MMCA Cheongju Project 2022: Urban Resonance

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA; Director Youn Bummo) presents Cheongju Project 2022: Urban Resonance. Running from August 24 to November 27, 2022, the exhibition is hosted at MMCA’s Cheongju Art Storage Center.

MMCA Cheongju Project is a series of regular exhibitions that transcend the boundaries of the conventional exhibition hall, expanding themes of the city and everyday space into outdoor and public settings. By hosting exhibitions produced “on-site” in a dynamic setting, the project aims to promote active communication between artworks and viewers.

Artists
Kim Seoryang, Team TRIAD, Kim Joon, and Kwon Byungjun use the outdoor space in front of the museum building and public spaces on its first and sixth floors to introduce works embodying the sounds of the urban environment. This year’s project comprises four themes: “City and Factory” (Kim Seoryang), “City, Regeneration and Circulation” (Team TRIAD), “Nature and City” (Kim Joon) and “City and War” (Kwon Byungjun). By collecting and refining the everyday sounds that we ignore and disregard as mere noise, the six artists ask us to re-perceive the places and cities in which we live.

Kim Seoryang presents the sounds of factories that reminds us of the history of the MMCA Cheongju, which used to be a tobacco factory (City and Factory). Team TRIAD provides audience with an opportunity to experience the city audibly using a variety of city data (City, Regeneration and Circulation). Kim Joon collects the sounds of the ecological environment around himself and shares subjective experiences with audience (City and Nature) and Kwon Byungjun embodies a virtual soundscape in the outdoor space in front of the museum to listen the sounds of potential disasters around us (City and War). By collecting and processing ordinary sounds in our daily lives that we tune out or dismiss as noise, the artists propose that we pause to concentrate on those auditory signals.

These artworks here ask us to feel and sense sound itself, with our ears and our whole bodies. Sensing the sounds and vibrations, we become aware that our bodies are organically linked to these spaces, this city, and the world. In the end, we sense anew the spaces in which we find ourselves, forming new relationships with the entities in our surroundings from which we had been cut off.

The world is always filled with invisible sounds. Discovering and giving new meaning to sound, previously unheard, may hopefully provide an opportunity to realize what a precious gift ordinary space and the surrounding beings. Let’s close our eyes for a moment and simply listen to all the sounds of the world. The sounds we thought we would be nowhere, but are everywhere. Our own worlds, resonating, here and now.

Reflecting its status as a sound-based exhibition, Urban Resonance is accompanied by a digital exhibition catalogue featuring audio content. The catalogue has been released in two different versions, one in the ePUB2 format, widely used in on-line bookshops and focused on images and texts, and ePUB3, which includes multimedia content and user-interactive functions. Readers browsing the catalogue using a personal computer or smartphone can also view sound art and video interviews with artists. MMCA’s first digital catalogue reflects the museum’s long-term goal of achieving carbon neutrality, while taking a first step towards developing overseas sales channels and enhancing the promotion of K-art through on-line distribution platforms.