MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO BAND: 2012

2012년 11월 4일 일요일

Play Time, Seoul Railway Station, Seoul, Korea

Our new music video shot in Seoul Railway Sta is going to be presented soon at the exhibition, Play Time, Culture Station Seoul 284, Korea.

Where The Wild Things Are, Paintbrush Factory, Cluj, Romania

Another group show in Romania. we are presenting our Incheon videos.

http://www.fabricadepensule.ro/en/2012/10/29/where-the-wild-things-are/

Where the Wild Things Are — Temps D’Images
9 November 2012
Artists: Apparatus 22 (RO), Katja Eliad (RO), Mehreen Murtaza (PK), Michelangelo Pistoletto Band (KR), Pablo Serret de Ena (ES), Sebastian Moldovan (RO)
Curator: Anca Mihuleţ (RO)The title and the motivation of the exhibition stand in Maurice Sendak’s children’s book with the same name published in 1963, in which anger and the need for independence are explained through the personality of a boy named Max that immerses in a parallel world where he becomes the king of a community of uncivilized beasts. The selected artists visually recreate the story with various conceptual instruments of analysis.

Where the Wild Things Are is a presentation of 6 artistic approaches that handle the thematic of future and mixed reality, combining personal history with an alternative spatial determination. Childhood, heroism, comparable truths, and a temptation towards the future and the unknown unite the works selected for this small-length project.
If for Michelangelo Pistoletto Band, the future is represented by deserted spaces and words with no meaning, for Katja Eliad the future must be provoked and confronted, as the answers are always moving faster than us.

Apparatus 22 is a multidisciplinary art&design collective initiated in the winter of 2011 by current members Erika Olea, Maria Farcaş, Dragos Olea and late artist Ioana Nemeş.

Katja Eliad (1972) often talks about her relationship/interaction with the letters of the alphabet: “graphically letters make-up my universe, as numbers would do for a mathematician, my work vouches for this”.

Mehreen Murtaza (1986) completed her studies at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore; she opens herself to thematic concerns in a way that does not retreat into a confession of identity politics.

For Michelangelo Pistoletto Band (Bona Park and Eunji Cho), fantasy is repeatedly led to fiasco, which is an ingrained characteristic of their works. However, it surprisingly plays a role to unveil political and social structures implied in the landscapes where they intervene.

Pablo Serret de Ena (1975) admits that the behavior of societies has mostly been defined in relation to their environment, whether natural or artificial. Pablo Serret de Ena works with these contexts, reorganizing their elements to confront situations.

Sebastian Moldovan’s (1982) installations often question basic actions like breathing (a recurrent theme in his works), survival, beginning and ending or the passing of time, being in a permanent struggle to find space – space for breathing, for thinking, for disaster.

Asynchronous Lifeworld, Juming Museum, Taipei, TW

Asynchronous Lifeworld, a group show, we are participating in. we are showing 6 video pieces. curated by 方彥翔. It runs by 17. Feb. 2013. Check it out!

Dr Stephen Epstein's writing on our band

The Michelangelo Pistoletto Band? Although a New Zealand audience may initially find it a trifle odd that artists Bona Park and Eunji Cho, South Korean women born in the 1970s, pay homage to a septuagenarian Italian painter in titling a performance project that blends music, video and more, the shared sensibility with the elder practitioner of Gesamtkunstwerk soon becomes apparent. As the pair state on their website, they “respect his passion, works, and name!”

Certainly, the resultant abbreviated label that they have also bequeathed to their project, Mich Pistol, has a slyly ironic quality, evoking an endearing yet aggressive punk ethos. Korean popular music is currently capturing a global audience via savvy corporate marketing strategies and extensive social media-based fan networks. Amidst these swirling transnational flows propagated by what has been termed the Korean Wave, the DIY and decidedly non-commercial work of Park and Cho offers a gust of fresh air, fending off K-pop’s glitzy production and calculated, anodyne sounds.

In their collaboration as the Michelangelo Pistoletto Band, Park and Cho draw on a Korean tradition of edgy, subversive humour that runs back to the pre-modern period, when itinerant troupes would entertain villagers with masked drama and other forms of comedy that satirized the aristocrats in power. Under the Japanese Occupation (1910-1945), censorship and political repression made critique dangerous, but such writers as Chae Man-shik, whose “My Idiot Uncle” subtly mocks slavish acceptance of the colonizer’s assimilationist policies, suggests the rebellious spirit that suffuses Korean society in the face of pressures to conformity. Even more striking are instances of writers and artists who refused to kowtow to power under the harsh years of South Korea’s military dictatorship. Most notorious among these dissidents was poet Kim Chi-ha who was imprisoned, not least for his work “The Five Bandits”, in which he skewered (with his pen) five key groups of power holders, from business tycoons to cabinet ministers, in the authoritarian Park Chung Hee government.

South Korea now has a vibrant civil society as a result of the democratization movement that in June celebrated the 25th anniversary of the 1987’s mass demonstrations that forced the government to consent to fair elections; nevertheless, concerns have arisen that hard-fought freedoms are being eroded under the current Lee Myung Bak administration. In the eyes of many, the incumbent president is fully living up to the nickname of “The Bulldozer” that he was known by as the CEO of Hyundai’s engineering and construction wing before entering politics. Not only has a central platform of his presidency and his former role as mayor of Seoul been urban renewal, but he has exerted a heavy hand in attempting to control local media and stifle dissent. A “growth at all costs” mentality and a promise to revitalize peripheral areas of South Korea has fueled such initiatives as his controversial “Four Greater Rivers Project,” which some have seen as a waste of money and others have criticized as environmentally destructive.

The Michelangelo Piccoletto band strive to make familiar urban landscapes unfamiliar again. In doing so, they have focused, aptly, on Incheon and its outlying areas for art installations and the filming of their music videos. Now the third largest city in South Korea, Incheon offers keen observers, like Park and Cho, a series of striking contradictions for exploration.

Known in the West primarily as the site of Macarthur’s landing during the Korean War and the decade-old international airport that has since regularly achieved annual world-best ratings, Incheon has a fascinating past, a turbulent present, and a contested future. By virtue of its port location, the city has long been a gateway of commerce and was once home to a thriving Chinese trader community. Nonetheless it has yet to shed an ongoing status as an industrial and working class neighbour of the more glamorous capital of Seoul, a contrast wonderfully evoked in director Jeong Jae-eun’s 2001 debut, Take Care of My Cat, which played in the Wellington International Film Festival.

Forces of change are afoot, however: Incheon was designated South Korea’s first free economic zone and is currently being rebranded as a global city, with government interests proclaiming the ambitious hope that English will become as prevalent a lingua franca in the city as in Singapore and Hong Kong so that it may serve as a commercial hub for Northeast Asia. But such ambitions come with costs: in “Heart of Korea,” Mich Pistol critique the obsession with national branding and hollow English (and French) coinages that hold out a vision of utopian futures but appear likely to come to naught and, regardless, promise little benefit for the nation’s marginalized. Park and Cho pedal a swan boat backwards in a park pond that has since disappeared to make way for redevelopment, and a disembodied voice recites to the beat of a rudimentary and mechanical techno backing track:

Heart of Korea
Well County
Centeral [sic] Park
Tomorrow City
Global City
Techno Park
Smart Valley
RETURN, Bon Chance

Similarly, their clip “Owner of Another Island” showcases the duo dressed in ornate gowns and standing in front of a deserted resort complex on the West Sea island of Seongam-do. Peurobangseu (“Provence”) reads the sign behind them, and local viewers will recognize the backdrop as an example of the weekend getaway sites that have arisen in recent years, frequently with faux-European stylings, as Korean citizens take part in the global imagining of elegant leisure. That the West Sea, not far from Seongam-do, is the site of an ongoing territorial dispute with North Korea that played a role in instigating the shelling of Yeonpyeong-do in December 2010 adds another layer of meaning to the use of an everyday setting that has been rendered eerie.

“Forecasting,” in particular, exemplifies the cognitive estrangement that arises from their portrayal of the urban landscape. The clip is largely shot in the new and still incomplete development of the Songdo International Business District, which has been widely touted as the showpiece centre for South Korea and Incheon’s global aspirations. Despite sparking initial frenzied real estate speculation, the area has continued to maintain a forlorn air, amidst growing concerns that with the global downturn its promise as a gateway city may not come to fruition. The notion of “Forecasting” takes on additional resonances as Park and Cho, this time clad in futuristic garb, pop up at various points within Songdo and around Incheon, as one almost expects tumbleweeds to come blowing by in time to a monotonous voice reminiscent of subway announcements:

One day in April
Four Forty Nine in the afternoon
The Sunshine in Subway Number One
seems to be related to a city, Incheon
…

With Karl Chitham and Aaron Lister

With Karl Chitham and Aaron Lister, wonderful curators who invites us to New Zealand!
In spite of the tight schedule, we feel, it was such a great experience! Thanks to Karl and Aaron for making things happen!

St Paul Gallery, Auckland, NZ


Eunji and Aaron in the balcony at Dunedin Public Art Gallery


Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, NZ

The Ladder is Part of the Pit

We had another performance at St. Paul gallery, Auckland, NZ on the 10th of Aug. and the last performance at the beautiful balcony of Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, NZ on the 11th of Aug. The Ladder is Part of the Pit, a amazing contemporary music band supported us and played a beautiful music in Dunedin Public Art Gallery. We really appreciate it!

Waikato Museum, Hamilton, NZ

Karl and Leafa Wilson, a curator in Waikato Museum

Waikato Museum, Hamilton, NZ

http://www.waikatomuseum.co.nz/events/pageid/2145877326/Michelangelo_Pistoletto_Band_9_Aug_2012

After a talk in Wintec College, we had a performance in Waikato Museum on 9th of Aug, supported by a super cool local band, bushwig led by Leafa wilson, a super curator in Waikato Museum.


Interview at Radio Active 88.6 FM

http://www.radioactive.co.nz/home

sorry for the late post. we did interview with Radio Active 88.6 FM to promote about our performance in City gallery in Wellington, NZ.

got an interesting question on North Korea.

2012년 8월 24일 금요일

미켈란젤로 피스똘레또 밴드의 뉴질랜드 8월 전국 순회공연! /NZ Nation Wide Tour!

City Gallery Wellington

Nationwide tour

The tour Waikato Museum on Thursday 9 August, St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland, Friday 10 August and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery on Saturday 11 August.

As Dr Stephen Epstein writes: “Although a New Zealand audience may initially find it a trifle odd that artists Bona Park and Eunji Cho, South Korean women born in the 1970s, pay homage to a septuagenarian Italian pai...

nter in titling a performance project that blends music, video and more,” seeing the Michelangelo Pistoletto Band perform live when they visit Wellington will make the influence of their namesake and his "total art" apparent.

Drawing on a Korean tradition of “edgy, subversive humour that runs back to the pre-modern period, when itinerant troupes would entertain villagers with masked drama and other forms of comedy that satirised the aristocrats in power,” the artist duo attracted the attention of New Zealand curators

씨티 갤러리 웰링턴, 미켈란젤로 피스똘레또 밴드 동영상

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr3a3W6JQ68

Open Late at the City Gallery Wellington with Michelangelo Pistoletto Band and Fiends. Sponsored by Radio Active and the Asia Foundation.
Filmed by Marty Lang.

2012년 8월 19일 일요일

our second performance in Waikato Museum, Hamilton, New Zealand

We were invited to Hamilton, New Zealand by SPARK, International Festival of Media, Arts & Design.

We performed at the Waikato Museum on Thursday 9^th August and gave a Masterclass on the same day at Wintec college. We also had work on display until the 10^th August at the Calder & Lawson Gallery, University of Waikato in the group exhibition, Raised Voices.

Our performance went well with a big support of Hamilton band BUSHWIG, another great band in Hamilton, which performed together with us.

We really appreciate to people who came to see our performance and lecture!

the University of Waikato and City Gallery Wellington have teamed up to produce our tour a series of performances and events. Many thanks!

SPARK, International Festival of Media, Arts & Design

our voice!

recording 'Red Elephant', our special voice and composer :)

Jia Yu and our composer recording sound

Jia Yu, our rock voice! she works as a special education teacher

our first performance in City Gallery, Wellington, NZ

Our first performance in City gallery, Wellington, New Zealand
great place and great people! we had such a great time! thanks Wellington;)

CIty gallery, Wellington where we had a solo show and performance with Fiends

our posters on the street in Wellington ;)

our performance photo

guitar, of course

our performance view, outside gallery. sunscreen rolling up

our single exhibition view in City gallery

many people came to see our performance. we really appreciated it!

Fiends, brilliant artist duo, who performed together with us. thanks Fiends!

About a band preparing to get retired when it becomes top

About the band preparing to retire at their glory days

Eun-young Jung (artist)

Michelangelo Pistoletto Band(hereinafter as Michey Band) was organized by two female artists, Bona Park and Eunji Cho, when they participated in a Residency Program at Gyeonggi Creation Center located in Seongam- island, Ansan, Korea. From its start, the band was not called as such. The band used to be called 123 Band, which was named after the only Bus No. 123 conneting a little remote island, Seongam-island, to a city, Ansan. After performing two songs ‘To Let’ and ‘Owner of Another Island’ in an empty box building in the island, it changed its name into Michelangelo Pistoletto Band. Michelangelo Pistoletto is an artist and a founder of a residency program in Italy, where both artists of the band participated in different years. However the band turns authority, dignity, seriousness or complexity of art associated with the powerful male’s name into abruptness, heterogeneity, lightness, flatness or easiness. Michey Band seems to take an opposite direction that performativity of the grand name has, and its strategy appears to be successful.

However, why should it be a band? For Bona Park and Eunji Cho, doing a band (or art) is a fantasy that they never reach but still dream, and a band performance (or artistic performativity) is a lip-synced music, which is never matched with real sound. It is as ‘Guns and Roses’ to Bona Park or ‘Prince’ to Eunji Cho. Their commanding stage presence and overwhelming performances enrapture and drive Michey Band but frustrate them at the same time. They present themselves in a form of non-fine art, band music, and reveal the process that such shameless and unsophisticated trials fail.

Without aim and desire, the fantasy is repeatedly led to fiasco, which is an ingrained characteristic of their works. However it surprisingly plays a role to unveil political and social structure implied in landscapes where they intervene. The band makes strange surroundings - empty buildings in a remote island, land for sale, flats lined up in a form of unrefined American-style bed towns, a global city where post-modern skyscrapers rise up, also, desolate ruins in an old collapsing town which has been simultaneously inhaled into a whirl of redevelopment project, and a rustic resort which became an abandoned community or a ruin - much more unfamiliar, The band just appears in music videos against such backdrop, but such landscapes get more pushed to a frontline and to a political arena.

They are a band but neither musicians nor singer- songwriters. They write lyrics but ask a composer to make music, and then they just try to imitate a band by synchronizing the songs recorded with others’ voices. Their performance copies ‘cool band like looking’, but it comes somewhat awkward bit by bit sliding far from integrity. Their performance, which seems nothing, veils something but unveils others. Lyrics are not clearly heard at the first time and yet get more prominent in a series of repetition, while their body movement, which do not specifically express, ridiculously steps backward behind the lyrics and landscapes. Michey Band chooses landscapes with careful intentions. It is needless to say how intentionally they choose places for performance or frame music videos. Obviously, Mickey Band’s humorous performance abandoned or breached customs of institutional arts. However, because the landscapes and place they choose are familiar issues in contemporary art, their performance seems to go back to representation of landscapes, which is an institutional art. It represents their chaotic conditions or intended twists leading to spectators’ laughter and confusion. The band will retire just when the public look at them with a surfeit of yearnings as well as confusion concurrently. Since then, the band will remain as a myth. Michey Band is waiting for their retirement. It means that they are waiting for the peak when their dramatic disappearing becomes possible. It is for fading into an eternal fantasy and staying as cacophony of an aimlessly expended place and history.

전성기에 은퇴하는 밴드에 대하여

전성기에 은퇴하는 밴드에 대하여.

정은영(작가)

미켈란젤로피스똘레또 밴드 (이하 미키밴드)는 선감도에 자리한 경기창작센터의 예술가 거주 프로그램에 참여 중이던 작가 박보나와 조은지에 의해 2010년 결성되었다. 처음부터 그들이 이 으스대는 이름으로 밴드를 시작했던 것은 아니었다. 다소 오지에 속하는 선감도를 가로지르는 유일한 버스인 123번 버스의 번호를 딴 123밴드가 미키밴드의 전신이다. 123밴드라는 이름으로 선감도의 빈 상가에서 ‘임대’와 ‘딴 섬 주인’을 노래한 이후, 밴드는 오래 전 머물렀던 이탈리아의 예술가 거주 프로그램을 제공한 예술가이자 재단의 이름이기도 한 ‘미켈란젤로 피스똘레또’를 떠올렸다. 그들은 얼마간의 명성이 담보된 영향력 있는 남성예술가의 이름으로 스스로를 호명해도 괜찮으리라고 생각한다. 지금의 밴드명은 그렇게 유래했다. 그들은 ‘미켈란젤로 피스똘레또’ 라는 이름이 주는 위엄과 예술의 권위와 심각성, 복잡성 같은 것들을 한없이 거슬러 오히려 느닷없고 이질적인 것, 가볍고 평평하고 쉬운 것을 향한다. 대게 호명은 수행을 결정하지만, 미키밴드의 수행은 번번히 호명을 배반한다. (전략 따윈 없을 것 같은) 미키밴드의 이러한 전략은 비교적 성공적으로 보인다.

그런데 왜 하필이면 밴드란 말인가? 그들에게 밴드는(혹은 예술은) 한번도 닿은 적 없는 판타지이며, 밴드의 공연은(혹은 예술행위는) 결코 일치하지 않는 립씽크와 같다. 박보나에게는 ‘건즈 앤 로지스’가, 조은지에게는 ‘프린스’가 그렇다. 그들의 무대장악력과 폼 나는 퍼포먼스는 미키밴드를 열광하게 하고 추동 하지만, 동시에 좌절시킨다. 미키밴드의 예술 행위는 가장 미술이 아니어야 할 것 같은 형식을 취하면서, 뻔뻔스럽게 유치한 도전들이 적나라하게 실패하는 과정을 드러낸다. 목적 없고 욕망 없는, 자꾸만 실패하는 판타지는 그들의 작업이 가진 태생적 속성이기도 하지만, 의외로 그들의 행위가 개입하는 풍경이 함의한 정치적이고 사회적인 구조를 폭로한다.외딴 섬의 빈 점포, 매매를 기다리는 땅, 조악하게 흉내 낸 미국식 주택으로 줄 지어 선 팬션 타운이나, 초현대적 건축물이 솟구치는 국제도시, 그와 동시간적으로 개발의 속도에 무차별하게 빨려들어간 허물어져가는 구시가지의 쓸쓸한 폐허들과 버려진 공동체나 퇴물이 되어버린 촌스러운 유원지 같은 이상한 풍경들은 미키밴드의 개입으로 점점 더 기이해진다. 밴드는 이러한 풍경을 단지 배경 삼아 뮤직비디오를 찍을 뿐이지만, 풍경은 점점 더 전면화 되고 정치화된다.

그들은 밴드이지만 뮤지션이거나 싱어송 라이터는 아니다. 모든 곡의 가사를 쓰지만 작곡을 의뢰하고 타인의 목소리로 녹음된 노래에 입을 뻥긋뻥긋거린다. 그들의 퍼포먼스는 밴드의 멋 부리는 ‘룩look’을 흉내내지만, 어쩐지 조금씩 조금씩 빗겨나며 어색해진다. 이러한 일련의 행위들, 혹은 아무것도 아닌 행위들은 어떤 것은 밝혀내고, 어떤 것은 은폐한다. 잘 들리지 않는 가사는 반복을 통해 점점 선명해지면서 의미화의 과정을 드러내지만, 무엇도 잘 표현하지 않는 신체는 노랫말과 풍경의 뒤로 우스꽝스럽게 뒷걸음질 한다. 풍경은 또한 정교하게 선택된다. 공연장으로 선택된 장소며 뮤직비디오의 프레이밍은 말할 것도 없다. 제도미술의 관습을 포기했거나 위반하는 것이 분명한 미키밴드의 농담 같은 행동들은 그들이 선택한 논쟁적인 장소와 풍경으로 인해 가장 제도화된 미술의 관습 중 하나인 풍경의 재현처럼 보이기도 한다. 그러므로 이 모든 것은 그들이 처해있는 혼란이자 의도적인 비틈, 더불어 그들을 지켜보는 관객의 혼돈과 웃음이다. 밴드를 욕망하는 대중의 눈에 말할 수 없이 과잉 된 동경과 혼돈이 동시에 비칠 때, 비로소 밴드는 은퇴한다. 그리고 밴드는 은퇴함으로써 신화가 된다. 미키밴드는 은퇴를 기다린다. 그것은 가장 드라마틱한 사라짐을 위한 전성기를 기다린다는 뜻이다. 영원한 판타지로 미끄러지기 위해, 목적 없이 소비되는 장소와 역사의 불협으로 남기 위해.