Filmmaker Park Chan-kyong Seeks Newness from Tradition in “Gathering”

On view now through October 13, 2024, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., is the exhibition “Gathering,” from Seoul-based visionary Park Chan-kyong. In an enthralling meeting of film and photography, the perceptive artist grants visitors access to his poignant investigations of contemporary Korea through a highly nuanced, creative lens.

Park studied fine arts at Seoul National University and California Institute of the Arts. His artistic prowess is a soulful patchwork of interest and intention—a dream-like trail of folk traditions, historical catastrophes, and stirring literary references leading to a haunted landscape of beauty and suffering within post–Cold War South Korean society and state. Works on display in the show, including Citizen’s Forest, Belated Bosal, Fukushima: Autoradiography, and Child Soldier, ingeniously layer scientific scrutiny, artistic meditation, and technical production, for a transformative personal and collective experience.

Brimming with tender reflection, query, and interrogation, Park’s sweeping exhibition honors both heritage and modernity, allowing ample space for an open-minded dialogue on the salvation of Mother Nature and the safekeeping of humanity. Recently, Whitewall had the opportunity to speak with the groundbreaking artist about the anthropological imagination, radical disconnection, and the newest form of superstition.

WHITEWALL: Can you share elements of your artistic process, which thoughtfully balances the crafts of photography and film to both document and impart emotional insight on Korean heritage?

PARK CHAN-KYONG: Research, production, materials, media, et cetera, seem to be of almost equal importance. What is always most important and difficult is conveying the profundity of an event. It seems that the only way to create a good dynamic between meaning and effect, indexes and metaphors, is to constantly reciprocate.

Rather than renewing Korean traditions, I try to find newness that already exists in the traditions. Honestly, to me, traditions are often newer than contemporary culture. It stimulates some anthropological imagination and also provides insight into interpreting various contemporary issues. As long as the imagination and insight can be conveyed well, it doesn’t really matter what the medium is. However, photos combined with text and videos combined with sound are essential for me as a storyteller.

WW: The three-channel video Citizen’s Forest provides the framework for this presentation, in which sweeping video invokes a landscape scroll painting. Within this piece, you spark a stirring encounter between folk culture, Minjung painting, and poetry of the late Kim Soo-young. What inspired you to shape this particular dialogue, making way for a meditation on contemporary tragedies endured by South Korea?

PCK: The reason I think tradition is important is because Korean society has become so radically disconnected from tradition. The causes are the Korean War, which brought about complete destruction, and rapid westernization and modernization. There are many artists who have paid attention to this issue, but in literature, Kim Soo-young, and in art, Oh Yun, have created some of the most notable works. 

The ghosts of history that Kim and Oh deal with seem to have a slightly different status nowadays. Although the ghosts in my work are somewhat scary, they express a certain indifference. To be more precise, those ghosts are aware of the indifference of modern audiences. There have been various historical tragedies, but it is difficult for us today to go beyond consuming a constant flow of tragedies. That’s why the ghosts that appear in my work do not perform actions that can be clearly identified.

“What is always most important and difficult is conveying the profundity of an event,” — Park Chan-kyong

WW: The Film Belated Bosal is quite sculptural, offering a mosaic of black-and-white imagery that both compels and unnerves. How did you develop this visceral work of impending environmental catastrophe?

PCK: I didn’t think it was sculptural, but thank you for putting it that way. Hearing reviews like that makes me think about my work again. Maybe it’s because the negative-inverted image emphasizes the object’s texture in a strange way? For example, there is a scene with heavy snowfall at the end of the movie, and because the white is inverted to black, it looks like radioactive fallout is falling in the movie.

This work is paired with Fukushima, Autoradiography. While Fukushima is more of a dry report, Belated Bosal deals with a somewhat religious and abstract topic of what “hope” is. I came to think that the paintings and myths depicting the Buddha’s nirvana episode address this issue at a very complex level.

In a state of nirvana, the Buddha shows the soles of his feet to his disciple who arrived late at the funeral, metaphorizing the end of a long period of time, a humble relationship between all things, and the overlap of mourning and hope. If you felt that this work was sculptural in another aspect, it was probably because it was “memorial.” In general, commemorative sculptures are often vertical, but this work emphasizes horizontality in several ways.

A Complex History of Mother Nature, Science, and Humanity Unfolds in Washington, D.C.

WW: How does the juxtaposition here of Mother Nature, science, humanity, and modern industry immerse viewers in the political realities of South Korea and our collective society?

PCK: In Japan and Korea, the Fukushima nuclear accident is called March 11th. March 11th made me ask a lot of difficult questions. For example, why did a country that experienced the atomic bomb build so many nuclear power plants? Is radioactivity invisible? Et cetera. But when I actually went to the site of the damage, I was first overwhelmed by the magnificent nature of northeastern Japan.

I was especially impressed by the overgrown plants, since there were no people around. However, my group and I had to cover not only our entire bodies but also our cameras with vinyl. The air was very clear, but I was confused about what clear meant. The biggest fear for me was the feeling that we really don’t know what we are doing to nature and ourselves, with what we call “science and technology.”

WW: A collaging of fixed and moving images unfolds in Child Soldier, following the uncertain journey of a companionless North Korean soldier, brimming with moments of lost youth and intimate connection to the natural world. How do you expect visitors might react to this project?

PCK: When this work was exhibited in Korea, I thought many people, I mean mostly anti-communists, might protest against the museum. But it was a bit surprising for me that no one did. I guess I was probably the biggest coward. I tried to show that the most nonpolitical image can be the most political image, but I think it ended up being an apolitical image. Maybe the only one of few apolitical images about North Korea in the world. That can be political in a good way after all. This work is also about censorship in a sense.

WW: Utilizing imagery that might simultaneously be familiar and unusual to audiences, does memory and awakening perhaps play a role in the evolution and intention of your works?

PCK: Ultimately, my work is a way to understand history. To me, understanding history does not mean uncovering the truth, but, rather, constantly reconstructing “valuable” memories. Perhaps this is because the experience of my generation, at least, changes and forgets so quickly. 

When I describe my work, I often use the term postcolonial unheimlich [unhomeliness]. When I encounter Korean traditions, it feels like home and feels unfamiliar at the same time. It’s like the experience of returning home at night after a trip and bumping into the same corner of furniture again.

“Ultimately, my work is a way to understand history,” — Park Chan-kyong

WW: Alongside “Gathering,” you screened your short film Night Fishing at the museum on October 22. The acclaimed work, which won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, was created in collaboration with your brother, filmmaker Park Chan-wook, and stars singer and actress Lee Jung-hyun. Uniquely shot on an iPhone, how does the film explore your ardent interest in traditional Korean shamanism through the lens of modernity and swift socioeconomic development?

PCK: We lose close friends and family, and we ourselves die at some point. In the past, the mourning process was complicated and long, so the culture of sufficiently honoring the departed and getting used to death seems to have been much more mature than it is now. The Korean shaman’s Jinogwigut (a ritual to appease the dead and guide them to the underworld), which is featured in the film, uses funerals as a refreshing opportunity to renew the community.

I believe that many of the ills of modern society arise from moving away from this culture. If smartphones are media, we just used the “medium” in its original meaning. Shamans are the oldest form of mediumship, and smartphone technology is the newest form of superstition?

WW: Do you have any other upcoming projects you would like to shed light on?

PCK: I have been doing art and film as “projects.” But these days, I want to create something through repetitive daily labor. So I’m trying to paint before I get older and my eyesight gets worse and my hands start shaking.