KOR
Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries, this year’s edition of the Sea Art Festival, is inviting us to rethink our relationship with the sea, referring to the beauty but at the same time, the fragility of our shores, and exploring alternative frameworks and visions for engaging with the ocean and marine environments.
The sea is deeply embedded in our lives and capitalist society, a vital source for our survival, but also a vast industry we exploit for food, medicines, energy, minerals, trading, travel and so on. But increased human activity, from extensive cruise tourism, shipping and overfishing to nuclear testing, pollution and deep-sea mining have been plaguing the sea, having a huge impact on marine ecosystems and habitats.
Instead of viewing the sea from the coast as a divided and abstract surface for moving around commodities, Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries reminds us that we are part of this body of water. This year's Sea Art Festival aims to explore new relationships with the sea and its ecologies, enabling spaces for cooperation, collective visions and synergies as a call to resistance and restoration.
Jang Seungwook currently works as an animation director in Reims, France. Winner of prizes at several international festivals, including IndieJúnior – International Children’s and Youth Film Festival in Portugal, In The Palace International Short Film Festival in Bulgaria, ShorTS International Film Festival in Italy, and Digicon6 ASIA Korea Regional Awards in South Korea, he is also expanding his artistic horizons by working as a children’s book author and illustrator.
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STUDIO 1750 (Kim Younghyun, Son Jinhee) is a project group that expresses freedom without any restrictions concerning materials or locations, and adds artistic imagination to everyday life. Their works are mainly based on the theme of a hybrid culture that originates from reality and the transformation of everyday objects, examining questions ranging from trivial curiosities to the unknown future. They propose to see things differently by shifting the meanings, perspectives, and functions of objects, while at the same time deconstructing/reconstructing various cultures and transforming/reorganizing everyday objects. They currently live in various places around Korea, engaging in bold initiatives for change and continuing their experiments to expand the framework of art.
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Calypso36°21 is a women-led, French Moroccan collective that was created in Rabat in 2018 and founded by Zoé Le Voyer, Justine Daquin, Manon Bachelier, and Sanaa Zaghoud. The collective is named after the coordinates of Calypso Deep, 36°34′N 21°8′E, the deepest point of the Mediterranean Sea, which is located in the Hellenic Trench in Greek waters. Now headed by Sanaa Zaghoud and Justine Daquin, the collective has developed a curatorial, transdisciplinary, experimental, and participative approach. An itinerant research program imagined and produced by the collective called Out.of.the.blue. looks at the knowledge production processes that shape the comprehension of (liquid and solid) Mediterranean territories.
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With philosophy at its core, Shailesh BR’s work contemplates the world by examining existing knowledge, systems, traditions, rituals, metaphysics, and philosophy itself through methods of science, technology, and artistic intervention. The artist was recognized in 2015 with the Emerging Artist Award from the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, followed by a residency in 2016 at Atelier Mondial, Basel. He had a solo exhibition, Tarka at Vadehra Art Gallery, and The Last Brahmin at Villa Arson Nice, France. Shailesh has also exhibited at SAVVY Contemporary and the Armory Show, as well as numerous other galleries and museums.
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Robertina Šebjanič’s immersive sonic installations and environments often create spaces where human and nature or human and non-human creatures meet, exploring their relationships and interconnected worlds, but also tensions between these ecologies.
Tidal Whispers: Busan's Oceanic Tales is a new immersive sound installation created specifically for the Sea Art Festival, and bringing together underwater sounds and sounds from marine life collected by the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), alongside human voices and song.
By engaging in a cross-empathic sympathy exploration of concepts and analytical methods from the marine world, Tidal Whispers: Busan's Oceanic Tales delves into more-than-human oceanic ecologies, geographies, and cultures as an entangled web of interdependencies in planetary watery imaginaries.
Interdisciplinary and poetic, the work serves as an activation of empathic sympathy towards oceanic creatures that reside beneath the waves and express their messages through the poetry of Their songs while reflecting deeply on our actions and their direct impact on the seas and oceans. Robertina’s work, exploring animal-human and interspecies communication through interdisciplinary research and art-science exchange, addresses ecological consequences and underwater noise pollution in oceans and seas across the world.
Tidal Whispers: Busan's Oceanic Tales weaves together aquatic and human stories, sciences and mythologies presenting and celebrating the resilience of marine species, while opening up a world view, where all creatures and living entities have a shared experience and are deeply connected, no matter how small or large, visible or invisible they are.
Credits
Artist: Robertina Šebjanič
Text, music, textile, audio: Robertina Šebjanič (SIovenia)
Narrators, voice: Polona Torkar (Slovenia) and Pilljae Kim (Slovenia / South Korea)
Recording of voice and mastering: Rok Kovatch (Slovenia)
Field recordings: KIOST | Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology
Architecture support of the installation: studioentropia
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The Mariana Trench is the deepest point in the ocean, extending nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. One might think that the deep sea such as at this point in the Pacific might be a dark, lifeless place, and a place with no signs of human activity. But recent explorations showed that not only the Mariana Trench is a place of diverse life, including different species such as corals, octopus and jellyfish, this deep ocean, remote place couldn’t escape human impact as plastic and chemical pollutants have also reached the deepest parts of the ocean.
Currently up to 199 million tons of plastic are polluting our oceans, and if we continue to produce so much plastic, by 2050, our oceans will have more plastic than fish, continuing to affect marine life, fisheries, coastlines, tourism, and our food chain.
Studio 1750, taking as a starting point their previous work Parallel Gardens (2018), they have created an imaginary garden, an artificially changing environment that alludes to environments being transformed by human intervention, but also to a bizarre coral-reef like structure. This new installation and almost alien environment, Aquatic Garden, invites visitors to a walk-through, while assuming the role of a new and peculiar species that mutates and evolves due to environmental or genetic influences in order to survive such an unnatural environment. Mutation, an “error” in DNA replication or resulting from damaging effects of pollution, radiation or chemicals, becomes a battle coming to terms with loss. In this performative, but also playful and interactive installation, the artists are expressing their concerns and anxieties for a world changing towards the unknown.
Aren’t we humans, who are inhabiting cities of desires made up of artificial structures, objects and artificial gardens, accelerating the spread of new viruses as errors of our collective “intelligence”? In the present, living in a future that was feared in the past - we hope it is now the time to ask questions about what the sea means to us and what future we imagine for this ecosystem.
Visitors are invited to make a sea creature paper hat at the Sea Art Festival Lab to wear and be part of the installation.
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The ocean is the origin of uncertainty and the beginning of navigation, an opening of the world where dreams of submission and domination meet. According to French philosopher, theorist and writer Michel Serres, it is the origin of noise.
Part cosmic weather report, part geo-strategic briefing, part romantic novella, Ocean Briefings is a series of daily transmissions taking place over the course of the Sea Art Festival. Telling tales of logistical breakdown, geopolitical scrambling, meteorological anxiety and erotic intrigue, it takes inspiration from the instability of a world in the making. For the duration of the festival, it functions as a “subtitle” to Ilgwang Beach, framing the sea in search for signals in an ocean of noise.
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It is said that during the Goryeo Dynasty (918 — 1392), Koreans discovered that whales would eat seaweed after giving birth to recover their strength, and it became a custom to feed seaweed soup to mothers. Even today, on birthdays, along with the congratulatory wishes, the question follows, "Did you eat seaweed soup?" It is the first dish cooked when a new life is born and invokes care, affection, and dedication in the Korean psyche.
In Gijang, this tradition is even stronger: According to research by Gijang County, when a child is born in the region, seaweed soup is served to the family on the ceremonial table every day for a week and every week for a month, to wish for the child’s health and well-being and give strength back to the mother after giving birth.
This installation and studio creates a special place for the seaweed that shaped the local cultures, next to Halmae Shrine and Halbae Shrine, an acknowledgement of a community’s multispecies entanglements and relations. It is a kind of ‘seaweed shrine’.
The artists exploring this natural resource aim at healing the damage that has already been caused and, in a synergic system, produce a material to be used on land with a low impact. However, it is crucial not to view seaweed as another resource to be extracted. In imagining future possibilities, Julia Lohmann and Kayoung Kim take on a regenerative mindset, rather than an exploitative one. The organism is seen as an embedded part of the ecosystem, and it is considered in all its life cycle. Through interdisciplinary, hands-on, creative and holistic approaches the “Seaweed Shrine” showcases new ways of engaging with a local organism and to explore its potential to restore and create.
As members of the Department of Seaweed - an interdisciplinary group dedicated to exploring the cultural, environmental, and sustainable aspects of seaweed and kelp, founded by Julia Lohmann - the artists delve into the vibrant stories of the people in the area, where seaweed and kelp play a significant part in their lives. It explores their relationship with the resources they obtain from nature and the material and psychological impact it has on their daily lives.
The collected materials, exhibited alongside the kelp sculptures, create an immersive experience that allows the public to engage with local stories and evoke a range of emotions.
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Echo, Filled in the Sea is an installation in the shape of a net that spans 8 meters in width and 4 meters height. The net is created based on stories of local residents. It is intricately woven with pearls and beads. The round and luminous pearls symbolize precious moments, emotions, and memories. Additionally, the arrangement of pearls, along with elongated beads, form Morse code messages, encoded text characters in sequences of signal durations. Each pulse of the Morse code represents a message written for someone close, who can no longer be here — a message for someone from the past and long gone.
The net is suspended above the beach, swaying freely at the boundary between the sea and the sky. It reaches out toward the distant sea, a symbol of longing, as delicate strands of the net are intertwined like outstretched hands.
The hidden voices within the encrypted messages in the delicate threads of the net yearn to reach the souls of those who are no longer by our side, while reminding us that the sea is a place of hardship and precariousness for many people. As we gaze upon the transparent glow of pearls and beads, we offer a prayer that they might echo back to us.
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