Tactics

Curator: Chaeyoung Lee

Artists: Gu Minja, Laure Prouvost & Jonas Staal, Song Min Jung, Jun Sojung, Johanna Billing, Bad New Days, Park Sunmin, Park Seungwon

Humankind is going through an unprecedented experience because of the pandemic. It began in 2020 when the whole people felt that they could freely go around the globe as if it were their own home, which might be the peak of “globalization.” Philosophers and futurologists warn that the pandemic would bring us back to “society for survival” like the primitive times. They also say that wealth inequality would become more polarized in the face of death and affect us undemocratically. It alerts us of the necessity of reminding us of the situation where micro-fascism prevails, in which people make racist or hate speech as if the virus assigned a license to detest them.

In this context, we face the question of how to live “together” seriously, which came from the pit of our stomachs. Individuals and communities would have to grope for new tactics to survive and resist. Those tactics are about monitoring digital surveillance, detecting fake news, fighting the irrational and indiscreet violence caused by hatred, disturbing the capital market more polarized after the virus outbreak, talking to a thing, and recognizing its history. They also mean thinking practically about the coexistence of humankind, nature, and things, tuning daily life in a surveillance system to the rhythm of a festival, and converting the fear of others into the possibility of solidarity and empathy.

The exhibition Tactics contemplates art and life tactics to respect and consider diversity, by which nature, things, and humankind can coexist. The term “tactics” used in the exhibition is borrowed from the French historian Michel de Certeau’s concept. He utilizes it to discuss the “performativity of the subject,” a method of practice by which the excluded others resisted concentrated power in everyday life in modern society.

The participating artists, Gu Minja, Laure Prouvost & Jonas Staal, Song Min Jung, Jun Sojung, Johanna Billing, Bad New Days, Park Sunmin, Park Seungwon, are making a gap by small physical performances in this wartime like period. This exhibition tries to observe a movement by which others refuse to be a target of suppression and surveillance and create a crack in the system continuously using little stories. It cherishes the slight hope that it might poke a hole in the solid world with these small artistic practices and look inside of it.

Hosted and Organized by Nam June Paik Art Center, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation
Sponsored by Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Supported by Sandoll Cloud