THE ARTS
Last February 12, 2022, there was an artists’ gathering at Cafetabac, a multi-cultural space in Hongseong city. It is one of the oldest cities, 111km away from Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. The multi-cultural space and bookshop are ideally located in a traditional Korean house, called Han-ok, which was built 153 years ago. So you can imagine how it was wonderful having an artists’ gathering during a sunny but chilly afternoon in a rural area surrounded by farming lands and small hills. And above all, when you find that the space is sharing boundaries with a very beautiful local public park.
The project, Solidarity Art of Coexistence, brought together Korean performing and refugee artists, an intermingling between the two groups sharing art, creative activities, and related stories for solidarity by organizing art workshops, performances and doing interviews to produce a documentary film. For the organizers, SolidArtCo and Cafetabac such events are like artistic rituals. They have been doing it for years and have produced several performances, documentary films and publications.
The gathering started with a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony, an attractive opening as it is known as a coffee ceremony that serves as social togetherness. The ceremony was followed by a musical performance by a Korean artist, singer and director Kwon So-hyeon, the director of Cafetabac multi-cultural space and project founder, and then, a poetry reading by Rostami Reza, a young Afghan refuge, artist and social activist. This was followed by a group comedy by a Korean actor and Emad, a refugee from Yemen, and an acting performance by Ugandan actor Meshach and Iranian actor Kim Minhyuk.
This project was initiated by SolidArtCo, a group of 15 Korean artists in various art fields– director, opera singer, actor, dancer, videographer etc, in cooperation with Migration to Asia Peace, MAP, a local non-governmental organization which supports refugees and migrants. Thanks to Youngah Kim, Executive Director at MAP, we were all able to have the opportunity to be part of the gathering. SoliArtCo’s mission is to build and promote solidarity through art in Korean society for coexistence.
The event was directed by Minjung Kim, director of SolidArtCo, who kindly shared her motives and experiences for Pressenza. She said “I have performed with the Movement DANG DANG for World Refugee Day in Korea every year from 2011 to 2016. Since then, I have been paying attention to the refugee issue in Korea. I founded Movement Dang Dang and I am a choreographer, director and documentary director. Movement Dang Dang has been producing performances beyond the limits of conventional boundaries between theatre and dance through thinking and sensing body movement and poetic text. Their enthusiastic works are a creative and unique approach to explore deep sensibility, experimenting physicality, language, text, various visual images, performative elements and soundscape. They are trying to explore the deeply connected moments in the present and in history, and vigorously seeking solidarity in a society through their artwork, based on freedom and dignity.
I thought that the pandemic blocked all encounters and put the connections on hold, and what artists can do now is to record and connect the world above all else. I was especially reminded of the alienated foreign artists in Korea.
Korean artists are also going through difficult times, but I thought they would be in a more difficult environment than us. I wanted to ask them to meet. I also asked my fellow artists who are close. They are artists who have always been working hard to treat the world with an open mind and practice solidarity through art. We formed a team called SolidArtCo for this work. A total of 10 Korean artists, including directors, film directors, vocalists, composers, actors and dancers, and five foreign artists, including actors, writers, and photographers, have become a team.
In particular, this event was made possible with the help of singer and director Kwon So-hyeon, a collaboration between ‘Cafetabac’ and SolidArtCo, which she has been working on, and was made at the book cafe in Hongseong, which she runs. I think, our meeting through this event answered the question of why art is needed in the world today. And here we started. We will continue this meeting. And we will work together to find a place for alienated foreign artists in Korea.”
Artist Kwon So-hyeon, singer and director for the Cafetabac project, a multi-cultural space and bookshop, recalls when she created the project and pointed out the main idea of the project and her ideals. “ Cafetabac is a project that started in 2015. In total there have been 8 episodes and each episode has its own story but with one theme through all the episodes: a warm welcome. Attention is paid to the moment when the ice melts and becomes water or the moment the water freezes to become ice, everyone coexists without drawing a line. Everyone welcomes each other. This is Cafetabac’s main project idea. Cafetabac is a space where this ideal will hopefully one day exist in reality. A bookshop and also a multi-cultural space with projects like Cafetabac, reading clubs, and anything that is creative and welcoming, a book stay (그리고북스테이) is also available where people can spend time in a Korean traditional house with books that are curated by me. It’s an ideal place for me.”
Photo credits :Park Min-seop, Bereket Alemayehu, MAP
