The contemporary Asian artworks of Lee Bae, Jung Yeongdoo and Wang Qingsong

The first time I made a visit to the Daegu Art Museum was for the solo exhibition of the celebrated avant-garde artist Kusama Yayoi – one of the most important living forerunner of pop art to come out of Japan. I had a fill of her obsession with polka dots – plastered on canvasses, walls, and bizarre figures – all tangible evidences of her creative mind. 

I came back to the museum weeks ago, this time on a field assignment commissioned by Colorful Daegu - a government organization that runs the official webpage of Daegu City. And this time, the museum comes even more replete with contemporary Asian artworks of Lee Bae and Jung Yeondoo - two of Korea’s representative artists, and Wang Qingsong from China. 

Paris-based artist Lee Bae showcased his obsession in all his works: charcoal. 

A Korean photographer/blogger attends to an important 
phone message near Lee Bae's abstract artwork.

In this untitled work reminiscent of Jackson Pollack’s drip painting technique, Lee Bae expresses abstractionism using the medium that puts him in touch with his roots. In Korea, charcoal is traditionally considered as life’s energy source. 

Charcoal in ominous shapes mounted on the wall.

These skull-shaped wall sculptures, made of small pieces of charcoal, show his sense and interpretation of space. As Henri-Francois Debailleux wrote in his review of Lee Bae’s 2011 exhibition at the Musee d’Art Moderne in Saint Etienne, France, these works accentuated the “extraordinary power of black”.

Another Korean artist who has gained wide public interest is Jung Yeongdoo, whose art is focused on ordinary people’s perception of reality and dreams. His Wonderland is a series of photos recreating children’s art into real life.

Wang QIngsong’s works are satiric depiction of the current reality in China – lost in the entanglement of capitalism and the influence of Western culture. This photograph, One Dream, One World is a potent expression of his disdain at the profit-oriented multinational corporations and the consequent deluge of consumerism. 

One World, One Dream 1000 x 800

Follow You 640 x 384

In Follow You, the artist depicted the excessively structured education system in China, leaving many students disgruntled and unable to appreciate the true learning process.

These great artists have significantly contributed a cachet to Asian contemporary art scene and will be remembered for their powerful, and often mischievous expressions of their artistry. The audiences who come to get their fill of the “food for thought” evoked by each piece of artwork will certainly leave gratified.

* Photo credits:
http://www.yeondoojung.com/artworks_view_wonderland.php?no=88
http://www.designboom.com/art/wang-qingsong-china-pavilion-venice-artbiennale-2013/

Korea’s Traditional and Modern Medicine: Keeping Pace Together

At the recently concluded World Traditional Fair Medicine and Festival in Sancheong, the donguibogam took center stage. The ancient book was showcased with esteem, being one of the classic works of Oriental medicine. Published 400 years ago, from the ivory tower of old Korea’s pantheon, the book brims with medical knowledge and treatment techniques compiled by Heo Jun, the royal physician of King Seonjo. Heo Jun compiled several ancient medical books and integrated them into one, coherent collection. As the donguibogam was immortalized at the world’s first ever assembly on traditional medicine, it also gained entry into UNESCO’s Memory of the World. 

The donguibogam: Heo Jun’s contribution 

to Korean traditional medicine.

Sancheong is the rightful host to the international assembly that dreams of wellness and well-being. It sits right at the foot of Jirisan, where an elixir plant was known to exist. Also, Heo Jun grew up in here. From his master Yu Ui-Tae, he learned the art of medicine, concocting medicinal foods made from natural ingredients teeming in Sancheong, now home to a famous medicinal herb village. 

Among the many goals of the gathering was to establish Korea as the nation of traditional and modern medicine and to lay the ground for the industry as a new engine for national growth. Lee Jae-geun, the governor of Sancheong-gu, relentlessly pursued the staging of the event, knowing it would bring his town into the global limelight. He even declared a resignation from his post if Korea fails to host the event. 

The recent years saw Korea’s fervor to push for global recognition, especially in the medical tourism industry where both traditional and modern medicines are well integrated. Investing on promotions, professional advancement and cutting-edge technology, Korea has been continually attracting medical tourists, from 7, 901 in 2007 to 110,000 in 2011. 

Korea is now a forerunner in robotics surgery – an operation performed by a robotic arm that rotates 360 degrees and enables surgeons to see 3D images at high magnification. The country also boasts of its Gamma Knife radiosurgery that provides better than conventional surgery for brain lesions.

A medical tourism booth 

at the Incheon International Airport.

On the other hand, the practice of traditional medicine has expeditiously kept pace alongside modern medicine. It offers treatment packages such as acupuncture, moxibustion, hydro-electric therapy, and herb therapy. Heo Jun’s feat at documenting the ancient practices has largely contributed to the development of traditional healing and laid the foundation upon which it stands today. Truly, a country that values the wisdom of the past is able to define its future. 

Now, the governor of Sancheong can proudly keep his post. For forty-five days that Sancheong hosted the international event, the limelight was on her and Korea leaps into the center stage of medical tourism industry that utterly blends both traditional and modern practices. One complements the other - like two reciprocal bodies of nature, as embodied by the principles of Yin and Yang. 

Photo credit:

http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/CU/CU_EN_8_5_8_7.jsp

Ericson Acosta and our PEN Writers

Last year, Korea saw the gathering of prominent writers from all over the world, including two Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, for the 78th PEN International Congress. The annual meeting was held in Gyeongju, a city in the southeast of the peninsula where I and a good number of our Filipino compatriots live.

Founded in 1921 as a global organization of writers, PEN now spans 100 countries celebrating literature and advancing freedom of expression. Its international president John Ralston Saul opened the event with compelling remarks: “The interesting thing is here we are we have nothing except language. That’s all we’ve got. And I’m saying this to you as writers ― if language is not more powerful than the armies, banks or governments and bureaucracies, then why are there 850 of our members in prison?”

Our distinguished men of letters from the Philippines – the National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera and Palanca Awardee Jun Cruz Reyes, Elmer Ordonez and other members of the Philippine PEN – came to tell the world of a comrade’s fate: that of Ericson Acosta who, like many of PEN’s members, was languishing in jail at that time.

With two of Philippine literary giants, Jun Cruz Reyes (left) 
and National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera 
(second from left)and fellow professor, Anne Ynclino (right).

Ericson Acosta is a poet, songwriter, journalist, thespian and an activist. He was arrested without warrant on February 2011 while conducting research on human rights and environmental issues in Calbayog, Samar. He was accused of illegal possession of explosives – a non-bailable offense under the Philippine law. He was, at the time of arrest, carrying only a laptop. 

Lumbera led the rallying cry to free Ericson; writers, academics, artists, and journalists joined the crusade – they posted blogs, wrote articles, and initiated a Facebook page to campaign for his release. Ericson, on the other hand, was not thwarted by his incarceration. He created Jailhouse Blog to write his prison reflections and continued to write poems and songs that articulate his immurement. He was even named finalist for the 2011 Imprisoned Artist Prize at the Freedom to Create Awards Festival in Cape Town, South Africa, along with filmmaker Dhonduo Wangchen of Tibet and musician Win Maw of Burma. 

A campaign poster showing Ericson scribbling inside his prison cell.

The campaign eventually gained widespread international support from prominent artists and human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the International Conference on Progressive Culture. In March 2012, occasioned by the World Poetry Day, English PEN paid tribute to Ericson and other poets whose rights to free expression have been violated. The London-based center posted a campaign poster and Ericson’s poem “And So Your Poetry Must“ on their webpage.

Four months after the staging of PEN International Conference in Gyeongju and after two years of imprisonment, Ericson was freed; his case was deemed groundless by the Philippine Department of Justice. After all, his arrest without any warrant was replete with irregularities. He was not informed of the reason of his arrest at the time of apprehension, was subjected to 44 hours of interrogation, was detained in a military camp, which is not of civilian jurisdiction, and was prevented to call his family or lawyer. 

Ericson’s imprisonment is not a case unexampled in the Philippines. Jun Cruz Reyes, who spoke to campaign for his release before the Gyeongju assembly, was himself a persecuted writer for a craft too honest about the country’s decaying state of affairs , without any dissimulation to depict the people’s struggle in a country where the clamant divide between the rich and the poor is grievously brutal. 

History tells us that even the most repressive regime – the martial law years under Marcos – has failed to muffle the truth that our writers speak. Many great conundrums in our history - from the Spanish colonization, the 2nd World War, and the eventual economic decline that further plunged the country into a quagmire – have sprung great artists and writers. At the turn of the 20th century emerged a militant man of letters Aurelio Tolentino whose play Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas (1903) caused his arrest for sedition. In the 1950s, the prison poems of Amado V. Hernandez became the cry for liberation of the oppressed masses, and the atrocious years of imprisonment and torture during the Marcos dictatorship did not quell the creativity of Jose F. Lacaba, Bonifacio Ilagan, and Ninotchka Rosca to name a few. 

A collection of music recorded while in prison.

Writers are our social critics and we need their strong opinions, however instigative they might be, for they help shape our thinking and views of the world. They bring us to a different level of understanding of peace when our armed forces simply see it as absence of war; when our institutions brag of economic prosperity based on a plain measure of GDP growth that never trickle down to the toiling masses. An old Latin phrase rightly puts it, ubi boni tacent, malum prosperat, mediocrity prospers where honest critics are silent.

Ericson Acosta may now be a free man, but the struggle of many of our writers, the curtailment of truth behind their art continues to hold its grip. Many of our writers know too well that they are not heard or appreciated, but they will continue to flourish and put up a gallant resistance to social injustices and repression. That was the tradition left by no less than our national hero, a novelist, when he walked to his execution before the Spanish colonialists in Bagumbayan in 1896 for his novels that sparked the Philippine Revolution. 

The Petrenko Effect

I was on a downloading spree for Shostakovich symphonies one afternoon when I came across the name Vasily Petrenko, an “alarmingly young” (as Geoffrey Norris of The Telegraph puts it) Russian conductor who is currently serving his post as Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) in London. I intently watched his impassioned interpretation of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 and later found myself scouring for symphonies he conducted, which included Mahler, Liszt, Schubert and Tchaikovsky. After seeing his acuteness, i felt infected by a renewed rabidity for the most complex (but least fashionable) form of music.

Vasily Petrenko conducts the RLPO

I had no education in classical music, and it was my brief postulancy with the Benedictines at St. Scholastica’s in Manila – where I was made to deliver a simple Mozart piece that introduced me to it. And my fascination never ceased since then. Here comes the young and doozy Petrenko who renders riveting performances that keeps you fastened and subsequently jolted. Tim Ashley (of The Guardian) once wrote about his rendition of Schubert’s 5th symphony, saying: “he opted for toughness rather than charm, tacitly reminding us that Schubert was no drip, and that his symphonies are often characterized by searching emotional rigour”.

Petrenko might be a little overhyped, but his personal magnetism has drawn new and substantially younger listeners to classical music, which is often assailed for its dullness and for being snobbish and incomprehensible. And his presence has simultaneously brought RLPO smashing box office records. Is it caused by some kind of charisma called the ‘Petrenko effect’? Geoffrey Norris thinks so, saying "It is what happens when a young, dynamic, personable conductor comes to an orchestra that has not been enjoying the best of luck or reputations and, well under a year, turns it around, boosts it morale and propels into the public consciousness".

I guess so too; I felt I was struck by this same kind of effect, especially at the time when I was engrossed with anything Shostakovich, which happens to be in Petrenko’s repertoire. It is in all likelihood that Shostakovich would be part of his list; they are both celebrated Russian artists who make history and culture evident in their artistic expressions. And one of Petrenko’s accolades was winning the Shostakovisch Choral Conducting Competition in St. Petersburg in 1997.

In performing Shostakovich’s 6th symphony with the RLPO, Petrenko embodied Shostakovich and the profound nature of the symphony’s emotional expression. And this is what I admired him for – his personification of Shostakovich who provided musical backdrop for the Russian Revolution and whose music evinced resistance to Nazi’s militarism and fascism.

He is young, yet blazing in his artistic expressions. And that makes me hunger for music, whatever form and genre, that express of more relevant issues of the times; music that transcend the selfish angst and vernal affinity for self-edification as evident in today’s many mainstream forms.

Photo credit: http://markmcnulty.co.uk/gallery/performance/