Artistic bridges between Germany and Korea

Since 1994 the Gwangju Biennale has taken place every two years in the city of 1.4 million people 300km from Seoul. It is considered the most significant event in the Asian art world. In 2024 Germany is contributing its first-ever pavilion. The project is designed by the German-Korean artists’ collective Longega and has been realised by the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen with financial assistance from the German Foreign Office.deutschland.de spoke to three artists from the collective.

Siyoung Kim, what will visitors encounter in the German pavilion in Gwangju?

Siyoung Kim: We were fortunate that our pavilion is located in the Gwangju History & Folk Museum, not far from the main performance area of the Gwangju Biennale. We can use a space measuring around 800 square meters in the museum where we are presenting our spatial installation “in between water – 두물마을”. When you first enter the exhibition you find yourself in a forest where the trees are mounted on fitness trainers. The vibrating plates makes it seem as if the wind is rushing through the treetops. Further on you come to a badminton court, a workshop, a campfire, mystical mountains with instruments and a river which spans a bridge. At the end there is a hut with a kitchen. It forms the warm and welcoming central point from which you can look out over the whole scene. Most of the stations encourage visitors to participate by playing, cooking, making music, painting or just getting lost in their thoughts.

With this installation you have created a place which is located in the Dolomites in South Tyrol, Italy, where your artists’ collective regularly meets, Longega. What are the Dolomites doing in the German pavilion?

Fabian Feichter: I grew up in the village of St. Vigil close to Longega in the mid-1980s. I always found the place just incredibly beautiful. But at the same time, there’s nothing going on in Longega. There’s a main road, a supermarket and about 70 inhabitants. After completing my art degree in Munich in 2016, Youlee Ku and I came up with the idea of creating a summer residence for artists in Longega, and some time later we were joined by Judith Neunhäuserer and Siyoung Kim. Since 2017 we have regularly invited artists from South Korea and Germany to come to South Tyrol, such as Nele Ka and Oliver Haussmann who came in 2021. We have also facilitated reciprocal visits to Gwangju. Before coming to Munich, Siyoung Kim attended art college in Gwangju, so she has many contacts with South Korea. That’s how we linked up with the Gwangju Biennale. 

But you’re not just recreating Longega in the German pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale, are you?

Nele Ka: No, our installation isn’t a stage set. As a collective and as artists who have all made Munich our home, we have created a space for participation which draws in South Korean culture. For example, we have worked South Korean lace into the badminton net which you can part in the middle like curtains. The lace reminded us strongly of mountain huts and their characteristic curtains in the windows. By combining various cultural influences we are challenging stereotypes. PLATFORM, an art and cultural institution from Munich, is handling the institutional and organisational management of the pavilion, with funding from MBQ, a Munich-based programme to support employment and skills run by the Department for Work and Economy.
 

Fabian Feichter: In the local language of Ladin, Longega means “between water”, which is where the title of our work comes from. We have set up a camera in Longega which sends a live stream of the river to the German pavilion. In the workshop we are showing more video documentaries which tell the story of our lives and work in Longega.

What were your cultural expectations when you came to Germany, Siyoung Kim?

Siyoung Kim: I was born in Berlin but my parents returned to South Korea when I was four years old. They taught me a few German words, such as the words for “orange”, “money”, “bag”. Despite this I had to start from the very beginning in language terms when I came to Berlin. The new environment was overwhelming at first. The people seemed enormous, pale, and I couldn’t understand the street signs. The cliché that Germany has a lot of rule turned out to be true. Nowadays I feel at home in Munich and I love sharing my Korean culture and origins.

Fabian Feichter: Eating together is so important in our artists’ residence in Longega. In the evening anyone can cook if they feel like it, and as my wife Youlee Ku is Korean, we always have Korean ingredients in the mountains. 

Siyoung Kim: Eating together is an icebreaker, particularly on the first evening when you don’t really know one another yet. The mixture of cuisines is always well received, too, such as kimchi and Tyrolean dumplings. To mark the fifth anniversary of the Longega project in 2022 we held a celebratory exhibition at the Maximiliansforum in Munich which included a cooking workshop on this topic for schoolchildren and young people.

What does your pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale have to say about Germany?

Nele Ka: As a visitor, of course you’re always excited to find out about what the two countries think of each other, and at that point you may already have a selective view of the question. As the Longega project, although we live in Germany, we are an extremely multicultural team, so in our pavilion we have deliberately broken away the idea of a national mindset as an outdated concept. To put it simply, just because we’re from Bavaria doesn’t mean there’s an Octoberfest here. Instead, our work relates to elemental encounters with nature. It causes you to reflect on people’s universal and archaic needs. Everyone needs a fire and a warm place to live. Within all of us there is a curiosity to discover things and go exploring in the forest.

Nele Ka, in your biography you say you were born as a member of an unknown species. As a Transplanetarian, what is your view of Longega and the German pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale?

Nele Ka: I work with the narrative of a different species which has travelled to many planets, including this blue planet and is looking at what is going on here. From the perspective of a Transplanetarian, Longega is probably the most beautiful place you could ever live. The Pavilion is an example of trying to translate this vision to other places.