Context, subtitles, and confusing Korean art

The first image to greet us was a wooden box. Inside was a glowing TV sign blinking the word “Offline.” So began the Media City Seoul tour of inexplicable videos at the Seoul Museum of Art.

The curators had pulled in work from all the globe. Tel Aviv, Berlin, Tokyo, New York, L.A. In the entrance were eighty images of the colour orange. Inside a satellite feed of viewers calling in to an Iranian American cable station. A sunset shot by a security guard, a group of Jews return to Warsaw.

The Xijing Men held their own Olympics, Izumi Taro shot garbage with viewers falling in and sliding on the trash. Yangachi shot some nonsensical woman racing across rooftops with a pigeon glued to her head.

But it was Sung Hwan KIM who did us in, with her film shown in a tiny black box of a theatre. In the darkness the Koreans beside us giggled at the inside jokes. A South Korean boy has his face slashed open by a North Korean Spy. “I don’t like communists,” he says, and we hear a giggle. Us, we just stare.

Out into the light we give our heads a shake. We stand in silence outside the gallery doors and watch the evening break. He said to me, confused, “I have to go home now.” And yes, I thought, so must I.