FUKUSHIMA, AUTORADIOGRAPHY
Digital slide projection (photographs converted to digital images, autoradiographs, text), 24 min. 40 sec. 2019
Collaboration with Kagaya Masamichi, Mori Satoshi
Installation view, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul, 2019
This is a juxtaposition of images of the works of Japanese photographer Kagaya Masamichi and the botanist Mori Satoshi’s photographic images of the autoradiographs of diverse organisms and products, combined with Park Chan-kyong’s photo works taken in Fukushima in 2019.
Forming a contrast to the black and white autoradiographic images that are full of scientific precision and solemnity, Park Chan-kyong has scanned the landscape of a spring day in the post-catastrophic region. Without the black and white images that have been inserted into the flow of the scenery, the landscape simply looks like that of a small town of suburbia.
The autoradiographs and Park Chan-kyong’s photographs, alike, attempt to unravel the truths of the radioactive accident and the post-disaster reality. However, both constantly fail to reach their goals completely; the former because of the non-present-ness of its x-ray images, the latter because of the invisibleness of the radioactivity. Nevertheless, the audiences may be able to have a glimpse of the overall image of the disaster through their encounter with these images. This is the experience that the artist calls “the deadlock between images and textual information.” (MMCA)
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2023 The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C.
2019 National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul