Chan Sook Choi

BLACK AIR

Black Air is a research project about «hybrid human identities» formed by migration and its relationship with strategically occupied political territories. This project will be formalized in a documentary video and is mainly composed of four phases: The Minbuk peoples in North Korea (DMZ), Chuquicamata city, Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Temple of Israel.

In this part of her project, Chan Sook draws a parallel inspired by propaganda villages near the demilitarized zones of the Democratic Republic of North Korea and the mining settlements in the north of Chile. 

Minbuk is a community of villages formed with the purpose of propaganda in North Korea. The residents of these villages received support for housing from the government, but they were not granted them with the ownership of the land.  Within the ideology constructed by the state, individuals have produced «deot- jip» with odd shapes to claim their ownership of the land that cannot be owned.

The mining industry in Chile has historically generated settlements of migrant workers from different regions of the country and abroad in the Atacama desert. The lifetime of households is determined by the economic value of the extracted mineral and to the reserves of the resources to exploit. 

Choi also observes ALMA, formed by an international research group occupying, for strategic reasons, Chilean territory.

Chan Sook Choi develops experimental activities such as video, installation, and performance. Her work refers to the notion of the inherent energy of each human memory within the limits of space and time. She «endlessly gropes around the memories of people in social, political, and religious contexts, finding out how to communicate with their memories.»

Through the projects of Chan Sook, we can observe an investigation of socio-political contextual narratives, which she develops by interviewing people in specific contexts to explore his world of memories. The artist’s search begins with his conviction that all distorted forms of memory are the present.

Chan Sook Choi received her bachelor’s degree in Visual Communications and Media Art as well as her master’s degree at University der Künste in Berlin, Germany. Choi won the grand prize at the international media art competition hosted by Bibliart and Berlin Pergamon Museums in 2008, and was selected the artist of Nafog project in 2009, a young artist support program sponsored by the City of Berlin. In Korea, Choi presents her work in Private Collection as a selected artist of the N ArT, a young artist support program sponsored by the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture in 2010. Since then, Choi was also selected Tomorrow’s Artist by Sungok Art Museum in 2012, the Young Artist Prize at Gallery Loop in 2015, and Young Artist Support Program at Seoul Museum of Art in 2017. Choi has also been conducting her narratology experimentations on psychological migration and the human memory as a medium through a multi and interdisciplinary methodological approach, in performances at the National Theater of Korea, Queens Museum New York, Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art Sacheon, REAL DMZ PROJECT, Grimm Museum Berlin, Art Sonje Center Seoul, etc.

Since 2015, She is adjunct professor of Art&Technology at the Hanyang University.

www.chansookchoi.com

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