Program Period

Partner Institution – SeMA Nanji Residency (South Korea)

Photo: Kim YongKwan

SeMA Nanji Residency was opened in 2006 by renovating a leachate treatment facility in Nanjido, Seoul. The residency operates various programs designed to revitalize international exchanges and provides studio spaces for artists to allow them to concentrate on their artistic activities in a stable environment. Located in central Seoul, the facility has twenty-five studios, labs, circular galleries, and outdoor workshops where programs to nurture and support talented artists and researchers.
https://sema.seoul.go.kr/en/visit/nanji_residency

Selection

Japanese artist was selected by SeMA Nanji Residency from those nominated by ARCUS Project.
Korean artist was nominated by SeMA Nanji Residency from an open call for residency alumni.

Reason for Nomination

For the Exchange Residency Program, Nagata Kosuke will undertake a project reconsidering the relationship between Korea and Japan through food culture and transport by sea. In the seventeenth century, chili peppers were introduced from Japan to Korea, where they were mixed with pollock roe to form a salted dish called myeongnanjeot, which was then brought at the start of the twentieth century to Japan from Korea when it was a Japanese colony and became known as mentaiko. During the same period, small dried fish called niboshi were introduced to Korea from Japan and became established as the base for soup stock. In order to elucidate the history of ordinary people’s lifestyles and culture, Nagata will conduct interviews in South Korea with experts on fishing and related foods, and attempt to understand Japanese and Korean food cultures intersubjectively through the same sea that they have traversed. Having produced a body of work to date that explores food to provide insights on how nation-states and ideologies assimilate and eliminate, Nagata’s interests curiously parallel in many ways those of Rice Brewing Sisters Club, who ARCUS Project will host for the Japanese part of the program. His project will endeavor to imagine the interchange of culture between Japan and Korea that took place during those premodern times when marine culture prospered due to bustling maritime transport and fishing. (Diredtor, Ozawa Keisuke)

Reason for Selection

The Rice Brewing Sisters Club (RBSC) collective’s interests lie in lifestyle and cultural practices across South Korea, Japan, and other countries along the Asian edge of the Pacific Rim. In particular, RBSC’s work rereads geographical connections between islands and those histories through interaction with the lifestyle, work, and environments of female divers. At ARCUS Project, the collective will focus on female divers (known in Japan as ama) and the closely related food agar-agar (made from sea algae harvested by such divers), visiting research institutes and ama fishing communities and conducting cultural and historical research. It will also attempt to reinterpret the occupation of the ama sea diver in terms of ecology and labor. Artworks at international exhibitions today frequently explore such themes as the environment and ecosystems, migration across national borders and its collective memory, and gender and sexual diversity. At a time when many are questioning the universal and male-dominated values of modern society, RBSC’s project will surely shine light on the period of transition through which we are currently living from a wide range of perspectives. (Ozawa Keisuke)