GANGNAMBUG / Seoul Queer Collective: PROJECT HASHTAG 2020

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA, Director Youn Bummo), presents PROJECT HASHTAG 2020, an exhibition stemming from an innovative public contest titled PROJECT HASHTAG. Launched in 2019, its purpose is to seek out promising next-generation artists and promote multidisciplinary collaborations. The opening of this exhibition will be broadcast live on the MMCA YouTube channel at 4 pm, Friday, July 24, 2020.

Hosted by the MMCA and sponsored by Hyundai Motors, PROJECT HASHTAG is an innovative and unprecedented form of contest devised to discover and support burgeoning talent by encouraging collaborations among creators in a variety of fields. The hashtag (#) is a special symbol that is used and interpreted in many ways depending on the context, region, or generation; in musical notation it is a “sharp,” in prose it is an abbreviation for “number,” and online it has become part of the language of social media. As the name of this project, it symbolizes the goal of bringing together prospective artists in various fields and helping them demonstrate their capabilities on an international level. Beginning with the inaugural contest in 2019, this five-year project will select two teams annually (10 teams in total) and provide them with a grant, a studio, and an overseas opportunity.

Out of 203 teams that applied from various fields, two teams were selected as finalists: GANGNAMBUG, and Seoul Queer Collective (SQC). These teams are composed of varied talents in the fields of design, architecture, and research. Using collective ideas that transcend formal boundaries and which demonstrate art’s limitless potential, these two teams proposed projects concerning the district of Gangnam and the Jongno 3-ga area in Seoul.

GANGNAMBUG (Lee Jungwoo, Park Jaeyoung, Lee Kyungtaek, Kim Nayoun) sees Gangnam—a district symbolic of Korea’s economic growth—as a bug, like a computer malfunction of sorts, and examines key points of contention in contemporary Korean society in light of the changes that have taken place in the region. If One Climbs Up and Up uses a drone to scan and estimate the size and height of skyscrapers under construction in Samsung-dong, Gangnam, to examine the nature of greed and desire. GANGNAMBUS tours the landmarks of Gangnam, and Win, Lose or Draw: The Drawing Competition breaks down the college prep courses offered in Gangnam, the hub of private education, where prospective art students are taught to memorize the shades and shadows of still life drawings so that they can reproduce them in their college entrance exams.

SQC (Kwon Wook, Kim Jungmin, Nam Soojung, Jung Seungwoo) concentrates on the problems faced by minorities edged out in the process of gentrification of Jongno 3-ga. People who are homeless and deemed “problematic for ruining the urban aesthetic,” solitary seniors in Tapgol Park, and women driven to sex work are termed “the urban queer” by SQC as they seek to have these people accepted as everyday neighbors. The team magnifies the visibility of the urban queer through seminars that discuss issues pertaining to the city, the community, and spaces for the queer, and also through Others, Jongno 3-ga, a publication that suggest an alternative documentation of the city. The team also operates a website, drafts a chronological history, and produces sound installations.

The opening of the exhibition PROJECT HASHTAG 2020 will be broadcast live online at 4pm, Friday, July 24 for approximately 30 minutes, with detailed commentaries by GANGNAMBUG, SQC and the curator of the exhibition Sabine Lee. Everyone can watch the video through YouTube after the broadcast.

Youn Bummo, Director of the MMCA, notes, “The PROJECT HASHTAG 2020 exhibition is the result of Korea’s first-ever innovative and inclusive open contest. The MMCA will continue to enhance its role as a museum, encourage collaboration among creators in different fields, and provide guidance in the production of next-generation art.”