The 2024 ACC outdoor exhibition “Reconstructing Sequences” highlights the historical events and memories related to the location of National Asian Culture Center (ACC). The references to “site” and “event” in the Korean title and content of the exhibition are derived from architect Hyuk Khang’s critical essay “Architecture of Events” featured in “Forest of Light” (2013), a collection of works by Kyusung Woo, the architect of the ACC. A “site” is defined as a “place embodying the depth of life where an event, incident, or activity intersects a specific time and space.” This exhibition takes a complex and broad approach to the various meanings of “site” intertwined with events, such as “the specific site where an event occurs,” “the scene or moment in which an event takes place,” and “the field of activity where an event unfolds.”
The ACC was built on the site of the Gwangju-eupseong Fortress, which was destroyed during the Japanese occupation, and the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office, which served as the last stronghold in the May 18 Democratization Movement. As such, it is an important “site” symbolizing the modern history of Korea. Currently, the ACC occupies the site of the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office, which was built on the site of the Gwangju-eupseong Fortress. Through this progression of new buildings replacing the old, traces of the past that had occupied the site were paradoxically erased. People, too, forgot about the events and incidents that had left these traces. The ACC, in line with its founding philosophy to “artistically sublimate the significance of democracy, human rights, and peace,” is currently working to restore the traces of the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office, partially damaged when the center opened in November 2015, and create a site that recalls past events and memories.
“Reconstructing Sequences” reinterprets the ACC, surrounded by a construction site fence, within the context of the “accumulated events and memories of a place.” The exhibition begins at the “historical site” of the Asia Plaza and the ACC Culture Exchange, where the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office once stood. Through impression and evaporation, erosion and deposition, low tides and high tides, and drawing and erasing, artists transform “the scene of memory” into a place while viewers create new sequences by physically moving from one place to another. This place transforms into a “field of experience,” encompassing new encounters and events triggered by artworks that change according to the surroundings and weather.
The site awaits performers. It calls upon them, hoping to become a place for events that generate memories. Reflecting on its layers of events and memories, from the Gwangju-eupseong Fortress to the former Jeollanam-do Provincial Office to the current ACC, we look forward to the site becoming a new place enriched with our lives.