WEBZINE ACC

The cityscape, after the night falls, changes to a quiet ghost town instead of flashing neon signs and loud noises. Although contactless services and entertainment have sprung up everywhere to keep pace with the current situation, the sense of emptiness we feel due to the continued stay-at-home life is still here. Therefore, we’re introducing a special trail, when you suddenly feel like going out for a walk, that will hopefully give you a pleasant night. ACC has opened ‘Sensory Garden’, a media art exhibition that took up about 4,000 square meters of outside space. The exhibition, with ‘flow’ as its theme, hangs down colorful light to the once dark exterior wall of a building and the garden by inviting five Korean artists.

Dohahm Oh, Your Skin Listens, 2021

First, artist Dohahm Oh's installation Your Skin Listens greets the visitors from the entrance of the sky garden. The appearance of the work located in the center of the lawn, a little bit far from the operating headquarter, resembles a small spaceship that crash-landed on a wide plane. If you visit the place at the time of the reservation, you can connect your smartphone's Bluetooth function to the sound equipment of the work. For 10 minutes, one visitor at a time, visitors can enjoy the music they selected while sitting on an opaque and soft, large tube spaceship. The distinction of the work allows the visitors to feel the vibration generated from the music, which is hearing contents. The artist was inspired by how a hearing-impaired music lover, who he came across by chance, listens to music: the person would listen to music by playing music on the mobile phone and fixing it under the bed mattress, so that the vibration through the surface could be felt on the body. The inspiration was reborn as a work that delivers music through the skin that naturally touches the tube while laying down.
I selected “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young, a song that I used to listen to all summer long. The song is from a scene from the movie Quiet Place, where the two characters who are living in a world of silence share earphones and dance silently. When the music resonates by piquantly stimulating the senses of hearing and touch, I was able to feel a trance as if I was part of the movie. Another attractive factor is that even though the visitors are supposed to experience the work exclusively for a short while, the music is played at quite a loud volume, and other people at a distance would be able to hear their favorite music too. The tactile stimulation, which is hard to experience when listening to music through earphones or regular speakers, and the view of an open garden and the night sky seen outside the material add visual charm. I recommend you experience this work along with your favorite music.

Ki-Young Ko, The Forest of Emerald Light, 2021

After experiencing Dohahm Oh's work, I was on the way to go around the outer wall of the ACC building. The street that was used to be dark was colored in a glimmering blue light. This is when the work of Ki-Young Ko, The Forest of Emerald Light, starts. Going inside along the outer wall, you will see the wall of a building that used to be dry and boring, a cooling tower, and small crape myrtle bushes that only show their presence during the day. It is full of pervasive green light and light of five colors, which are bright, yet restrained to the extent that it does not hide the natural presence of the natural objects. It feels as if I'm in the middle of a mysterious forest from the movie Avatar. The sound of insects that are heard even if not paying close attention adds liveliness to this little forest. This awe-inspiring sight leads the harmony of the overall space by spreading through the places where the work is installed, starting from the cooling tower, which is the heart of the exhibition space for Sensory Garden.

Ki-Young Ko, Emerald Light Forest, 2021

I guess the work that attracted the most attention would be the media façade installed near the fifth gate where the fire fighting road starts. The term is a compound word of media and façade, which indicates the outer wall of buildings, which as the word itself suggests, indicates a media art piece that utilized the outer wall of the building as a screen. It is an exhibition method that can be easily seen in night attractions or festivals. ACC has previously exhibited media art pieces that utilized outdoor spaces through the exhibition Night Glow Hall in 2020, which was part of the project to commemorate the 40th anniversary of 5·18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. The best part of these outdoor exhibitions is that they can show how the work is harmonized with the weather, natural objects, and other surroundings, and the visitors can also enjoy the exhibition more freely compared to the indoor exhibitions.

Sera Yong, Words Said in Passing, 2021

Here, the works of four artists, Hyewon Kwon, Changhwan Moon, Sera Yong, and Sung Rok Choi, can be enjoyed in successive order. The image travels down, not only the outer wall of the building, but also down the long and gentle slope of the firefighting road, spouting a sense of overwhelming emotion as if the large image will embrace the audience. Arriving at the outer wall of the building, which serves as a starting point of the work as well as the main screen, artist Sera Yong's work Flowing Words, created with the signature design from the exhibition poster as the center, was being played. The work has portrayed nature that flows along with time as if morning was coming after passing the long night. Graphic images with a burst of colors move and flow in dynamic motion to draw a cheerful atmosphere. A witty poem from Sang Wook Ha, a poet that has been gaining lots of popularity by creating relatable poems on his social channel, was also adding to the joy of the exhibition.

Sera Yong's work was not the only work that granted a sense of freshness with unexpected harmony. Hye Won Kwon's How to Borrow a Landscape, which focused on the concept of 'borrowed scenery,' an act of borrowing natural scenery from inside the house, spreads out the image of a distant place captured by camera in front of the audience. The artist included the current and old image of the Gwangju River, which flows along the city from Mudeungsan to Yeongsangang, to borrow the scenery of water as the medium of the work, as it was the only part that lacked in and outside of the exhibition space. Additionally, artist Chang-Hwan Moon's autobiographical metaverse A More Perfect World which contained the image of nature that humans casually consume based on the images of trees, fire, soil, iron, and water included in one's fortune and destiny, and artist Sung Rok Choi's Genesis Canyon, which stimulates the sense of modern people living in a digital era through the scenery of virtual space full of animation image that resembles the legend of creation from folklore, are also displayed.

Mee Kyoung Shin, Fragrance and Nostalgia: Remembrance of Things Past, 2021

Along with the keyword 'flow,' another point of the exhibition is that the works displayed hold site-specific characteristics, where the works are harmonized with the existing construction of space and landscaping. If the works introduced above were intended to consider the paths of the visitors on the firefighting road that resembles the outer wall of the building and the walk that serves a role as the large screen, artist Mee Kyung Shin's Fragrance and Nostalgia: Remembrance of Things Past installed at a small square behind a cooling tower has a more direct relationship with the external environment. If you've managed to smell something sweet, you're in the right place. The secret of the work, that reminds of something between a stone that makes up a castle and a sculpture, is that it is a sculpture made out of soap. Artist Mee Kyung Shin, who believes ‘scent’ is the sense that fixes the moment of memory like flowing water, says that she was inspired by a French novelist Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. A piece of soap that weighs more than 15t changed its shape by the weathering of nature with sunlight, rain, and wind. In mid-September, when I visited the exhibition, the surface had already cracked and became opaque by weathering. I will make sure to come back in the winter when the exhibition ends to see if the scent of the autumn wind still remains.

Ligyung, more Lights_ DelightFULL, 2021

Going down the short stairs located left to Mee Kyung Shin's work, Ligyung's installation piece more Lights _ DelightFULL is another thing not to miss. The work based on the moon, which is a natural flow itself that rises and tilts according to the flow of time, effectively recreates the delicate and cozy light of the moon. According to the artist note, unlike the sunlight, which distinguishes or individualizes an object, the moonlight tends to fuse and embrace the object. Passing through the works that stimulated the visual and auditory senses with vibrant images and sound, I recommend enjoying a special night work at a Sensory Garden through calm and quiet works unique to Mee Kyung Shin and Ligyung.

You could say you've enjoyed the exhibition to the full extent if you have enjoyed all stimulations of senses such as touch, sight, hearing, and smell of work delivered by the works displayed along the path. Upon the arrival of the unprecedented quarantine society, which made enjoying nature even harder, the exhibition Sensory Garde is a beneficial production of the development of digital technology that can be truly felt with our skin. If you are ready to put aside the agonies you experience in your monotonous life and knock on the door of senses, go on a night walk to ACC tonight. The exhibition will be open until December 31st.

• Written by Ming-Jeek Kim mingjeek@gmail.com
  Photo. In-ho Hwang. photoneverdie@naver.com
  
  2021.10