“KOREA 2018” Part I & II

The Long March Project to initiate and mediate a conversation between North and South Korean Art Historians October 4, 2007, Seoul, Korea

as part of the exhibition “Tomorrow”, Kumho Museum and Artsonje Center October 4 – November 4, 2007

"Long March Project – Korea 2018" is the first platform of discussion for a major ongoing project that aims to project a future destination where boundaries, limits and cultural divides are sympathetic to the necessity of subversion and open regard. For "Korea 2018" invited participants will be asked to imagine their arrival in a time zone of future speculation, where oppositional politics and historical spectacle concerning ideas of North and South are no longer a given praxis of cultural, social or artistic engagement.

"Korea 2018" is a confidential, creative meeting of minds. Art historians, writers, artists and filmmakers, from both sides of the present day Korean divide, have been invited to take part in what aims to be the beginning of a continuing dialogue, where issues such as the juncture between education and art; the definition of the ‘contemporary’; and the relationship between social politics and artistic production shall be on the agenda.

Initiated and mediated by the Long March Project, "Korea 2018" will be first launched in Seoul as a part of the exhibition "Tomorrow" at the Kumho Museum and Artsonje Center (October 4 – November 4, 2007). Conceived as a "multi-local conversation rather than a traveling show," the exhibition "Tomorrow" grew out of a response to the numerous tendencies and techniques of the state in appropriating cultural and artistic purposes for particular itineraries and agendas. How are these negotiations reproduced within particular geographies, what spaces exist for re-imagining the possibilities that these influences put into play for the future? The exhibition seeks to bring together a broad perspective of views from around the world outside of the frameworks of state of market, proffering an alternative framework for cultural exchange and creation.

Long March Project, acting as the mediator for this discussion about a "Korea 2018", seeks to reinforce that it is through an understanding of how knowledge structures are produced and thus provide social meaning that society discovers a roadmap in which to act, give opinion, and seek improvement. This in itself is a new kind of social progress that enables artistic creation. This meeting recognizes the authority of culture as a fundamental visual economy to which all other avenues of human production feed and interacts. This perspective embraces the existence of culture as essential to the development of future social and political initiatives, seeking to go beyond the boundaries of art formally inscribed by the format of exhibition and display.

"Korea 2018" is a departure point for further discussion, exploring and negotiating methods of understanding that make knowledge about socialism, art, history, the present and the future possible. By undertaking this conceptual journey, by positioning a perspective grounded in an inevitable moment of the future, by resonating this experience with an awareness of the realities of the past, while also possessing a concurrent sympathy for the varied and parallel situations of the present – this complex interstice of time and space will hopefully enable a projection of tomorrow where Korea in 2018 is not an impossible ideal, but a productive reality.