Chang Gyeong

“She would narrate events she had witnessed with her own eyes, as well as events that she had never witnessed.” Haruki Murakami

When I was a child, the zoo was a place that gave me a very fantastic experience. Changgyeonggung (then called Changgyeongwon) in Seoul was particularly strange, a place where a zoo, amusement parks, and old palaces coexisted. Perhaps childhood memories remain as an emotional vestige of events – the people, the food, the weather – rather than specific moments. These emotions lie somewhere between the boundary of reality and the virtual.
I later learned that the coexistence of these elements came from Changgyeonggung’s tragic modern history. At the time of Japanese rule, a zoo was created with the purpose of mocking and degrading the palace. During liberation and the Korean War, the palace grounds witnessed the victimization of animals. Uncovering this painful history stripped Changgyeonggung of its emotional appeal.
The video installation Chang Gyeong explores this shift: emotional memories that once blurred the line between reality and fantasy now separated again, leaving no emotion on either side. (Jangwook Lee)