Commissioned by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
at Deoksugung Outdoor Project: Light Sound Landscape, Deoksugung, Seoul, Korea, 1 SEP - 28 DEC, 2017
Insomnia & Hanabi - Nowhere in Somewhere Series, 2017. 6 channel video installation, variable size. Installation view at Deoksugung, Seoul, Korea. Photography courtesy of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Insomnia & Hanabi - Nowhere in Somewhere is based on the artist's research on Hamnyeongjeon, a place where Emperor Gojong passed away, and it expresses the artist's subjective perspective through video and sound. For this project, the artist collected and reconstructed various elements, including the sound of blinds hitting the wall, which the artist first used in the video work Insomnia (2006) when he himself suffered from chronic insomnia like Emperor Gojong, the exhilaration of people enjoying fireworks at a festival in Japan(Hanabi), and footage of past nuclear experiments.
Particularly, this work embodies the artist's central intent within the unfamiliar discord between the projected video images on the wall and the sounds heard throughout the space. In the place where Emperor Gojong was detained and met his end under the control of the Japanese Empire, the artist completes the narrative of the work, which reflects the inherent violence and global conflicts that persist today, portraying the artist as a feeble human being confronted with the grand currents of world history and the era, the sense of powerlessness, and the futile anxiety hidden behind the splendid epithet of an emperor.
Insomnia & Hanabi - Nowhere in Somewhere Series, 2017. 6 channel video installation, variable size. nstallation view at Deoksugung, Seoul, Korea. Photography courtesy of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.
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