On Common Ground

On Common Ground
Agatha Park, 2018
3D rendered vertical film projection with sound
running time 2:12

​We often think we understand an issue from reading articles, watching documentaries, seeing photographs or from listening to accounts. However when information start to contradict one another and if the matter does not immediately affect our daily lives, we simply stop thinking about it. The issues are swept away by the current of everyday life. The topic remains unresolved as a jumble of fantasy in our mind. Even as a South Korean, issues about my country’s relationship with North Korea is a subject of jumbled fantasy. However close I am situated to North Korea, I rarely meet people from North Korea. All I have to base my information about North Korea is through the media, whether they show positive or negative information. I make an assumption that this is probably the same case in North Korea, in an even more regimented system.
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Through this projection, I bring a common North Korean living room scene into our immediate reality. In this scene there are two screens showing news reports in North Korea at two different times. The left screen shows the North Korean army training for an attack against the South in August 2017, and the right screen shows President Moon and Kim Jong Eun visiting the famous Cheonji crater lake in Paektu Mountain hand in hand in September 2018. Both reports are from the Korean Central Television: North Korea’s sole news channel.