Mixed Installation art and performative work, 2019

Title: 2018 Criminal Trial

Genre: Mixed installation and performance

Material: Mixed installation with 21 photo frames, 1 single channel video, 1 headphone, 1 monitor, 4 document files, 5 books, 2 shelves, 1 chair, 1 police uniform, 1 actor, etc.

Year of Production: 2019

Performance Length: 10min.

Director & : Park Kyong Ju

Playwright: Park Kyong Ju

Performer: Kim Ok lan

Exhibition: Exhibited work from the solo exhibition ‘ 26 Day archeology’ @SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2019

Context: 2018 Criminal Trial (2019) is a hybrid work of mixed installation and live performance presented in Park Kyong Ju’s solo exhibition 26 Day Archeology at SeMA Storage, Seoul Museum of Art, in 2019.

In 2018 Criminal Trial (2019), Park Kyong Ju presents materials related to the outcome of a criminal complaint that she filed in the course of the Lan’s Diary Project on behalf of Lan’s birth mother, with only one month remaining before the statute of limitations expired. The work’s title, 2018 Criminal Trial, alludes to this action. Because Park was unable to secure a legal professional willing to take on the criminal complaint, she had no choice but to act as the deceased’s mother’s representative herself.

Documents related to the criminal accusation, carried out as a form of Park’s social performance practice (2008–2019), are arranged in the exhibition space in the form of file folders, books, video, monitors, and headphones, constructing what resembles an “evidentiary wall.” These materials include records of the criminal case, official notifications of the investigation results, and the artist’s own writings and artworks on Tran Thanh Lan’s death that were explicitly referenced in internal police investigation reports. During the exhibition period, a performer dressed in a police uniform repeatedly delivers a 10-minute performance, explaining to visitors the beginning, process, and results of the criminal complaint. Within this explanatory frame, even Park herself, as the producer of the materials that make up the “evidentiary wall,” is positioned as an object, while her works are categorized, described, and objectified as evidence related to the case.

The artist deliberately cast a migrant woman of Korean-Chinese (Joseonjok) background in the role of the police officer, and asked her to adapt the script and perform it in the distinctive accent and phrasing associated with Korean-Chinese speakers, so that the actor’s vocal timbre and gestures would register with the audience as unfamiliar and estranging. In this way, the very voice of “explanation” becomes a central device of the work, and the exhibition’s form is constituted as a site of tension where the conditions of record and authority, translation and utterance, intersect and confront one another

From left to right in the top row of the picture

1. 2018 Criminal Trial If the diary is a human being, video still image from document video

2. 2018 Criminal Trial, Photo by Suk Sung Suk

3. 2018 Criminal Trial, Photo by Park Kyong Ju

4. 2018 Criminal Trial If the diary is a human being, video still image from document video

Copyright of all images Ⓒ 2019 Park Kyong Ju

제목: 2018 형제

분야: 혼합 설치 및 퍼포먼스

재료l: 사진 및 서류 액자 총 22개, 서류 파일 2개, 희곡집 10권, 배우 1명

제작년도: 2019

퍼포먼스 길이: 10분

감독 & 저자: 박경주

배우: 김옥란

전시: 박경주 개인전 (세마 창고)

작품 소개: 〈2018 Criminal Trial〉(2019)에서 박경주 작가는 〈란의 일기 프로젝트〉의 과정에서, 공소시효를 한 달 남겨두고 란의 친모를 대리해 실제로 진행했던 형사고소의 결과 자료를 제시한다. 작품의 제목인 ‘2018 형사’는 이를 직접적으로 암시한다. 작가는 형사고발을 맡아 줄 전문가를 섭외하는데 실패했기 때문에 스스로 대리인이 될 수 밖에 없었다.

전시장에는 작가가 사회적 퍼포먼스의 형태로 수행해온 형사고발의 관련 자료들(2008–2019)과, 경찰 내부 조사보고서에 실제로 언급된 쩐탄란 사망사건 관련 작가의 창작물 및 작성 기사, 그리고 형사고소 결과 통보 공문들이 서류 파일, 책, 영상, 모니터, 헤드폰 등의 형태로 배열된다. 이들은 하나의 ‘증거 벽(evidentiary wall)’처럼 구축된다. 경찰 복장을 한 배우는 전시 기간 동안 10분 퍼포먼스를 반복적으로 수행하며, 관객에게 형사고발의 시작과 과정, 결과를 설명한다. 이 설명의 프레임 안에서 ‘증거 벽’을 구성하는 재료들의 제작자인 박경주 자신조차 하나의 대상으로 위치 지워지고, 작가의 작업들은 사건에 관한 증거 자료로 분류·서술되며 객관화된다.

작가는 의도적으로 중국동포 출신 이주여성을 경찰 역으로 캐스팅하고, 배우가 중국동포 특유의 억양과 문장으로 대본을 윤색해 연기하도록 요청함으로써, 배우의 음색과 몸짓이 관객에게 낯설고 생경하게 도달하도록 했다. 이로써 ‘설명’의 목소리 자체가 작품의 핵심 장치가 되며, 기록과 권위, 번역과 발화의 조건들이 긴장 속에서 교차하고 충돌하는 전시 형식이 구성된다.

혼합 설치와 퍼포먼스로 구성된 작업으로, 2019년 서울시립미술관 SeMA 창고에서 열린 박경주 개인전 〈26일의 고고학〉에서 발표되었다.

Copyright of all images Ⓒ 2019 Park Kyong Ju

Excerpts from the performance script

Park Kyong Ju intentionally cast a Korean-Chinese migrant woman as a police officer. Author Park asked the actress to rewrite her script with Chinese accents and sentences. The last letter of the actress’s name is also ‘Lan’.

Ⓒ 2019 Park Kyong Ju

Female police officer, pick up the file folder. Then, in the file folder, she unfolds the documents of the prosecution’s face-to-face investigation of Park Kyong Ju and shows them to the audience.

Female cop: Film director Park Kyong Ju has filed a criminal complaint, acting as an agent for her late mother. If you look at these related documents here, can you see the power of attorney written by the deceased’s mother for Park Kyong Ju? Looking at this content, it is said that Park Kyong Ju had a question in the process of researching Ran’s notepad diary in the spring of 2016. So the director Park is said to have visited her mother in Vietnam to check the original diary. At that time, the mother of the deceased asked for the cause of her daughter’s death, and after returning to Korea, director Park looked for a lawyer to handle the case, but was unable to find one. So director Park became the attorney for the lawsuit herself.

The Female cop put down the file and pointed to the power of attorney in one of the frames on the wall of the exhibition hall.