Social Performance, 2004

MIGRANT WORKER’S ELECTION CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE PART 1

An Yang City

Title: Migrant Worker’s Election Campaign Performance Part 1, Anyang City

Producer/ Author /Director: Park Kyong Ju

Collaborator: Chun Min Sung (OHMYNEWS CITIZEN REPORTER)

Camera: Park Kyong Ju, Sungsuk Suk

Edit: Park Kyong Ju

Year: September 29,2004

Length: 60min. (Documentary Video)

Place: Anyang City Public Art Project Exhibition Participation Performance 2004

Context: A fake election campaign performances of virtual candidate were held in various places in Anyang city using campaign vehicles. Candidate Kim Ti-ton (28, A Bangladeshi who became a naturalized Korean) was happy to show that foreigners, like Koreans, can run for election as members of a community. However, he said it was a pity that fewer people than expected gathered at the place where he was giving the speech. Mr. Kim Ti-ton is working as a Bangladesh counselor at the Seoul Foreign Workers Center.

Artist Note

I prepared an election campaign performance which actualized a hypothetical situation where a migrant worker holding a Korean citizenship, participates in Korean politics.

A campaign truck decorated with placards of Kim Titon, a Bangladesh migrant worker, as its candidate, drove throughout the city of Anyang. Stump speakers on the truck solicited citizens for votes though loudspeakers and distributed election handouts, exactly like the real election campaign tour.

Listening to canvassing voices from loudspeakers and reading the election handouts, citizens of Anyang expressed rather generous opinions toward migrant workers in Korea. Several of them even misunderstood the campaign as one for the coming by-elections and studied carefully the pledges on the handouts. Some opinioned that they would vote for a migrant worker politician in the future.

– Park Kyong Ju 2004

OHMYNEWS CITIZEN REPORTER CHUN MIN SUNG CLOSE COVERAGE ARTICLE

최초의 이주노동자 정치인이 나온다면? What if the first migrant worker politicians appeared?