PROJECT HASHTAG 2020
24 July ~ 30 September 2020
MMCA Seoul
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA, Director Youn Bummo), presents PROJECT HASHTAG 2020, an exhibition stemming from an innovative public contest titled PROJECT #, from 24 July through 30 September at MMCA Seoul. Launched in 2019, its purpose is to seek out promising next-generation artists and promote multidisciplinary collaborations.
Hosted by the MMCA and sponsored by Hyundai Motor, PROJECT # is an innovative and unprecedented form of contest devised to discover and support burgeoning talent by encouraging collaborations among creators in a variety of fields. The hashtag (#) is a special symbol that is used and interpreted in many ways depending on the context, region, or generation; in musical notation it is a “sharp,” in prose it is an abbreviation for “number,” and online it has become part of the language of social media. As the name of this project, it symbolizes the goal of bringing together prospective
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Out of 203 teams which applied from various fields, two teams were selected as finalists: GANGNAMBUG, and Seoul Queer Collective (SQC). These teams are composed of varied talents in the fields of design, architecture, and research. Using collective ideas that transcend formal boundaries and which demonstrate art’s limitless potential, these two teams proposed projects concerning the district of Gangnam and the Jongno 3-ga area in Seoul.
GANGNAMBUG (Lee Jungwoo, Park Jaeyoung, Lee Kyungtaek, Kim Nayoun) sees Gangnam—a district symbolic of Korea’s economic growth—as a bug, like a computer malfunction of sorts, and examines key points of contention in contemporary Korean society in light of the changes that have taken place in the region. GANGNAMBUS tours the landmarks of Gangnam, and Win, Lose or Draw: The Drawing Competition breaks down the college prep courses offered in Gangnam, the hub of private education, where prospective art students are taught to memorize the shades and shadows of still life drawings so that they can reproduce them in their college entrance exams.
SQC (Kwon Wook, Kim Jungmin, Nam Soojung, Jung Seungwoo) concentrates on the problems faced by minorities edged out in the process of gentrification of Jongno 3-ga. People who are homeless and deemed “problematic for ruining the urban aesthetic,” solitary seniors in Tapgol Park, and women driven to sex work are termed “the urban queer” by SQC as they seek to have these people accepted as everyday neighbors. The team magnifies the visibility of the urban queer through seminars that discuss issues pertaining to the city, the community, and spaces for the queer, and also through Others, Jongno 3-ga, a publication that suggest an alternative documentation of the city. The team also operates a website, drafts a chronological history, and produces sound installations.
The PROJECT HASHTAG 2020 will be broadcast live online at 4 p.m., Friday, 24 July for approximately 30 minutes, with detailed commentaries by GANGNAMBUG, SQC and the curator of the exhibition Sabine Lee. Everyone can watch the video through YouTube after the broadcast.
Youn Bummo, Director of the MMCA, notes, “The PROJECT HASHTAG 2020 exhibition is the result of Korea’s first-ever innovative and inclusive open contest. The MMCA will continue to enhance its role as a museum, encourage collaboration among creators in different fields, and provide guidance in the production of next-generation art.”
The MMCA will be partly reopened from Wednesday, 22 July offering online reservation for museum visits with free admission.
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Attachments
PROJECT HASHTAG 2020
Hosted by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and sponsored by Hyundai Motor, PROJECT # is an innovative public contest to promote multidisciplinary collaboration and support the next generation of Korean artists. The hashtag (#), which was originally devised to help people find or sort information on social media, has quickly evolved into a dynamic tool for creating and sharing user-generated expressions with unique meanings. Embracing this open and active spirit, PROJECT # will choose two teams of young creators from various fields each year (for a total of five years) to receive sponsorship for major art projects. PROJECT HASHTAG 2020 introduces the first two selected teams: GANGNAMBUG and Seoul Queer Collective (SQC). Coincidentally, both teams proposed projects that focus on a specific district of Seoul: Gangnam and Jongno 3-ga, respectively. Beyond a mere geographic territory, every region contains its own mix of unique stories and social issues, and can thus serve as a microcosm for the wider problems of our world. By sharing these stories, we can begin to gauge where we stand in the present, and where we hope to go in the future.
GANGNAMBUG The team of GANGNAMBUG views Gangnam as a strange anomaly— like a computer bug—that unexpectedly emerged through the urban development of Korea. With its astronomical real estate prices, luxury shops, and renowned private education facilities, Gangnam has come to symbolize the materialist desires and mainstream culture of contemporary Korea. By creatively tweaking the images and values associated with Gangnam, GANGNAMBUG sheds new light on the district and lifestyle that “everyone wants to enjoy and destroy at the same time.”
(from left) Lee Jungwoo, Lee KyungTaek, Park Jaeyoung, Kim Nayoun. Photo: Lee Kanghyuk
Seoul Queer Collective Seoul Queer Collective (SQC) is a project team with a particular interest in minority groups that have been “Other-ized” and marginalized through rampant gentrification around Jongno 3-ga since 2016. The team applies the name “urban queer” to all minority residents or workers of Jongno 3- ga who have been labeled as undesirable or detrimental to the beauty of the city, including homosexuals, flophouse residents, homeless people, female prostitutes, and the poor and elderly in Tapgol Park. The goal of SQC is not only to visualize the existence of these urban queers who have been spurned by the city’s hierarchy, but more importantly, to (from left) Kwon Wook, Kim embrace them as neighbors. Jungmin, Nam Soojung, Jung Seungwoo. Photo: Lee Kanghyuk
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◆ GANGNAMBUG
GANGNAMBUS 2020, Participatory Art Project, 2 Channel Video (synchronized), 51min 18sec, color, sound, 4K
Offering visitors a fresh perspective on the Gangnam district, GANGNAMBUS is an interactive bus tour that was presented on 25 June 2020, running from Hyundai apartments in Apgujeong to Cheongdam-dong, Daechi-dong, Guryong Village, and Gangnam Station. At each of the four stops, the tour guides assume different roles—as actors, singing instructors, and working mothers, for example—in order to share unique stories about the respective area. Looking at the real scenery of Gangnam, hearing the personal stories of the guides, and recalling their own memories and perceptions, visitors gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of this one-of-a-kind neighborhood.
Win, Lose or Draw: The Drawing Competition 2020, Participatory Art Project, Drawing Installation, Single Channel Video, 30min 34sec, color, sound, FHD
Prior to the 2000s, one of the standard entrance exams for art school was “plaster drawing,” in which students were required to draw plaster casts from memory. In the 1990s, however, the number of private art prep schools sharply increased, until such tests no longer offered a special challenge. At the same time, simple representation came to be seen as an antiquated form of art evaluation. As a result, most art institutions eliminated plaster drawing tests from their entrance requirements. Although plaster drawing tests may have been abandoned, the rigid system of private prep schools geared towards college entrance exams remains in place. To remind us that any skill or knowledge acquired simply for test purposes loses its original meaning, Win, Lose or Draw: The Drawing Competition is a participatory competition that seeks to restore the fun and enjoyment of drawing. Visitors to the Seoul Box of MMCA are asked to draw a plaster cast within a time limit. The submitted drawings are then posted online, where they are ranked according to people’s votes. Through this familiar process, Win, Lose or Draw: The Drawing Competition shows that forcing students to memorize “proper” drawing techniques for an exam eliminates the true pleasure and purpose of drawing.
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Anesthesia Gangnam 2020, Research, Architectural Plans, Drawings, Model, etc.
Since the 1970s, the district of Gangnam has rapidly developed from the rural outskirts of Seoul into one of the world’s busiest urban and commercial centers. Taking the unique perspective of urban architecture with no regard for the current landscape, Anesthesia Gangnam examines architecture that exists only as paper, in the form of plans, blueprints, and photographs of structures that were never realized or have already been torn down. What were the ideas of the architects presented with the limitless opportunities of Gangnam? Following the example of the architect Le Corbusier, who compared urban planning to a surgical procedure, Anesthesia Gangnam classifies its “paper architecture” in medical or surgical terms, considering architectural structures as forms of metastasis, intergradation, anesthesia, and transplantation.
◆ Seoul Queer Collective
Seminars Through the course of this project, Seoul Queer Collective is hosting four seminars. To open the proceedings, the first seminar, Urban Archive and Social Participation (22 November 2019 at MMCA Residency Changdong), initiated a conversation about the social meaning of recording cities. In partnership with Seoul Youth Hub, the second seminar, Recording Queer Space (1 December 2019 at Seoul Youth Hub), discussed the afforded spaces and daily lives of sexual minorities in Seoul. Notably, gender queers themselves directly documented the existence and conditions of queer space in Seoul, issues that have long been ignored in the fragmented individual discourse. In the third seminar, Walking-Talking-Listening (streamed live on 23 May 2020 on the Seoul Queer Collective YouTube channel), participants talk about their own experiences and histories in certain parts of Seoul. Finally, Re;building Seoul (July 2020) proposes a new perspective for establishing an urban community that nurtures the daily lives of urban queers.
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Others, Jongno 3-ga 2020, Book, 282 pages
Seoul Queer Collective began this project by questioning how to fairly and accurately document a specific city space. The group’s efforts to answer this question led to the publication of this book, which recreates a walk through Jongno 3-ga, combining newly interpreted visual materials with the stories, thoughts, and experiences of the neighborhood’s diverse inhabitants.
Drawing the Trajectory of Your Life (www.seoulqueercollective.org) 2020, Participatory Webpage
By entering your age, gender, and other information on the website above, you can map the “trajectory” of your life, from your place of birth to your current home, along with sites of various other social activities. This project shows how the trajectories of various lives overlap within the regional boundaries of Korea. In particular, by looking at the trajectories of gender queers, we can see that their lives and activities are not bound to any specific space.
Chronology of Others, 2020, Graphic Installation By juxtaposing the history of Others from the Jongno 3-ga area with the world and national history that we are generally taught, this timeline attempts to locate the stories of Others within the grand narrative. The audience is encouraged to participate by adding their own history to the timeline.
Flat-Overlapped (www.myownplace.co.kr) 2020, Participatory Webpage, Sound and Text Installation
One of the critical purposes of the Seoul Queer Collective project is to collect and give significance to the voices of everyday people from Jongno 3-ga. While gathering the stories of such individuals, Seoul Queer Collective came to realize that Jongno 3-ga is not merely a physical space, but rather a concept or phenomenon that is constantly evolving and expanding. Based on this perception, Flat- Overlapped attempts to expand the general conception of Jongno 3-ga through an interactive online project, where people can share their own response to the statement “My Jongno 3-ga is ______.”
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Exhibition View
Entrance of the exhibition PROJECT HASHTAG 2020. Photo: Tabial
GANGNAMBUG, Installation view. Photo: Tabial
Seoul Queer Collective, Installation view. Photo: Tabial
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Curator guided exhibition tour - Video image
Sabine Lee, the curator of the PROJECT HASHTAG 2020
GANGNAMBUG : Lee Jungwoo, Kim Nayoun, Seoul Queer Collective : Kim Jungmin, Lee KyungTaekand Park Jaeyoung (from left) Nam Soojung and Kwon Wook (from left)
Park Jaeyoung (GANGNAMBUG) explains Kwon Wook (Seoul Queer Collective) explains Win, Lose or Draw: The Drawing Competition Chronology of Others
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