Interview with Bartomeu Marí

Yet when I came here I had to change this concept, because what in Korea corresponds to the idea of modern is something that was imposed through the Japanese occupation. Everything that is “modern” is Japanese-imported, or Japanese-brought, or Japanese-imposed. This building where were are now is a very good example of modern architecture in Korea. It was a hospital. It is a very beautiful example of rationalist architecture and made out of brick, which the architects used before concrete was developed. What makes also the forms of modern art were languages that were taught through Japanese schools in Japan. So the Korean modern artists studied in Japan and either produced in Japan or came back [to Korea].

The notion that we have cultivated in Europe and the United States—lets call it the “Western world,” if that still means anything—doesn’t really apply to the way art developed here. And so the vocabulary doesn’t apply and the chronology doesn’t apply. My first thought was that we need to develop a vocabulary and a chronology that allows us to situate ourselves in time and space. And this what is really what the museum should be doing. I should note this is very similar to what we were trying to be doing in the International Consortium in Europe, of which I was a founding member. That brought me to another realization, and that is that the global conversation in art is not really taking place yet. It doesn’t exist.

What do you mean by that? Or in what ways?

It means: when we suppose the forms, the vocabularies, the grammars of modernity and contemporary art, the ideas, movement and authors that have made the universe of modern art are not globally recognized. And that “nouvelle vague” in Korea doesn’t mean anything. That’s not bad in itself. It’s just as it is. So in my perspective, there is a need to develop a new idea of internationalism that is also regionally based or oriented. And it makes more sense now than ever to contribute to write pages of history that mainly tell the way modernity unfolds in places that are outside of the main centers of decision-making: decision-making meaning economical, political and military power.

I think this is very beautiful because it is like a polyphony. It is like suddenly the plural voices begin to speak. This is my feeling. They are not yet there. They don’t say yet. But when you see, for instance, the opening of National Gallery Singapore and the intentions that are animating that institution, or when you see that India is beginning also to send out voices, and when you compare to it what we are trying to do here, and what people and institutions are trying to do in China, then you see that this is becoming an interesting part of the world, which really has something to say. So what I am trying to do is organize all of these spaces and to make the museum participate in that movement.

How in logistical terms do you plan to realize this vision, in terms of exhibitions, commissions and acquisitions?

First let’s take [the museum space in] Deoksugung, which is like a time capsule. When I first arrived there, I even smelled the past. Deoksugung is where we try to focus on art made before the war—the war in Korea means before the Korean War, which ended in 1953. In Gwacheon, it is more a space dedicated to the collection and history. And Seoul is more like an urban neighborhood; it is not a building, it is a piece of the city. So the idea is to make these three places work together, and to be able to navigate through the 20th and 21st century through the exhibitions, and also through the collection. The exhibitions and the collection are complementary, but they have different speeds. So perhaps what you expect in an exhibition program you can see very quickly, but what you do in a collection you will achieve very slowly; you only will see it much later. Making a collection is a very slow process.

What is the history of the collection?

The history of the collection is very interesting. It is a public collection. It is the Korean government’s. The museum opened in 1969 and had been located in different buildings until Gwacheon was opened in 1986. We celebrated this 30 years of Gwacheon this year. Later on in the 1990s, the museum started using Deoksugung for modern art, and then the Seoul branch, which opened in 2013. So this is still brand new, like [it opened] yesterday. The history of the collection is that the Korean government collects where there is independence and there are means to collect. Right after the war Korea was a very poor country.

Do you think the collection accurately reflects Korean art history?

No, no I don’t. But I also admit that I am not the right person to judge, because I will not pretend to know it well. I think the collection is a very interesting national collection, with some very good international works, but these are a minority. They do not correspond to an idea. It is just the result of acquisitions through time. Though there are really good artworks in there.

What is the potential of this collection?

First of all, I think that this collection can really become something that explains the unfolding of the idea of modernity, and especially modernity in what was called “the Far East.” My idea is to try to represent through the collection what happened in an area that is composed mainly of Japan, Korea, and China. We would like to go further but we, firstly, don’t think a collection should be geographical. It should be cultural. At this moment, the tension surounding Korea—this entity that is a small country sandwiched between two giants—is very interesting.

That would be a first step. In my opinion, Korea has the most sophisticated, most interesting art scene, because of its artists. Maybe we don’t have the biggest and best collectors, maybe we don’t have the most prominent art critics or historians, but we have the best artists. That for me is very clear. So we have the good basic material to begin with.

My idea is also to work a lot with the link between commissions, productions, exhibitions and the collection, because it doesn’t make sense for this museum to try to reconstruct the past. The past is what it is. We represent it the way we do and when we have opportunities to acquire works that are significant in relation to the past, we will do it, but mainly we will focus on the present—as an investment in the future.

How does the MMCA make acquisitions?

There is a very complex process that involves recommendations and commissions, and that involves quite a thorough and complex way to spend public money, which is what we have. But we have also begun to get private support, which is also good, because it means that civil society feels involved in the construction of the museum beyond what the government does. I think that is good.

What other kinds of facilities are integral to the mandate museum, besides the collection and exhibitions? What are the research and education facilities?

The different areas of the museum that will contribute to make this is a really successful, intellectual project, have yet to be organized. But there is one interesting element that has already been started. The museum is managing two artist-residency buildings that we will open in Changdong and Goyong to critics, artists, curators, designers—people with creative minds who will make the museum, and this country, a solid hub for creativity. We are going to make it very international, because I think that if the 20th century was about displacing objects, the 21st century, or our times, [and more specifially] our portion of the 21st century, is about people. I mean, you cannot collect people, you cannot exhibit people, but you can live with people. So this is going to be a artist-in-residency program that we will transform into an independent study program—half-residency, half-study program—and utilize for production for the museum itself.

My project is to make this museum discourse-based. This means having a very strong research component. In order to have discourse you need to empower the capacity to develop an intellectual project. I would try to explain it as: “Let’s describe how modernity unfolds in a context like the Korean one”—where, as I said before, it is sandwiched between the largest forces of East Asia. Consider the troubled history that it has had, where the country emerged out of a colonized period [in what feels like just] five minutes ago, and consider the fact that it has gone through a miraculously fast economical evolution without necessarily having digested or felt the social evolutions that we western people thought is in parallel with industrialization. You know, a liberal-democracy, so to speak. So with these contradictions, being able to make this voice part of the global archipelago, is very important.

Korea still has aspects of history that people don’t want to talk about. Is that something you are thinking about and are you worried about the reaction to addressing still sensitive parts of history?

I think all cultures have those blindspots, but probably I’m not the best person to talk about that, because, I admit, I am a foreigner. But you know, Spanish society has not come to terms with its own past either. So I can imagine that a society that contains conflicts, like the occupation, the liberation and the Korean War, also lives with those elements. So I don’t think there is any society that doesn’t have taboos.

Do you think it is the museum’s place to address this?

Yes, sooner or later it is, because the museum is a mirror of society. It is impossible for those elements to not appear or end up appearing sooner or later. It will be a product of the evolution of Korean society in itself. The notion of the museum as public space is different here, because the notion of public space in Korea is different than the cultures where we come from.

How do you see the difference?

I think it is a space under construction. It is not a given. While in the old continent, we take it for granted, here it is still under construction. And it is very important to be present in this construction.

How do you think about the MMCA beyond regional and national terms? How would you like to situate it internationally?

One of the reasons that the ministry hired an international expert—or a foreigner, you can put it the way you prefer—is that this museum needs an impulse to become a more active part of the international dialogue or the conversation. I believe that museums and cultural institutions like this one only exist and make sense if you consider them internationally. Nowadays it is very difficult to consider a culture as isolated from other cultures. One culture or one community is alive only when it is in contact with others. If it is not in contact with others, it dies. There is no brain activity.

I am saying this knowing that Korean society is still quote-unquote “pure.” Immigration has not yet being felt as a reality in this part of the world—immigration or cosmopolitanism. Even tourism is something very recent here. So it is very interesting to be able to develop an institution like a museum that is changing.

Here we have 2.5 million visitors per year, which looks like a lot—but I don’t think is a lot, though it looks very good—but 99 percent are metropolitan Koreans.

How do you see international artists functioning in this context? Will they need to have an inherent connection to the Korea context?

This is a very important question for me. Before I arrived here, I had a very clear idea of which international artists were relevant for me. But my question was, which will be, or which are, universal or international artists that will be relevant for the Korean context. This I don’t have the perfect answer for, but I am building it. And a challenge for the museum will be to attempt to answer it. Because what is important for the Korean culture may not be what is urgent elsewhere. This I like very much, because in a way it leaves you with a bigger and deeper problem than we have in the western context, where we think we have it all figured out. In Asia it is much more complicated, because, as I said, the global conversation in art is not really taking place.

For instance, how much of the canonic or alternative art history that we know is relevant here? How much Fluxus is needed or how important of a reference is it here? MMCA has not yet produced a historical narrative. This is something I am trying to do. The museum has done an interesting exhibition program with some very interesting group or themed exhibitions and too many one-person shows. This I can say very clearly: too many one-person shows. There are not enough narrative or thematic approaches and very little historical approaches that attempt to read something. This is something I am trying to squeeze my team to really produce.

What are some of the narratives that your teams are developing?

One idea is that Nam June Paik is the first global artist—[or at least in the sense of what] we call a global artist in the west. And he is the most internationally known Korean cultural figure, whether you like his work or not. He’s Asian, he’s European and he’s American. And he did that in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, before the world got globalized. He invented that.

Now, with Nam June Paik, you can tell a lot of the history of Korea—of Korean art and of Korean culture. And this is going to be one pillar around which we build an exhibition program and the collection. This is where I believe Fluxus is very important. And if you push me further, [I would say that] I think you can find a lot of Asian culture and parallelisms between Fluxus and the idea of chance, for instance, and Asian culture and Buddhism. After all, Nam June Paik studied Asian philosophy in Japan after he left Korea.  

If you push me again, I would say the figure of Nam June Paik appears as being among the first generation of artists who were engaged in using digital technologies [in their work]. But Nam June Paik is the figure who connected new technologies and the idea of future with shamanism, with very irrational or magical connections with the earth, the planet and the hidden forces that might be living with us, if not controlling us.

So these are some things that I am trying to formulate in my exhibition program. It is not easy, but I am trying to do it. Korean modernity allows us to develop an idea of the modern that is not necessarily industrial, not necessarily metropolitan, not necessarily urban and rational. It is, instead, handmade; it is symbolic, it is rural and magical. It is not the opposite, but it is the alternative to the western canonical idea of the modern.

I like this idea, because then you can compare it to the South American, African or Pacific model. It is a colonized modern and it is a decolonizing modern. It’s not an idea of modernity that belongs to the powerful or the winners. It is another way to construct it, and that is a very attractive one.

Do you see a parallel dialogue happening intellectually in Korea, in universities and other institutions?

It is still too early to ask me this question, because I still don’t know. I wish to believe that, yes. But honestly, I have not been able to connect yet. I dream about it, of course.

My feeling is that it is also the moment to go beyond the traditional partisanship of Korean society—partisanship meaning that there are two sides, at least. And I think it is the moment to invent ways to go beyond that and to produce and share in a different way. Being a foreigner and not owing anything to anyone, it is the most attractive thought. But let’s say I dream about the connection with the intellectual, academic world.

It seems like the museum could be a place or a home where people could speak and come together. But when you talk about the partisanship, do you think there is an opposition to this space because of its history, or that it is government run, or because it is being led by someone who is not Korean?

I have an idea of the history of the space—in the sense that it physically used to be a place were many Koreans were tortured and killed, but now it is a public space. But as I said before, I’m a stronger believer in its future than in the capacity of the past to undermine it. Let’s say this is the occasion to re-invent it. This a big moment to re-invent this space, as an institution and as a physical space. So let’s use it, and let’s even try to redefine what public space is and why is it needed. And that means let’s not misuse it. Let’s squeeze it, but also cherish it, because it is very delicate.

Are design and architecture part of your interest and program? Will it be?

It is part of my program, because I have been asked to make it, but it is not my original contribution. I was asked to develop a policy for the exhibition of the collection of design and art. It is not something I brought in my pocket. But considering that my first job was in a museum of architecture, in the 1980s, I am very happy that I can have one of my hobbies back. And in design, we are trying to do a very beautiful project that will help us also develop a policy and a line of activity, which is very important, with the Istanbul Design Biennial.

What are your plans for the exhibition publications?

There were several areas from minute one that I pushed to develop. One was the public programs and the idea of generating discourse, and the other was to professionalize the production and distribution of publications, because the museum produces publications, but nobody knows about them, because they are not distributed and not in the market. We will keep the best of the museum’s tradition, which is making beautiful books, but we will make sure that they are accessible to everyone, and we will make catalogues that will be ready at the openings.

HG Masters is editor at large of ArtAsiaPacific.