Genius Loci, a Tale of You and the Island 1
Mohee (Curator, Perigee Gallery)
From Underground
You open a narrow door and descend into a dark basement. The space you're greeted by, after a dim staircase, is sparsely lit with a haze of light, and you can somewhat see some enigmatic figures. They occupy a small corner of the room, leaning more or less flattened against small screws embedded in the wall, or reclining where the wall meets the floor. You'll lean into a similar shape to get a closer look, to see what exactly is there. And you'll see countless particles clinging to the surface of the image. The tiny grains shimmer in the light, barely revealing the shabby image hidden between them. There's not much information you can deduce, only a faint hint that these are traces of something–the remnants left behind by some phenomenon or entity.
…
What are these remnants of? If you were to leave the dark basement and climb back up the dark staircase and walk out the narrow door, lacking any information about the place or its temporary occupant, answering that question would be challenging. Instead, you notice a piece of paper lying on one side of the room. It is covered with words and phrases: “the medium of photography,” “Seomdolmoru,” “the passage of time,” “during the Chun Doo-hwan regime,” “vacation spot,” “tidal flats,” “sand leaves marks.” With these clues, the origin of the image and the particles becomes clear. You deduce that what you’re seeing is a photograph of “an uninhabited island, Seomdolmoru, which was developed as a vacation spot during the Chun Doo-hwan regime,” and that the particles covering it are from “the tidal flats of Seomdolmoru where the photograph was exposed.” Thus, you become one of the few people who know about Seomdolmoru without even realizing it.
To Seomdolmoru
As you read on, you realize this article has made you one of the few who knows about Seomdolmoru. You imagine a remote, abandoned island, Seomdolmoru, now deserted and in ruins. Was the artist trying to preserve the memory of this forgotten place by excavating its past and bringing it into the present, or by documenting the present of a place that remains mired in the past? If that was their aim, they were only partially successful. Both you and I now know of the island's existence, but can we truly grasp anything from the ruined photographs? Is there any solid evidence that what you saw was indeed a photograph of Seomdolmoru? All that remains is a vague memory of a deserted island and an image you have painstakingly pieced together in your mind. Did the artist fail? Perhaps, but this failure seems deliberate. By exposing their pristine prints to the elements—damp waves, sea breeze, and sunlight—the artist intentionally allowed the work to deteriorate. Far from an act of preservation, this exposure ensured that the images would not outlive the island's own fate. The images that resulted from this deliberate failure were, through a combination of control and countless coincidences, placed in an underground exhibition.
Before we delve into the current state of this place, where the caption now reads “sea mud stains on the photograph,” it’s essential to revisit the image’s history—a history almost like a past life. The artist, intrigued by a story about the island of Seomdolmoru, did not simply accept it at face value. Instead, he bought a rubber boat and set out to explore the island himself. The landscapes and narratives he discovered were visually striking. Like a grave robber uncovering a tomb, he began to photograph the island's hidden and intriguing aspects, previously unknown to the outside world. He invested heavily in printing these images in large, high-quality formats and exhibited them to the public. The results were compelling: shabby wallpaper and floral curtains, faded mattresses, torn ceilings, dried insects, and old maps. The remnants and imagery from Seomdolmoru captivated viewers, and for a time, he reveled in the “power of knowing” as the sole eyewitness and photographer to rediscover this long-forgotten island.2 Yet, what his photographs captured was not the island itself, but rather the sum of what was disappearing from it. He aimed to document not the island but a specific "side" of it. The elements in his images, which seemed to deteriorate over time, were actually building up. In his later work, these images took on new meaning, resurrecting the significance of the collapsed and vanished elements they once depicted.3
The peculiar landscape of Seomdolmoru stems from a distorted belief in artificial waterfalls, man-made lakes, Western-style leisure towns, and other “artifacts” that clash with the natural geography. One day, the artist realized that the "now" of his photographs yearned to mirror the very face of this distortion. He took his pristine, meticulously printed photographs to the beach. The sense of disorientation you experience is not an illusion.
To the Ruins Again
You ascend the stairs of an old building and step into a vast, open space, flanked by open windows and a gaping door. The floor is scattered with the same large and small grains you noticed on the surface of an image a few months ago, showing signs of having been stepped on and dragged. Your eyes are drawn to a stained cloth hanging like a curtain from the ceiling and window sill, where tattered leather, rocks, netting, and small images in neatly framed frames are displayed. Breathing in the dry, musty air, you move closer to examine the engravings on each piece. The images and texts, etched in various ways by different machines and the artist, appear as blurry, unrecognizable shapes. The dust floating through the space, the intact photographs of desolate landscapes, and the text that reads “The sinking seaside...” all serve as poignant reminders of the name that has faded into obscurity.
Seomdolmoru—a place of "ruins."4 Here, the crumbled remnants of shattered hopes point to a unique past while hinting at a universal future. As someone once said, ruins "ask to be told by those who enter them," yet "the story of ruins is a kind of ‘murmur’ that one dares to utter but can never quite complete."5 The artist listens to these murmurs and observes the spectral site suspended in time. The grains falling downward, defying human constructs, remind us that the fates of here and there, me and you, this and that, are intertwined. The artist has carved images by touching and rubbing objects long existing but never truly encountered. He has translated the same text repeatedly, recording and playing it back until the fragile words coalesce into a single, resonant sound echoing through space. In doing so, he redeems the ephemeral, not to the point of tedium, but as if yearning for an eternal present while acknowledging its inevitable, wistful end.6
At this point, I must reveal the presence of Genius Loci—a spirit that has accompanied us from Seomdolmoru to the present, from the underground to Seomdolmoru and back to the ruins. This same spirit is reflected in the artist's images and in the space they create. Though it cannot endure forever and may appear more as a trace or a rumor, it is a constant presence in both our past and future. In the journey that lies ahead, I will encounter this elusive face repeatedly.
2. Paraphrased from a conversation with the artist on March 6, 2024.
3. This is why I now refer to his work as “(once a) photography” or simply “image.” As Siegfried Krakauer noted, “In order for history to be revealed, the straightforward associations that photography provides must be dismantled. In art, the meaning of an object can become a spatial phenomenon, whereas in a photograph, the spatial characteristics of an object constitute the meaning of the photograph. (...) While art does disintegrate over time, the fragments of art reveal its intended meaning. In contrast, photography merely accumulates these fragments.” (Translated by Namsee Kim, The Threshold of the Past: Essays on Photography, Youlhwadang, 2022, pp. 30-36).
4. Jioong Kang, “Notes (24.04.26),” All Legs and Wings, Strange Sandy Eyes, 2024, p.91-92.
5. Joosik Min, “The Aesthetic Experience of Ruins: The Memory of Places Without Stories,” Aesthetics, Vol. 81, No. 1, 2015, p.217.
6. Krakauer, ibid, p. 44.