Offering, seven boats
Performance 2015
Imjin River, South Korea
Imjin River is a river flowing from North Korea to South Korea.
I’m interested in an act of “offering.”
If people would offer anything they have to one other, not only for fellow human beings but also for nature, the earth will become a heaven on the earth.
If people would pay respect to invisible forces residing everywhere, that place becomes prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious.
This performance piece is a part of my ongoing project of transforming the relationship between the living and dying in contemporary society through my artistic practice.
I gave offerings, seven paper boats to Imjin River.
I prayed that those ships would carry as many children’s lost lives to the afterlife plain as possible.
Many children’s lives are lost in North Korea during the mass famine in the late 1990s and its aftermath tragedies.
camera: Park Jong-Ho
GIME
The paper ornament of the ships is called Gime, paper ornaments, which Shamans use for conducting rituals on Jeju Island, South Korea. Gimes represent the body of the Gods, the curtains of Gods, and the tools of the Gods. On Jeju Island, many men were fishermen. A lot of people died during the sailing trip to catch fish in old days. I assume it was for those who drown to death.
Learning Game from a shaman
I learned Gime from Seongsil Seo, a respected shaman Kim Nyung Village on Jeju Island.
Installation view
Der Meinblau, Berlin, 2017
Performance
The following text was handed out to the audience.
“Please pour a cup of milk on the stack of flour as your offering.”
Ghost/ Resurrection/ Emergence (performance, 2017)
Ghost
I have been experiencing the visitations of ghosts since when I was 14. The visitation came along with the experience of sleep paralysis and out-of-body experience.
Subconsciously, I was drawn to the theme of numerous deaths of the past century in Korea and Japan and began to make artworks around that matter. It was a ritual to let hovering dead spirits pass onto another realm of the world.
I have been looking for an elixir to cure people from suffering. Ritual is one of the most potent forms of healing our being.
At the same time, I was looking for a root cause of social disorder, and I found out it has been the work of ghosts, parasitic beings in human presence. Ghosts cannot exist without the enslavement of human beings. Thus, ghosts chain people into a cycle of suffering and pain.
As I researched the theme of massacres from past centuries, I realized that an oppressor and a location may change, but the manipulating force has been the same; it is the hungry ghost who needs human energy for its survival.
In Buddhist scripture, hungry ghosts have been depicted as creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs, and large, bloated, empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction, where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment (Maté, Gabor, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction,” North Atlantic Books, 2010, p.1)
In contrast to the dull, moderate pain of the modern urban life of enslavement, hungry ghosts always require fresh and blood of human sacrifice to survive.
In past years, wars have taken place everywhere in the world, but in modern times, such wars are also concealed in another form, in areas controlled by human traffic through national border agencies. Urban citizens are warned through terrorism not to cross these borders as well as not to be in touch with them in any form.
Resurrection
Ghosts require asleep consciousness because ghosts cannot easily use awakened human beings.
To awaken the human spirit, meditation is an essential practice to be in touch with our soul and higher consciousness.
Another valid practice for me is ritual.
Rituals have been an essential element of human life in all societies. One of the key functions of ritual is to transform negative into positive, cleansing human consciousness through communal living and offering.
I suggest an act of “offering” in my performance/ art. If people offer anything they have to one another, not only for fellow human beings but also for nature, the earth will become a heaven on earth.
If people would pay respect to invisible forces residing everywhere, that place would become prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious.
I offer ritual through performance using my body as an offering.
As I was researching to prepare for this exhibition, I saw many movies about and made in Korea about the theme. So many deaths were involved. Many got hurt.
When I see much suffering, sometimes I don’t know what to do but pray. My artwork is a form of prayer for me.
Emergence
In Hindu rituals, flowers, milk, honey, and sacred water are used to cleanse the sculpture of the deity. In the Korean shamanic ritual in Jeju, flour (white powder) is used to conduct a ritual for the dead soul. Using these materials, I wanted to create a sacred pond with milk, flowers, and honey. The holy pond is surrounded by flour (white powder)
I believe we need to pray, act, and offer something to transform Ghosts into something light. My form of offering is my artwork. After prolonged prayer and good wishes and works of people, symbolized as milk, honey, flowers, and flour, the ghosts transform into light.
We know that so many people died during the Korean War and the post-war reconstruction process in both North and South Korea. An estimated 3 million people died during the Arduous March, a mass famine in North Korea in the late 1990s. There are concentration camps in North Korea nowadays.
We’ve been working hard, and transformation is happening little by little.
Even the most horrific creatures in the world have a chance to transform into light.
Inspired by the idea of a “holy ghost” like Jesus Christ and many other saints who sacrificed their lives to save the rest of human beings, I would like to offer this performance piece for all the lives who suffered through the Korean War and the division of the Korean Peninsula.