POWER PASSAGE

In 1972 - the year marking the beginning of Détente, Richard M. Nixon and Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin of the former Soviet Union approved the rendezvous plan between the U.S. and the USSR spacecraft, and 3 years later the ASTP (Apollo-Soyuz Test Project) was realized in space. There are those who collect everything related to the ASTP – from document files holding all records of the mission, photographs, pictures, and diagrams, to stamps made in the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Mongolia, commemorative coins, and pla-models. However, the obsession that far surpasses any collector’s zeal is the obsession found in the project itself. The vastly complex calculations, technical specifications, and political protocols all focused on one single mission – the docking of two spaceships. 

There are also people who are obsessed with the underground, not space. The South Korean organization called “Underground Tunnel Hunters,” composed of former high-ranking military officers, pastors, and college professors have maintained that North Korea has already dug underground tunnels into the Seoul Metropolitan area. During the excavation to prove the existence of Hwasung underground tunnel, the hunters found a weeding hoe of a type that is not used in South Korea. They said this type of weeding hoe is used only in Vietnam. 

The second underground tunnel dug by North Korea was found in the same year (four months before, to be exact) when the ASTP was concluded. Of course, there were far more tunnels in Vietnam during the same period. Once an underground tunnel was found in DMZ, the two sides at each end are opened to infiltrate, regardless of who created it first. By the same way, the underground tunnels shall be able to offer tourist attractions from/to either side in the future. 

In 1969, the movie Marooned directed by John Sturges was produced based on the novel of the same title. The movie actually had a substantial impact on ASTP six years later. Philip Handler of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who visited Moscow in 1970 used the movie’s scenario to stress the importance of cooperation between the two countries in his meeting with the representatives of the Soviet space project. The Soviet representatives were quite surprised that a Soviet cosmonaut who saved the life of an American astronaut was portrayed as a hero in the movie. 

In Marooned, there is a scene where a cosmonaut barely manages to grab the U.S. astronaut of the Ironman 1, which had veered off course in space, because he could barely reach the astronaut. The contrast between the vastness of space and the confined interior of the spaceship is a typical feature of many Sci-Fi films in space. But here, the nearness of two bodies that barely miss touching each other is more than just a contrast to the vastness of the space, especially to Korean viewers. 

SF films show images of the future created in the past. Robert Altman’s Countdown depicts the moon landing as it happened in 1968 of which is a year before Apollo landed on the moon. A scene in the movie that carries many implications is the one where an American astronaut discovers dead bodies of Soviet cosmonauts who came to the moon before him. This probably is a working metaphor of the present time. In this movie, the moon represents the earth ruined by reckless competition, while the earth becomes a beautiful planet that watches over the moon seized by destruction. The movie ends without giving a clear conclusion as to whether the astronaut left alone can return to that planet. 

These SF stories were played in the future tense. But the special effect techniques are seemingly obsolete that we can see the “futuristic imagination of the past”. These images put the viewers in an odd perception of time warping. The illusionistic space leaks the special effects, and the scientific images are suddenly slipped into the soap opera. 

I imagine that one day the movies like Marooned and Countdown are screened in the underground tunnels of Korea, and then the world tourists are going to see some marooned spaceships at the artificial cave as experiencing both digging toil and high-end technology. Perhaps, the tourists would enjoy Korean Sci-fi films instead of US ones screened. To apply the US Sci-fi film chronology literally, the film about the space rendezvous between two Koreas will be produced in around 2010. (The Korean War was occurred in 1950. South Korean satellite was launched in 1995 and 2004, and North Korea claims the launch of satellite in 1998 and 2009.)  (Park Chan-kyong)


power passage+ 3 cemeteries_brochure
 

​

2016 Park Chan-kyong Solo Exhibition, Tina Kim Gallery, New York

2015 The 70th Anniversary of Liberation Day <NK PROJECT>, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea

2013 The Shadows of the Future: 7 Video artists from Korea, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucarest, Rumania

2013 Real DMZ Project: From the North, Artsonje Center, Seoul, Korea

2011 Art Second Worlds, Steirischer Herbst Festival, Austria

2010 Brinkmanship, REDCAT, Los Angeles (with Sean Snyder)*, United States.

2004 Seoul: Spaces, People, ifa Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany

2004 Hermès Korea Missulsang, Artsonje Center, Seoul, Korea

2004 Power Passage, Ssamzi Space, Seoul, Korea