WEBZINE ACC

“BANDI WALK.” What a nice name. Imagining a walk with BANDI (fireflies in Korean) in the middle of a city with neon, electronic boards, and car lights refreshes my mind. It is an imagination to meet BANDI at the former Jeollanam-do-Asia Culture Center, the heart of the city.

“BANDI WALK: One Step Closer to Our Earth” is an event where media art is displayed in both small and large spaces under the theme “just like nature” this year ACC decided. “It is an outdoor exhibition that sheds light on the past, present, and future of the Anthropocene age to remember the abundant ecosystem of the past and that promotes the practice for carbon neutrality by carefully listening to the current story of Earth.” The exhibition was composed of 27 works of art by 16 artists from China, Japan, Singapore, Germany as well as Gwangju, Korea.

The three parts of the exhibition, “Remember,” “Practice,” and “Prepare”, have their subtitles “Protect the Disappearing things,” “An Inconvenience Chosen with Pleasure,” and “Become Friends with the Nature of Future” respectively to deliver their messages more clearly. The exhibition is designed to renew the perception and desire about the abnormalities caused by the climate change augmented by numerous developments and backfires of the abundance we have and about the joint countermeasure as we are the one responsible to realize the hopeful future.

Depending on the task setting, the composition of the exhibition is divided by hours, but through any part the audience can reach to the insight. In addition, if you take a walk, enjoy, and rest along the works arranged in the outdoor spaces of ACC, you won't have to try to read them according to the designed composition. Regardless of the starting point, south or north, there are a lot of works connected to the east-west axis of ACC so that you just need to stroll relaxed, but since the exhibition period is quite long, I think it would be fine to see them for several days. I want to introduce some works I met on the walk in the early evening of the cool early fall.

Lee Byungchan, <Creature>, 2022, LED lights, vinyl, film, air motor, polyethylene film

In the "View Foley" on the rooftop of the Gwangju Visual Content Center behind the ACC Creation, you can enjoy the night view of the city where stars begin to fall one by one in the sunset. Around 8 p.m., when the "BANDI WALK" program begins, you will take a walk after briefly identifying the approximate exhibition composition and location of the works at the information center at the Haneul Madang.

LayLay's <Punk Look>, which sits alone in the middle of the spacious grass, has a built-in lighting that serves as a photo zone with a bright and cute appearance, and the main character from the author's Pinocchio themed fairy tale is out as an air sculpture. Kim Uljiro’s <Three-Dimensional Preparat>, which connects the escalator moving up and down the east side of the hall in front of the Haneul Madang with the entrance of Medi Cube, allows the audience to enjoy the illusion as if you move along the stem to nourish the plant, you fly with spring flowers, or you teleport around a waterfall.

LayLay, <Punk Look>, 2022, Fiber

If you go to the underground of the hall away from the city lights, you will see a new space made by the video artworks reflected on the fire road that has the length of about 100 meters. On a long, slanted ramp, which becomes the screen for the exhibition, Lee Jo-Heum’s <Elongated Earth, Pictogram Jungle>, Chung Hae Jung’s <End Island (Ver.2)>, Charles Lim Yi Yong’s <Sandwich>, Choi Jiii’s <Marmot Day: Punxsutawney Phil’s Week>, Digital Serotonin’s <Everything Is Connected>, Yonghyun Lim’s <Can’t Be a Fossil>, and Kayip x Lee Seulbi x Lee Ji-hyeon’s <Carbon Clock@ACC> are repeatedly played.

While I am standing in between all these artworks that the artists’ ideas and messages about the environmental ecology of Earth are delivered through new media visual languages, they create an illusion that I am rolling like one of many pebbles or I am being swept as a part of the fish with an army of flowers and letters.

Chung Hae Jung, <End Island (VER.2)>, 2022, Digital 3D animation, projection mapping, color, and sound

In the Myrtle Cape next to the Fire Road, instead of myrtle crapes swept by unprecedented typhoon a few days ago, Choi Jiii’s <Human Martyrdom> is shining a light as a group of big roses of Sharon with built-in lighting. In the Yeolin Madang close to the stairs, Yanobe Kenji’s <Ship’s Cat (Sailor)> guards the east side entrance of the center. The cat is wearing a shield like a diving helmet in a red guard costume, acting like a protector of the world contaminated and an explorer of new world with keen sense.

Choi Jiii, <Human Martyrdom>, 2022, Forming after polycarbonate carving, light, cement, and mixed media

You can experience the augmented reality virtual world at the forest in front of the ACC Creation and at the Butterfly Garden. It is a collaboration work of three artists, Kayip, Lee Seulbi, and Lee Ji-hyeon, <Carbon Clock @ ACC>. When you answer 10 questions through the application according to the guidance, the carbon emission will be calculated, and you will experience the unfamiliar virtual spaces and the time left to turn into a carbon neutral society like a time capsule.

In the vast Asia Culture Center, the exotic tents are installed, and people can take a rest by sitting or lying down on chairs and beds prepared inside to appreciate the media wall. At the large multimedia screen installed at the backside of the ACC Culture Exchange, the artworks like Sungsil Hwarang’s <Endangered animals graphic archives>, Charles Lim Yi Yong’s <A Lonely Concert for What Was There>, Chung Hae Jung’s <World of a Half of a Half of a Half>, AABB’s <BABEL x BABEL II>, Jang Jongwan’s <The Day I Came Back, He Left>, Digital Serotonin’s <New World? II>, Kim Uljiro’s <Gosari Walk>, and LayLay’s <The Universe Cotton> are repeatedly screened, the short one for 30 seconds and the long one for 5 minutes. Animation like fairy tale, graphic archive, a video like fable, and high-quality 3D program like SF video reflect the Earth and animals and plants destroyed, sacrificed, and mutated as the shadow of Anthropocene and various phenomena in the age of electronic civilization.

Digital Serotonin, <New World? II>, 2022, Data visualization video, single-channel video, color, sound, three minutes

At the Tree Shade Rest Area in front of the ACC Children, <Endangered animal graphic archives> by Sungsil Hwarang are standing in a circle like the Twelve Zodiac Animal Deities. They are the bust sculptures of Fennec fox, Eurasian eagle-owl, gaur, Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, and sea otter, and they are like the portraits of the deceased made with reinforced plastics. At the ACC Children Entrance Ceiling, Lee Byungchan’s <Creature>, the grandiose, weird-looking shape of creature, is installed. It raises the awareness of the severity of urgent situation in ecosystem caused by modern society and city through a horrifying bizarre creature, constantly wiggling, swelling, and shrinking, made with disposable vinyl and plastic wraps with air motor.

Sungsil Hwarang, <Endangered animal graphic archives: Fennec fox, Eurasian eagle-owl, gaur, Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, sea otter>, 2022, fiber reinforced plastics, acrylic

Lastly, when you go up to the ground and move to Sangsang Madang, you see UMALONG’s <Signs of Movement> that makes a connection between the center and the daily life of city. A boundless bird, animals and plants discarded at the redevelopment district, and waste are lined up at the pillars on top of the cornerstones to induce the fragments of life in the city and social introspection about migration or movement.

UMALONG, <Signs of Movement>, 2022, Iron, concrete, stainless steel, UV prints

The ACC is becoming an individual island even though it is connected to the downtown or street of youth. “BANDI WALK” is a trial to find the night culture of the center where the silence takes up the whole space in the evenings through media art that nature, modern society, and art are combined. If you move a few steps from the daily life of chaotic city, you will be able to have a rest and self-healing time by imagining BANDI, a symbol of clean nature.

Although the exhibition is dealing with some uneasy topics like global environment, ecology variation, and climate change, a small change can begin by just agreeing each other to solve a common problem the entire humanity faces by gathering our interests and desire to practice.