WEBZINE ACC

# Stop the pause

In the late 2019, the coronavirus spread out all over the world, and the humanity acted like we would never lose based on the past experiences. And as of today, September 2020, we felt that humanity lost by experiencing the pandemic we have never been through before. Humans began to fall helplessly due to this new virus, first, the city, then the country, and then the world locked their doors and dealt with the deadly virus that they first encountered.

After the virus began spreading out, many things have changed around us. There were numerous cities and countries that locked their doors to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and the active movement of mankind was halted for a moment. Whether intentional or not, we had more new experiences resulting from it.

Three years after COVID-19 swept the world, most people became accustomed to living with masks, and not wearing masks at first sight became a significant violation of basic etiquette. The new encounter also begins with the mask. If a person is not your family or friend you already know, it is hard to recognize the face because it is covered by a mask.

Mask is a sort of anonymity that provides us another type of freedom. Some people said that it was good to wear the masks because they could hide their faces and facial expressions. Especially for those who have a job that requires dealing with others, they are satisfied since they can filter their true self. However, some other people express the discomfort of mask caused by the humidity inside the mask. We have undergone many trials and errors until we are accustomed to wearing a mask.

Pause. Pause that the movement or motion of object stops. We chose the pause, and the word, lockdown, brought us quite negative feeling at some point. Nonetheless, we never stopped while we said we did. We found a way to move while staying in the same place, and we met ourselves moving actively more than ever despite the state of pause.

Research Topic Seminar

Although the flights traveling around the world have stopped, the global network of Internet has moved more actively than ever. The emergence of the word "un-tact" has renewed the activity that requires “contact,” and the humanity, who seemed to be briefly depressed by the lack of contact, has created a new term called "ontact," which means the connection through Internet, and created new activities. And now the world starts moving again.

# Residency, Moving and Staying

When mankind chose to stop, we could not easily see foreigners around us, but now we begin to feel through people in foreign countries that we are starting to move again. And the ACC announced its start of the residency program. In culture and art, residency refers to the activity of living in one place and creating works. Creators stay in a new city or country, not a familiar place, to plan and create new works there.

The ACC invites artists from Asia and around the world to Gwangju, Korea as a platform for research and creative production that produces and shares ideas to spread the diversity of Asian culture and art. The ACC Residency, an international residency program run by ACC, provides the facilities, human resources, and various networking programs to help participants create new works away from existing forms and expand genres and fields around Asian culture and art, while introducing our history and culture and providing an opportunity to experience them to the creators from other countries.

Networking Party

We recall that along with the expectations for what kind of activities they, who have own culture and art, would show at this new place, Gwangju, Korea, we asked the participants for many questions and changes just like how COVID-19 did. Many people have come up with questions about how to live in the future through the pandemic, and the 2022 ACC Residency asks questions about the identity after the COVID-19 era under the theme of post-COVID age, post-humanism. What answers will participants from each country who visited Gwangju give us to this question?

Orientation

No one expected this length of time, and we chose to stop or were forced to stop. As a result, the atmosphere, which had only shown us the murky sky before COVID-19, showed good day after day so that we could easily open the window to feel the fresh air. The increasingly strong wind sweeps through the surroundings, heralding a strong typhoon. Like the wind blowing beyond the constraints of space, people aspire to move beyond the limits of their space to new places.

The new virus ordered us to stop. However, with it, we constantly moved and found new ways to keep moving. At a time when people’s desire to move was just firing, 33 participants who made the move before anyone else arrived in Gwangju. The mankind, which had been cut off for a while, has continued again in a new way, and we will have to wait and believe in our positivity in what direction it will take. I am excited to see what kind of answers to the "post-COVID age, post-humanism" participants from the ACC residency will show during the next three months.

# New challenge of 21 teams (33 individuals) from five different fields from eight different countries

The ACC Residency program is a residence consisting of a total of five fields and aims to “build international residency governance" in which researchers and creators of all genres of culture and art gather to create, produce, and exchange based on Asia. The ACC Residency invited 21 teams consist of 33 creators in the fields of art & technology, visual art, dialogue, design, and theater.

Seven teams in art & technology—Christian Dimpker (Germany), Lee Inkang (Korea), Lingxiang Wu (China), SLITSCOPE (Korea), ().(:) (Germany), Shailesh BR (India), Jonghyeok Chae (Korea), eight teams in visual art—SI A Joo (Korea), J.H.R (Korea), Seam Lee (Korea), vn-a & a (Vietnam), Su Jeng Ga (Korea/US), Boram So (Korea), Lumbera-Singh (Philippines), and korinsky/seo (Korea), two designers—Rodrigo Marín Briceño (Venezuela) and Bokyung Go (Korea), three teams in theater—Lucia Pineda (Mexico), Theater Miin (Korea), and Jeong Seyoung (Korea), and one person in dialogue—Seung-a Yoo (Korea) were selected and moved in.

The creators from Germany, China, India, Vietnam, Philippines, Venezuela, Mexico as well as Korea finished moving in, and after the orientation on September 2, they had an in-depth discussion about “post-COVID age, post-humanism” through research topic seminar and workshop on 5th and 6th. The creators added more depth to the discourse as they got the lectures and expert-connected programs about “post-humanism” through the research topic seminar co-designed with Professor Sun Hee Park of Chosun University.

On the 15th, starting with a lecture by Professor Sang-bong Kim of Chonnam National University on the theme of "from the struggle for one’s rights to the response to the suffering of others (about the meaning of May 18th in terms of world history), a tour to the Soswaewon Garden in Damyang and May 18th National Cemetery was held to examine the history and culture of Gwangju. In addition, at the networking party co-hosted by the local creative production space, Hollywood Creative Studio, the participants of the ACC Residency could interact with the artists in residence from the Gwangju Museum of Art, Spaceppong, Overlap, and Hollywood Creative Studio.

For the research about technical experiments and productions and their process, the creators who will get various support from the ACT Center will develop their individual projects, and the results will be available on display starting from December 15. In the exhibition at ACC’s Space 1, the technology-based convergence creations that break down boundaries are expected to present new standards for art. In addition to the exhibition, the dialogue team and the theater team will hold a roundtable research presentation and atelier performances, respectively.

It is a time when the movement, which seemed to have been stalled for three years, is being revealed as a desire for change and as movements of many people who cannot resist anymore. Artists will be more sensitive than anyone else to these changes. We are looking forward to December when 33 participants who visited Gwangju, Korea all the away from their origins will show us new works in anticipation of the new era.