Station 3 has no beginning; it is neither an artist list nor a theme or concept. Instead, Station 3 exists in the middle of Station 1 and Station 2, spread out like a trail of crumbs leading from one festival venue to another. It is like arriving at a journey that has already begun: the point of departure is no longer relevant because it is in the past, and the point of arrival still has to be determined by the different encounters and contexts experienced along the way. From Kirsten Schemel’s lantern-like Nam June Paik Art Center to the different scales and perspectives created by Architect Joh Sung-Yong’s ZN Art Space and finally to the cityscape inserted by Architect Seo Seung-Mo into the the Shingal High School Gymnasium, Station 3 threads together different territories punctuated by individual works erupting like geysers that hint at subterranean creative energies flowing beneath sediments of past references.
In the Nam June Paik Art Center, Station 3 works appear very sparingly among the constellation of friendships, influences, and concurrent trends related to Nam June Paik’s art practice mapped in Station 1 or the works for Station 2 that resonate ideas instead of sharing common denominators. At the ZN Art Space there is a shift in mood and tone. Whereas before the works were in dialogue with a past or a contemporary present, here the dialogue is more domestic, retrospective and yet also directed at the future and what is possible. The ZN Art Space presents dreams and implementations, a drive for creative innovation, but also nostalgia for other ways things could have been done. Imagining possible balances between people and nature, surroundings and lifestyles, here, architects’ visions and realizations accompany myriad voices, resignations and calls for awareness. In this space, Station 3 offers a shifting point from an accumulation of references to an internalization of the ability to transform.
At the Shingal High School Gymnasium the loose gathering of artists associated to Station 3 has come into being as an assemblage that has only the architectural structure imposed upon it as a call to order. However, this is also a chaotic maze-like space, all the more disturbing because of its city-like grid structure. Each piece exists in its own separate space and the burden of connecting cells belongs to the visitor both physically, through the path navigated, and conceptually, as baggage from previous cells is smuggled into the experience of the present. Only through navigating these three spaces is Station 3 constructed as a nebulous palimpsest of ideas, and concepts, exposing the fixedness of established, objectified ways of thinking.
More a situation than a discernible thematic selection, works in Station 3 can, themselves, be witnessed as evidence that what is at first imagined hardly ever happens that way. From personal pilgrimages and final quests, to speculations about the future compiled into a timeline of films, and discarded technological materials reconfigured into landscapes and sound; or from personal accounts of experience translated and portrayed through the power of the voice, language and music, to artists negotiating their place within existing frameworks; humankind’s knack for determining its surroundings, and the fragility this talent entails, is presented as a power of re-visitation and repetition. The ability to dream up ways out becomes about the possibility of being diverted from the actual achievement and enthralled by the each step of the process and all the potentialities offered. It is time to act and not recount: now jump.
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