Artist and curator Yumi Song
discusses her current exhibition Place as an Extension of Body: Linking London and Fukushima, and reflects on the role
of art in a changing world
By Jessica Holtaway
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| SUIKO, “Tuchiyu”, Arafudo Art Annual 2013 photo by Kazuyuki Miyamoto. |
Yumi
Song arrived in London in May 2017 and has spent four weeks on the Art Action
UK residency programme. As an artist and
curator, her exhibition Place as an Extension of Body:
Linking London and Fukushima features documentation from
curatorial projects that took place in Fukushima – Arafudo Art Annual 2013/ 2014
- and in Northern Ireland in 2015. The
exhibition also features her artworks How to know the distance to it and OYASUMI – Trees: This is
the story of how I acted as an artist and worked on March 11th.
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| Yumi Song "OYASUMI-trees" photo by Yumi Song |
As
an artist, Song is interested in the ways in which we might visualise
subconscious impressions. Her work aims
to uncover commonalities between people and places that are not immediately
visible. Spanning performance and
installation, her artworks focus on instances of hope and joy - they celebrate
life. But this is not to say that Song
looks at the world through rose-tinted glasses.
Song was born in Japan and lives in Tokyo, but as a Korean she
frequently faces prejudice and been subject to hate speech. Her father is a survivor of genocide during the
Cold War. Responding to her family history, Song’s work often addresses themes
of memory and communality – for example in 2016 she collaborated with artist
Yisha Garbarz (whose mother survived the Holocaust) to make Throw the poison in the
well – a video work that
developed over the course of two months in which the artists lived and worked
together in Kyoto.
In
the residency exhibition Place
as an Extension of Body: Linking London
and Fukushima Song
focuses on the consequences of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
meltdown in East Japan. Through
discussions about her practice, she draws attention to how the name ‘Fukushima’
is now used as a blanket term to describe a number of places, all affected differently
by the disaster. In 2014 and 2015, Song spent time in Tsuchiyu-Onsen, working creatively
with local residents. Tsuchiyu-Onsen is
a village in the mountains, historically popular for its hot springs and with
the lowest levels of radiation in the Fukushima area. Song worked with local people to playfully
subvert some of the regulations in the village – she facilitated a wall mural
(which some may have seen as ‘defacement’, by graffiti writer SUIKO) and encouraged
local people to produce home-brewed alcoholic drinks made by artist Nobuhiro
Kuzuya, which had been prohibited. Media
sources soon heard about the arts festival and throughout the summer thousands
of visitors came to Tsuchiyu-Onsen. The
media presented the festival as proof that Fukushima was a safe place to visit
and that it was once again thriving.
Whilst Song had hoped to provide a positive creative experience for
residents and visitors, her aim was to engage with the repercussions of the
disaster in a more nuanced and critical way.
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Nobuhiro Kuzuya "Pioneer party fermented recipe"
Arafudo Art Annual 2013 photo by Kazuyuki Miyamoto |
Song’s artworks explore the way in
which corporal sense creates a perception of place. Often her works unfold into participatory
practices, such as the site-specific work in Deptford - How to know the distance
to it. In this piece, British cities are
mapped out on the wall of the gallery piece and visitors can use wooden
measuring sticks that show the distance between the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant and Tokyo, to see the equivalent distances here in the UK (the
distance between the power plant and Tokyo, is roughly the same distance as
London to Sheffield). OYASUMI – Trees This is
the story of how I acted as an artist and worked on March 11th features texts from
Song’s diary, in which she reflects on act of giving gifts (lavender bags in
the shape of trees) to people who were experiencing loss and anxiety after the
2011 disaster. These small acts of
giving, of creating something tangible to share, also characterised her
curatorial practice at Arafudo Art Annual.
Here local residents were encouraged to participate in familiar creative
practices in new ways, and visitors to the village could buy ceramic artworks by
artist Hiroyuki Yamada using an ‘honesty box’.
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| Hiroyuki Yamada "Earthy radish" Arafudo Art Annual 2013 photo by Kazuyuki Miyamoto |
In the following interview, Song
further explains the context and implications of both her art practice and
curatorial practice:
Your
exhibition Place as an extension of body looks at embodied practices that
respond to the disaster in Fukushima in 2011 – can you tell us a little more
about you approach the relationship between body and place?
When I was
deciding whether to hold an art festival, I talked with people living in
Tsuchiyu-Onsen in Fukushima. They were not concerned with the actual amount of
radiation, but they were worried that something invisible was entering their
daily life. For example, the scenery that we see everyday can be said to be
part of our body. We see an arrangement of the books on the shelves of our
favourite library in our head, as if it is part of our body. We know the
distance to nearest supermarket when feeling hungry. Although there is a clear
boundary between my body and my environment (my skin) I think the actual
boundaries in our mind are a little more ambiguous than we think.
I
know a chef at the hotel in Tsuchiyu-Onsen who used to be proud to use local
wild vegetables and fish. But his business has suffered since 2011, despite of
the fact that Tsuchiyu-Onsen has not directly been affected by the earthquake,
tsunami or radiation. The mountain still looks identical in appearance. But after
the disaster, the mountain he knew became an unknown territory. The trouble is
that the problem is invisible. The chef cannot move out of the village as his
business is deeply linked to the mountains and hot springs, which cannot move
with him. Everyday we experience the landscape around us as an extension of our
bodies. Invisible uneasiness and anxiety
spreads over the ground. We thought about and discussed how to deal with this
new reality and the changed relationship with the landscape around us. And we
talked about the possibility of considering the landscape as a part of our
body.
You
are an artist and a curator – do you see the two roles as different? Are there any ways in which they overlap?
Yes, they
are different, and I do not exhibit my own artwork when I curate. However, when
I work alongside other artists as a curator I use similar logic to my own
practice, so there is a similarity in both roles.
What
are some challenges you have faced as a curator working in Fukushima?
It was
difficult period after the disaster to work as a curator in Fukushima. People’s
hearts were still sensitive and delicate. For example, authorities in Fukushima
City requested that we withdraw a video work by artist Kouichi Tabata in
which rose flowers wither, as they thought it might hurt children's feelings.
They thought the withering of flowers were reminiscent of death. In the end I
managed to show this piece. Does this mean I have hurt children’s feelings in
Fukushima? I do not know who will be hurt by a piece of artwork, and I do not know
how to choose a criteria to measure the harm caused by the artworks. I question
"what criteria should we use?”
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| Kouichi Tabata "rose" Arafudo Art Annual 2014 photo by Kazuyuki Miyamoto |
What
role do you think art has in responding to a disaster?
Art did not
directly impact the recovery effect after the disaster. In the immediate
aftermath of the disaster, people needed to be given space and time and
physical necessities were the first and foremost priority. People had to
survive after the disaster. I first went to the disaster area as a volunteer to
clear up the debris. I also helped to search for bodies along with the local
fire brigade and took photographs. But I saw cases where the local evacuation
centre received requests from artists who sent artworks/ projects with a
box of supplies and asked the centre to send them a photograph of the local
victims. It was obviously a real annoyance to the locals and as an artist I
felt embarrassed by the actions of other artists. But then, after a while,
around 2012, I was invited to Tsuchiyu, as they had started to make an effort
to recover the local economy, which had been indirectly affected by the
disaster. They approached me because they thought art might help the economic
recovery of the area. I accepted this invitation as I believed that we had to
reconfigure new moral frameworks after the disaster. And I thought art could
help to view a world that had changed.
What
plans do you have for 2017/ 2018?
I have been the director
of an art museum in Miyagi pregacture in the north of Japan since 2014, so I
will organize an exhibition there. And when I’ll go back to Japan after this
residency, I plan to develop an old house in Kyoto as a space for art. The name will be “Baexong Arts Kyoto”
which combines both my mother and father's family names. In Korea women keep
their family name after marriage but children use their father's family name.
In this art space the presence of women is as important as the presence of men. I started this project in 2016, using
the space as a residency space and also hosting discussion events etc. I would
like to develop this programme, and am hoping to find funding to run it as a
proper programme in the future.
