In April and October 2019, Martin Remigius Wohlwend traveled with Nine Dragon Heads, an international artist collective, to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone along the border between North and South Korea. Cheorwon is a geographical location where one of South Korea's many military bases is situated. Besides touristically developed attractions such as a peace memorial site and a crane museum, there are two of the four infamous tunnels to visit. These were allegedly dug by the enemy in the North in the 1970s to infiltrate South Korea. They created tunnels up to three and a half kilometers long at a depth of over 70 meters.
Tunnel Experience
When the artist descended into one of the tunnels during his first visit, he held back from the group to capture the atmosphere of the tunnel on his mobile phone. Suddenly, he noticed a single group member, who later complained of claustrophobia, starting the way out earlier than the others and coming towards him alone. Wohlwend paused, filmed the scene, and realized at that moment that he was capturing the same emotions he had just experienced in Ed Atkins' exhibition at the Kunsthaus Bregenz/A.
Half a year later, Wohlwend was again in the DMZ, this time in a different tunnel. He first looked in the direction of the group in front of him. Suddenly, he heard singing behind him. He turned around but saw no one. Wohlwend quickly pulled out his mobile phone and started recording. He could hardly believe his eyes; he saw the same situation as the first time: Out of nowhere, dwarf-sized and far away, a person was moving towards him in the narrow tunnel. This person had previously separated from the group. Due to strict regulations and instructions from security personnel, these two scenes could not be staged. It was a matter of chance.
Vicious Circle of Sadness
With this work, Wohlwend aims to focus on the handling of the topic of "borders." His concern is with man-made borders, national borders. Borders are erected and controlled. However, they can also be minimized, disregarded, crossed, destroyed, and overcome.
Both South and North Koreans perceive the border drawing as a tragedy. It has etched itself as a festering wound into the national psyche. It pains when Wohlwend speaks with the locals. He senses melancholy in their words, sadness in their faces, a great misunderstanding. The people feel lost and powerless in the face of the separation imposed from outside in 1953. They do not find answers to their decades-long questions, leaving them even more frustrated.
The two tunnel videos from Cheorwon abstractly reflect the endless emotional cycle in which Koreans on both sides find themselves. The soundtrack of the two videos corresponds to the original track in the two tunnels, with the only exception being the occasional single note from a keyboard strike on the piano piece "Good Wine" by Ed Atkins. The artist thus explores the absurdity of political and social behavior in relation to the DMZ.
Source: Exhibition catalog "Kunst Kann, Einblicke in zeitgenössische künstlerische Haltungen" by Dagmar Frick, Marc Wellmann, Franz Moser, Leo Andergassen. gugler GmbH, Melk/A, 2020.
Cheorwon's endless, purgatorial circuit is a reference to Ed Adkin's "Good Wine," symbolizing a vicious cycle of sadness.
