Kim Gordon
It almost came full circle when our Art Director Jacob Fabricius brought three video works from the Busan Biennale 2020 to Kunsthal Aarhus. In recent years, Jacob Fabricius and Kunsthal Aarhus have created a very special relationship with Korea and the Korean contemporary art scene. An exchange that would manifest once again with this exhibition...
... But we only got to the first chapter of the exhibition An exhibition in three chapters: Works from the Busan Biennale by Carey YOUNG, Kim GORDON & JANG Minseung / 전시 세 편: 캐리 영, 킴 고든, 장민승 - 부산비엔날레로부터 before Denmark shut down.
Artistic translation was the main theme of the Busan Biennale 2020. While we await the reopening, we have chosen to make a new translation of the exhibition we had already translated – the rest of the exhibition plus musical and literary accompaniments are made available on our frontpage throughout March.
Program:
01.03.–07.03. / Kim GORDON, July 24, 2020, 2020
08.03.–14.03. / JANG Minseung, Voiceless-pitch-dark, 2014
15.03.–21.03. / Elias Bender RØNNENFELT (Iceage), concert in Kunsthal Aarhus, 02.12.2020
22.03.– 26.03. / Mark von SCHLEGELL reads the short story Busan in Rose
27.03.–31.03. / Andrés Felipe SOLANO reads the short story We’ll All End Up Rocks in a Lake
Kim GORDON, July 24, 2020, 2020
Kim GORDON is an artist, writer and founding member of the New Wave band Sonic Youth. Her visual practice, which encompasses painting, sculpture, video, performance and design, can be defined as a morphology of surface. Her work is governed by the motto ‘the outside is the inside, and the inside is the outside’ (a paraphrase of Gordon’s 1995 song, Panty Lies, inspired by a quote from Andy Warhol, which states, ‘Pop Art took the inside and put it outside, took the outside and put it inside’). Kim Gordon wanted to create a new work for the Busan Biennale 2020, but due to Covid19 she could not visit Korea to select actors and locations on site.
Instead, Gordon sent instructions to the exhibition team in Busan. Gordon asked the team to use their hands, eyes and ears in relation to the research and the recording of her new film July 24, 2020. She sent short descriptions and instructions like: ‘Some back alley, if possible the back of a restaurant or an alley where there are noodle shops in the old part of the city. A young man/boy and girl wearing denim jackets looking at each other and then they kiss. Also, a cigarette stuck in the boy’s mouth without lighting it and then giving it to the girl. The boy riding on a bus. A woman with long legs eating a donut. An old woman eating noodles. A boy sleeping. Walking thru the big shopping complex shooting the shops etc that could be longer like 10 min […]’.
These scenes were to be filmed with a smartphone in Busan, Korea. JiYeon Seong, from the curatorial team, asked friends to participate, found the locations and settings, and filmed it with her phone before sending the raw footage to Gordon, who then edited them with her own clips from California and made the soundscape. Following the tradition of punk and DIY ethics, Gordon’s sneering humour is accompanied by raw aesthetics, resulting in a hallucinogenic film. Deskilling keeps things strange: Gordon morphs both the physical and the social landscape around her, making it speak her poetry.
Kim GORDON (b. 1953, USA), July 24, 2020, 2020
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 6:53 min.
Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York. Video footage by JiYeon Seong / Kim Gordon