Ghosts from Bamboo Forest
Rho’s labyrinthine space, with its mirrors of shiny metal, sets out to evoke a particular cinematic experience: the apparition, or ghostly appearance. The artist is thinking of Asian movies from the mid-1960s until about 1980, but ghost stories have a long tradition in Asia, where they are closely tied to cosmologies, spiritual beliefs and ancestor worship. In Korea, these stories date back to The Three Kingdoms period (57 BC-668 AD). The ghost (almost universally coded as female) is an ambiguous figure that is both incomplete and excessive. It stands for pain, rejection, betrayal and loss, but also strength in its unwillingness to conform to any societal standards.
Because of its ambiguous character, the modern cinema ghost is the perfect fit for the interstices between a largely traumatic period (in Japan after World War II; in Korea after the Korean War) and rapid social change. In the feverish pace of the Asian economic miracle, deeply ingrained social structures were violently transformed almost overnight. Running counter to a specifically modern temporality that encroaches upon people’s work schedules and the experience of social fragmentation, the ghost rather adheres to Buddhist-coded temporalities (cyclical structures) and their ability to overcome temporal and local divides. This observation can serve as a starting point for Rho’s labyrinthine structure. As so often in art, the work’s spectacular visibility, even beauty, is almost misleading. Although the mirroring has a disorienting effect, it is not only a visual phenomenon but also a mirroring of time. The “bamboo forest” denies any here and now; it offers its visitors an equally seductive and eerie multitude of viewpoints and temporalities. Or, to put it simply, a possible ghost’s perspective.
Roger M. Buergel (Director of 2012 Busan Biennale)