Delving Deep: Interview with Song Sanghee

I know that you studied painting in university.  I was curious as to whether painting informs or influences your practices today?

My major was painting when I was university. At the time I was interested in all sorts of things. I wanted to make paintings on political issues. My university was female only so it was very conservative. They couldn’t understand why I wanted to do political art.  It was also very direct, not abstract, so I had conflict with the professor and the faculty. So I decided not to paint anything after that. Because painting is very honest, it’s work that you do with your body, and my body is connected to my mind. My mind is here, so how can I do something a different way? I think painting is very close to your body. So I quit it and I did something different. 

Come Back Alive Baby (2017), your video work which is currently being shown at MMCA, includes some drawings or watercolors. So you’re still engaging in painting in some way.

Yeah, I did all of them. I didn’t want only digital images on the surface, I wanted something more touching and human, which is why I put the drawings in the video.

How did you became interested in overlooked or invisible histories and socially engaged art?

I felt very guilty when I was at university. I had a comfortable childhood, but my parents were conservative. I really didn’t know what was going on in South Korea when I was in high school. I really woke up when I entered university. I received a lot of information.  I went to meetings and realized I was totally blind.

What kind of meetings?

Student unions. They taught us to look behind the story. At the time it was still an autocratic government, so some books were forbidden. So at first I felt very ashamed. I still carry the depth of this feeling.

To this day?

Yes, I still feel guilty because I didn’t do anything for my country. So I joined demonstrations at university, but it wasn’t enough for me. These kind of things are still left in my mind.

Did you talk to your parents about these issues in your mind?

Not really, but they know my work. My mother, she understands what I’m doing very well, but she will say: “Why do you always make something sad? Why always something negative?” We don’t really talk about the politics of Korea in my family, but I know my parents are very sincere. All their lives, they have worked hard. My father works very hard, my mother also works hard.  I know that as people I respect them. But it is an issue that is totally different, they were born during the war, and for them North Korea is a total enemy. They really couldn’t accept why we have to communicate with North Korea, because 50 or 70 years ago, they could always attack us.  So they are still very against it. Being conservative means they could live, because otherwise they couldn’t survive the tough times in Korea, so I understand.

So would you say your work is more intuitive or planned?

It’s not really planned. The project that I just made wasn’t really planned. I wanted to create a science-fiction story based on the apocalypse. So I found some interesting science-fiction books, and I read a lot of comic books and apocalyptic books. So many science-fiction writers talk about moving away from earth to some planet that’s colonized by us, and all the people moved there. I had something like this in mind for an idea, so that’s why I went to Chernobyl. Because it is like another planet. Time seems to have stopped there; so I went with some text from a science fiction book. But I changed my mind when I arrived, because it should not be like this.

You felt irresponsible, given the original idea or intention and the history of the place?

It’s only been 30 years since 1986, and there are people, still alive, who lived through this disaster. Children were born there. How could I make this sarcastic science fiction story? I really couldn’t do that. So the project began with my intuition, this plan, but then it changed when I saw Chernobyl. If I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t have made it this way.

How did you feel when you saw Chernobyl with your own eyes?

Well actually, it was really beautiful, totally beyond my expectations. It’s very important that the artist should go and see things with their own eyes. I thought, “Wow.” It was very beautiful, very clean and very quiet.

Have you gone to Fukushima?

A Japanese artist contacted me immediately when this disaster happened. But I thought, that’s too fast, too soon. I felt going there needed more consideration. So no, I couldn’t, you understand?

Yes, but you did think about it.

Yes I did, of course, because I went to Chernobyl, so I need something in Asia too. The trauma in Japan is not just because of the nuclear weapon or power plant, this is because of the government. I went to Hokkaido because the Japanese really made efforts to develop this city as part of the modernization of Japan, and they dug out everything and just let it go. This is not done only with nuclear weapons, it’s also manmade, with intention.

What is your research methodology as you go through the process of making your work? It seems to entail a lot of research, direct interviews, meeting people, visiting a place.

First when I want to make something, I go the university library and I download all the theses, or texts about words or concepts. Then I read. I check the words or connotations, sentence by sentence. And then this leads to more books and theses, and the research becomes wider and wider. Also Wikipedia—actually the first text is Wikipedia, even though I don’t really trust it as a source. So this is how I do it. If I want to find “Yubari, Hokkaido,” I search “Yubari” in the English-language version of Wikipedia and I find the Japanese translation, and then I go to the Japanese version of the site to look for it. The same process extends to researching China; of course I can’t read the Chinese, but I can see the symbols. I live in Holland so I can read Dutch too, so I check the Netherlands Wikipedia. I check five or six countries and see how the format is different, the images are different, and how the articles are reported and structured on these Wikipedia pages. It’s very fun and interesting.

Sometimes you also go out to meet people? Primary research?

I couldn’t do that. I meet the people but I don’t really shoot or record.  For the people who live there in Chernobyl, I meet them and I drink with them.

Also prostitutes in the Red Light District.

Yeah, of course that was quite funny, it was quite something. They really open their mind and talk. It was very fun. I like this engagement. It’s totally different if you meet people.

Your works contain so many references; it must take a long time to make a piece.

I build my time to see, to read newspapers or a book. I believe that reading and research is essential. For me it’s very important. Some artists say, “Walk around a mountain and get some ideas,” but I don’t do that. Some artists can do it. I sit like this and look at the window, but my ideas are from my time.

I now live in Amsterdam. South Korea’s newspaper is very much about domestic news; I think 80 percent of its content is domestic. In Holland, a very small country that is also part of EU, 80 percent of news is about events outside of Holland. I can read well; there are images from all over the world, and I always say, “Wow!”

I came across photos of Chernobyl from the newspaper. Somebody wrote about the people who went there immediately to help clean up the mess. So I was quite shocked at how they were sent immediately to the power plant, and they died three days later. So my first step was to think: How could that be possible? Because they had knowledge [about the dangers of radiation exposure] at that time. They knew it was dangerous but they just drank very strong vodka and then cleaned up the mess. It’s a very strange story, and reading it, I had the same feeling as when I was university. This feeling of, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” If I put these things in my work, Korean people will look at this and they will know more. So for me the newspaper is very important.

Did your move to Amsterdam ten years ago have a large impact on your work?

Yes, for instance there I read about the refugee stories. I saw so many babies, children. I started to draw the hands of refugee babies, which are also in Come Back Alive Baby.

So you drew those hands from the newspapers?

Yeah, I can show you the images if you want.  But it’s fairly difficult because I have to see their face and they’re dying. But that’s my responsibility; I have to look at their face and draw their hands. I can’t just remove one face with Photoshop. I have to see their faces.

Why did you choose to only show the hands, and not their faces in the drawing and the video?

I watched a Youtube clip an institution made of all the hand shots from Robert Bressons’ films. It was very moving to me. From only hands you can see the situation, you can see who they are, the emotion, everything. I got the idea for drawing only hands from this special Bresson clip.

You have explored nuclear energy, the oppression of women, sex workers; what other urgent issues do you want to explore now?

There are two things now. First, when I decided to live in Holland, in 2008 or 2009, I began researching the VOC Dutch East Indies Company. If you live in Holland it’s a very big issue and if you understand Dutch history, the chapter starts here. And of course trade is always connected to colonization, and European imperial countries traveled to Asia, America and Africa. This was my starting point but I didn’t know how to build it up, so I went to Tanzania to start this project. However, I couldn’t finish. I always thought about trade and colonization. Now, the focus is on Earth and other planets. NASA always wants to check what going on other planets. They want to make the Moon a colony. They always send robots to Mars to see what’s going on Mars, and now they’ve found water on the Moon.

And the other thing starts from my own feeling that I will die alone. I think now everybody might die being alone. Of course some people have children, but you can still feel alone. I don’t have children and I live in Holland. If I die there, who will clean up my body? Also here in South Korea, many old people, even if they have children or grandchildren, they just die alone. It’s fear of being alone, fear of how my body will end up.

It seems like society has really changed, especially with technology. We are more and more alone, yet we think we are more “connected” through computers and smart phones.

Yes, I’ve talked about this issue with my friend and he said in Japan, this is common. Japan has developed technology where you put something like a chip into your pet, and if the pet doesn’t get fed in a few days, that means no one has taken care of the pet. It also means someone is dead. Also, they have developed a house sensor so if nobody moves, it means someone is dead. They are developing this technology, as dying alone is a reality.

Elaine W. Ng is the chief editor and publisher of ArtAsiaPacific.

The “Korea Artist Prize 2017” exhibition is on view at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, until February 18, 2018.

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