paintings and project are like a Mobius strip that is obviously divided but at the same time connected. To him, painting is knowledge that he has learned with his body, while a project is a practice of what he knows.

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

There are a few points to be desired in his work. However, these are not his personal problems but ones that the current young generation must think of together. Their older generation, who had to fight the dictatorial government of the time, endured a miserable era. However, the subjects that today’s artists resist are not clear. They too easily negotiate with the subjects, and the injury made by the subjects is cured too quickly. An easily healed injury is wounded again by even a small friction. Hong Won-seok has chosen a shallow method to escape from the contradiction that was established with perspective and forces a fixed depth. An ultimate reconciliation must be done based on fierce hatred after cutting off the rotten roots that are stuck in society. Laughter is not a cheap forgiveness but a power that overcomes fear.

 

His incomplete projects are left as homework. He has said that he will work on the projects in Cheongju-si and Jeju-island using different methods. Many art projects declare their end as short-term events. He did not complete the project in Gasangri in Youngcheon as an independent form but has connected it with another project titled “Two Days and Three Nights Project.” He donated his taxi to the village, will provide after-services for the residents to run their own program with the car, will collect travelers who want to break away from their daily routine lives, and will visit with them in other regions where he carried out his projects.

 

Hong Won-seok is an artist who has developed along with his projects. He has a courage that can express his thoughts even during a dry and tough reality. He also knows well that art without containing the lives of people and developing social abilities is just fiction. His work is still a present progressive form. Of course, his car may get lost or fall into a ditch. However, its engine running toward a new solidarity will never stop.

Who killed Jiwon Bak? Four Conjectures about Case 121219 (Mullae Homicide)

Who killed Jiwon Bak?

Four Conjectures about Case 121219 (Mullae Homicide)

                                                        
                                                         Mullae diary
                                        2013 Single channel video, 30' 00''

Mr. Jiwon Bak, a 31-year-old, was found at Seoul Art Space Mullae at 6pm on 19 December, 2012, in a murder which was attempted to be disguised as a traffic accident. After he was found dead, police promptly initiated an investigation but failed to find material clues. Although the probe went on for several days, the case became more and more of a mystery with many questions unsolved. What actually happened in Mullae-dong and who killed Mr. Bak?

I met Mr. Bak several times late last year for interviews. I was working on a feature story about Mullae Art Town which was emerging as a new art venue for poor artists at the vacated steel material arcade in Mullae-dong. When I first interviewed him, he had moved into the town a few days earlier. At that time, he seemed very ambitious. As he was appointed to be one of the participants in the MAP project, a program designed by Seoul Art Space Mullae to foster public artists, in early October 2012, he was planning to stay in Mullae-dong for about three months. He did not start his career as an artist. He had spent a few years in Daejeon without much career development, but he earned a reputation as he posted several video clips about the interviews he conducted with his taxi customers in Jeju, Daejeon and several other

locations on YouTube. His activities enabled him to earn popularity and artistic recognition in that he created artworks with viewers. "Thanks to my video works, Seoul Art Space Mullae gives me the opportunity to officially debut as an artist. I had conversations with taxi customers and captured the interviews before, so I just need to interview the local residents in Mullae-dong. I have some curiosity about art and this also gives me some income. I feel as if I have hit a jackpot", Bak said in an excited tone. However, investigators found out that Mr. Bak was actually working on an important confidential government mission. The government designated Mullae-dong as the site for a pilot redevelopment project in 2008 in order to reshape the outdated industrial town into a high-tech residential and industrial complex. He was in charge of researching the overall perceptions of local residents and persuading them to move out of the town in order to relocate ironworkers and artists to the suburbs. Then, why was he murdered? First, he might be killed by the government.

In fact, Mr. Bak is more of a cultural agent than an artist. As the violent crackdown on Yongsan residents resulted in harsh social criticism, the government appointed ordinary people as sponsored artists to monitor local community and artists in the areas. Mr. Bak, a former taxi driver, was particularly talented at communicating with strangers thanks to his unique social skills so he seemed capable of identifying the thoughts of local ironmasters and artists. Although he had some early difficulties in adapting to the new environment, recently he seemed satisfied with his role. However, as he tapped deeper into the insides of Mullae-dong, he began to lose his passion. He sometimes lamented; "It seems very futile to specify someone's home for redevelopment projects without any attention to the lifestyles of local residents." He also said that someone seemed to be watching him. The government could remove him as he was increasingly unlikely to complete his mission. Second, Mr. Jiwon Bak, a 66-year-old project partner, is on the suspect list. The background information about the former taxi driver of Saenara is rarely identified, but some findings showed that he used to work as a member of Park Chung-hee Commemoration Foundation. He is currently missing so he is considered a prime suspect in the case. Junior Bak had strong complaints about senior Bak. "I expected him to make my work easier because of his experience, but he is physically weak and listless. He is not helpful at all for this project," said junior Bak. It is an interesting finding that senior Bak had driven Saenara as a taxi driver in the 1960s. 'Saenara Motors' expanded its business quickly thanks to the 'Automotive Industry Promotion Act' enacted by the Park Chung-hee regime, which reigned in Korea in 1962, as part of the efforts to restore the country's economy. Given such transitions, 'Sibal', the first Korean-made vehicle and a symbol of progressive movement, disappeared from the streets quickly. Saenara Motors (currently, GM Korea) imported automotive parts from Nissan Motor of Japan and produced Saenara, featuring a streamlined design and the model attracted large popularity. Many taxi companies also replaced their fleets with 'Saenara'. Therefore, Saenara has many resemblances to the New Community Movement, a government campaign internalizing the compulsiveness for new elements in the 1970s as both names suggested. Since senior Bak worked as a taxi driver for Saenara, he seemed suitable for the project of relocating local residents for the redevelopment of the outdated town. Senior Bak may aim to reject junior Bak by being uncooperative.

Mullae diary 

                                        2013 Mixed Media, Dimension variable

Then, why was he doubtful of junior Bak? The recent 18th presidential election made not only regional conflicts but also generation gaps more distinct than ever. Junior Bak once said that he had a quarrel over politics after the presidential election. Discontented with the election outcome, junior Bak and some younger voters called to eliminate the free subway ride benefit program for senior passengers. Senior Bak, who has been yearning for the old times under the Park Chung-hee regime, felt threatened by this claim. This may have led him to murder junior Bak. Over 200 application forms for the Pyeongyang Taxi Project were found at the residence of senior Bak, raising the possibility that he has fled to Pyeongyang. This scenario suggests that Bak is working on a specific plan. Third, we cannot rule out the possibility that a third party is involved in the murder because the third party was jealous of junior Bak's abrupt ascent to the title of artist. Hundreds of aspiring artists apply to the MAP project that Bak recently joined every year and the winner's prize has been increasing so quickly that it intensified the competition year by year. Many young job seekers vie for the prize in order to improve their resumes. All of them fear dropping out of the competition as the job market is increasingly tough. The winners of the MAP project are entitled to a large cash amount, social reputation and various benefits. Threatened by fierce competition and fear of dropping out, the younger generation internalizes the winner-takes-all structure day by day so that they increasingly pursue money and power. Junior Bak, who was relatively flexible in his career, might get on their nerves. Lastly, it is not unlikely that junior Bak committed suicide. Although he showed strong enthusiasm in his success, he often said that he was not supposed to stay in Mullae-dong for a long time. The Mullae community was reported to maintain harmonious relations between artists, ironworkers and residents by media, but he pointed out that they actually had substantial gaps in their thoughts. He had complaints particularly about the existing authorities of art. "Boundaries cannot be set for art. Artists always argue that they support public arts and the integration of life and art, but the notion that artists provide cultural benefits to local communities can be burdensome to ordinary people," he said. As described by junior Bak, the residents of Mullae-dong do not want to enjoy long-forgotten cultural benefits from artists but they want to earn respect for their own lifestyles and local cultures. Bak sometimes said he wanted to give up his art career. His ideas were used for the government's redevelopment project. 

Mullae diary 

                                        2013 Mixed Media, Performance

 He was also abused as an artistic tool for such a project. Doubts about his reality may have depressed him and forced him to kill himself. This accident not only resulted in the termination of a life but also led to deliberation on the modern history of Korea, conflicts in local communities caused by redevelopment, generation gaps, an extremely capitalistic society and artistic authenticity, various social and cultural issues of Korean society. We hope that the investigation will produce a quick breakthrough to disclose the underlying truth. 

Art Car-Wind

media

2012 The Creative Attitude of that 'Distance', Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon

* Pyongyang is the capital of North Korea, and South Koreans are not allowed to visit.

project

2011 Jeju-Gasirl “Captain Hong’s Art Taxi Project”, Jeju

Daejeon Museum of Art holds an exhibition that

reviews art projects conducted outside studios,

and four artists take part in it. They each create

their work considering the public using a different

method. One of them, Hong Won-seok carried

out a peculiar project that used painting, a genre

he has originally pursued, and video concurrently.

He is originally a painter. From 2006, he has

made paintings by endlessly reconstructing his

memories with his father and grandfather, who

were taxi drivers when he was young, and with

his experiences as an ambulance driver in the

army and as a driver to making a living. To him,

driving is a vague memory and a means to earn

money in life. At the same time, it is an element

that makes him feel uneasy and the only passage

that allows him to escape from uneasiness. While

he described his experiences in his early pieces

with his imagination, the pieces that he has made

since 2010 contain social issues. Standing in

front of real painful situations, he has focused on

shedding light on the dark impulses inherent in

society.

2011 Jeju-Gasirl Art Taxi project, Jeju Free-Taxi interview

His piece “Light Pollution,” shows his curiosity

about why the McDonald’s chain leaves its lights

on for 24 hours, while another piece, “Yongsan

Mystery,” shows a destroyed site in Yongsan, which

he sketched with tension. He speaks about the

events breaking out in our lives as a witness of his

time.

Such a change in his work is not a simple flow.

It is based on the experiences that he obtained

through affluence and frustration during the 21st

century. The taxi driver, which he thought as the

best occupation during his childhood, came to

be regarded as an insignificant job. As he went

through the bubble phenomenon of our society

and the fall of the ar t market as an ar tist, he

came to see through the system that actuates

social desires, and to more keenly recognize the

problems in which individuals are victimized by

the system. He is an artist who communicates

with people using the medium of driving. In the

aspect in which he makes his works not by the

knowledge learned with his brain but by the

knowledge learned with his body, his progress is

persuasive.

■ Lee Seul-bi_Reporter of Wolganmisool

2011 Yeong Cheon project idea sketch

2011 Yeong Cheon project, Art Car 'wind'

2011 Yeong Cheon project, iphone interview

2011 Yeong Cheon project, iphone interview

2011 Yeong Cheon project, Art Car 'wind' Room

QR codes are attached to treasured items of participants who experienced art taxi and free taxi. Through the QR codes viewers can see videos containing stories of each item by using their smart phone. The Captain Hong's Art Taxi Project engenders interaction and relationship with others. This is an unpredictable situation which generates diverse narratives through the art taxi project.

    

 2012 Changdong-graphy, National Museum of Contemporary Art Changdong Art Studio Gallery, Seoul

2012 Community Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Gyeonggi

2012 The Creative Attitude of that 'Distance', Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon

2012 The Creative Attitude of that 'Distance', Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon