"Transversal", the inter-local projects under the umbrella initiative of 2010 pool production series, are organized to foster and continue an exchange and connection of ideas through informal, inter-personal relationships among individual agents of cultural producers.
For the first "Transversal" project, art space pool introduces ‘mixrice report : welcome, my friend!’ by mixrice, an artists duo(Cho Jieun, Yang Chulmo, active since 2002, based in Seoul). This is the mixrice’s midterm report on one-year long project that was started from the collaborative book project with the migrant workers community in Maseok, Korea, A Frog in the Valley Travelled to the Sea(co-published by mixrice & mediabooks, 2010) ; via the three month-long research residency in Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo ; to the current reflection and extension on the state beyond migration in Seoul and Maseok.
mixrice’s interest navigates around the issue of “migration,” particularly focusing on the process of re-contextualizing one’s memory at the state of psycho-physical displacement, an inoperative community that emerges out of complex crisscrossing of personal memories as a self-compliment to the state of displacement, lastly intangible contingency that sustains such nebulous communities. mixrice encourages the act of personal archiving of individual memories by collaborative/DIY creative activity workshops, non-verbal game plays, casual gatherings, street interventions, events, graphic designs, through which mixrice observes potential rise of autonomous connectivities among individual initiatives.
“welcome, my friend!” is the artists’ reflection on (dis)jointed archive of anecdotes, memories and imageries they have collected from their dialogues with various migrants in Maseok, Cairo and Seoul. The report features more than 20 works including photographs, lenticular series, collected objects, wall drawings, comics and collaborative drawing series with invited fellow artists, that will comprise mixrice’s second artist book to be published in early 2011.
The praxis of mixrice(Cho Jieun and Yang Chulmo, active since 2002, based in Seoul) operates in the intersection of migration, personal archiving and participatory workshops. mixrice positions themselves as a program organizer and a social mediator who integrates personal and collective archives of memory by operating diverse strategies of dialogues, gatherings, graphic design, photography, video, comics, murals, interventionist street performances, etc. In approaching the issue of migration, mixrice focuses on the tension between the sense of displacement and appropriation in one's identity and memory.
mixrice has been introduced in various venues including 'The Antagonistic Link - Electric Palm Tree'(2009, Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht), 'A Dish Antenna'(2008, Alternative Space Pool, Seoul), 'Activating Korea : Tides of Collective Action(2008, Govett-Brewster Art Museum, Plymouth), 'The Society : Realism in Korean Art 1945-2005'(2007, Bandaijima Art Museum, Nikata), 'Bare Life'(2007, Journal BOL, spring issue, artist page), 'The 6th Gwangju Biennale : Fever Variations'(2006, Gwangju Biennale Hall, Gwangju) and 'The Battle of Visions(2005, Kunsthalle Darmstadt).
