Suh Yeongran's sentiments
1) Research on folk performing arts before this project and performance work using them
We (Natsuko, Venuri, and I) all had a common interest in rituals of religion/belief, traditional dance, and folklore. I have searched and interviewed participants in shamanic village rituals in Seoul and shamanic rituals of East Sea, West Sea, South Sea, and Jeju Island in Korea. Those researches were portrayed in my last performance works, such as 'I confess my faith' and 'The God of Earth comes up Imperfectly'.
2) About research in Sri Lanka
We saw several religious rituals, mask theater, and traditional dance in Sri Lanka. We discussed how Dutch and British colonial collected or abandoned the Sri Lankan's traditional dance/rituals, and how they have been modernized or changed into stage form.
Like other post-colonized countries, there was an ideological inheritance from the colonial power in Sri Lanka. Although the colonized pretend anti-colonial or anti-western stance, they adapt the perspective or political idioms of the colonials. There was an emergence of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism in Sri Lanka. As Sri Lankan emphasizes the Buddhist identity of its nation, it arose a tension toward Muslim groups who have lived there together several centuries. We felt the tension during our visit and discussed it. Venuri wrote about social anxiety in her letter.
3) What you felt when you read the text of the 'floating bottle' (Natsuko instruction).
Natsuko sent her old question to the other Asian artist from the region where experienced similar social changes. It was about the tradition have changed during the 20th century. It was a question that naturally came up while observing the tradition we all had a common interest in. I emphasized with her letter and already shared many of her thoughts in my previous performance works. Therefore, I tried to follow her question and method once again. At the same time, I jumped further. I reflected on the historical, political landscape of South Korea in my work for Yokohama, which I found after the previous research and Natuko's letter.
4) About creating work using it and performing at ST Spot
When I received the archive box and Venuri's letter, the South Korean government have been changed after the revolution by Korean citizens. Because of the massive change in our society, it exposed the historical line fo the contradicting ideologies and extreme right wings in South Korea. I created the new work 'Enquete' while thinking of the ideology/belief of the extremists who were holding the national flags of three countries (US, Israel, and Korea) in the demonstration.
Recalling the last three performances, we all started from the interest in the 'tradition' and discussed the 'invention of tradition' during colonialism and western modernization. Further, all three works addressed the identity of citizens invented by the nation that experienced modernization. For example, Venuri's work exposed international discrimination toward specific citizens who hold the passport of a specific country. That recalled the lasting perception of race, ethnicity from the colonial era. In my work, it pointed out the contact between nation and individual citizens by the national law. Each individual put into the contract from birth and should fulfill the requirement of the nation. This concept of government and citizenship have spread around all over the world by colonialism.
All three artist made a work observing the current structure of each society after the modernization, not only the 'change of tradition' by the western modernization. I think it is because we existed in between or outside of each nation, observing invented individuals, social responsibilities as a citizen, and the discrimination between the countries, on the top of each nation's colonial history and modernization,
5) Exchanges before the performances in Kyoto. For example, replacing Japanese and Korean contracts with individual contracts.
After Yokohama, we narrowed down our keyword into the 'Colonialism and Western modernization'. It was still vast a subject. We made a time-frame and shared it through Google docs. The time-frame started from the beginning of colonial-era until the massive western modernization in each country. We wrote the critical event of world history and notable events or contracts in each one's country. If there were any questions to each other, we messaged to each other and continued our discussions.
It was difficult to tune each other's time difference between Berlin/Fukuoka, Copenhagen/Jinju, and Columbo/all around the world!. It required us to be more slow and patient. Furthermore, I gave birth to my baby and had maternity leave that I was not able to participate in the research in Fukuoka and presentation in Malaysia. It could be a stressful situation for Natsuko and Venuri, but they accepted and understood my situation.
During the research period in Fukuoka, Natuko and Venuri sent me messages about what they were discussing every day. I answered it and kept my minimum participation. During the last performance in Yokohama, coincidently, we all dealt with different kinds of 'contract' by coincidence. During the discussion by messenger, we focused on the 'contract' between nations during the colonial era. Following the suggestion of Natsuko, we transformed the 'contract' between Japan and Western Europe, Korea and Japan, and Sri Lanka and British into personal contracts and compared the similarities and differences.
During this process, I was able to compare how the British colonial approach was different in between Sri Lanka and Malaysia, (I was writing about British colonial policy in custom law and Islamic law of Malay) and Japanese colonialism in Korea.
During the history study in Korean public education, we usually learned about unequal treaty between Korea and Japan. It was the first time I heard from Natsuko that Japan applied and followed the unequal treaty that Japan had contracted with Western colonials. From that, I was able to share her question and expand my thinking from 'how Japanese colonialism was in Korea and what kind of changes brought by Japan' to 'Why Japan did such colonialism and had to imitate Western colonial powers'. Furthermore, it brought out a collective basis that we can share the common frame, 'various Asian regions vs. Western modernization', rather than 'Japan vs. Korea'
6) What you felt when you saw the performance in Kyoto.
During the summer in Fukuoka, Natsuko and Venuri created the 'Experiment'. They told me that the format of my last work inspired them. While Venuri and Natusko's work revealed how they perceived the border and discrimination in the national/international system, the audience in the 'experiment' become a participant and perceive it themselves.
The structure of the' experiment' resembles the unequal treaty and the strategy of colonial policy. And it continued by local political power during the post-colonial era ).
We had a difficulty with defining the feature of western modernization. However, is the 'experiment' which created by the strategy of western colonial policy, able to make the audience to perceive it?
After the 'experiment' in Kyoto, we questioned/discussed that;
what is the purpose of it
Is it necessary to re-do in South Korea and Sri Lanka
If we conduct it again in Korea, how we can approach the sensitive relationship between Korea & Japan's colonial history.
How it is different from the other experiment of psychologist/scientist
How it is different from the definition of western modernity defined by postmodern philosophers.
Natsuko shared the feedback from Kyoto. When she participated in the experiment, she felt some changes in the conscious attitude of Japanese audiences. We decided that, although the experiment is not perfect, it is important to continue it in other contexts and share the feedback with all the participants. However, we made sure that it is a game type of showcase which requires the physical activity of the participant. And we explained that our project is a combination of workshop+experiment+feedback/discussion, which is in the process of experiment.
Nasuko has done her artistic work by observing her body like an anatomic experiment and revealing the natural reaction of her body. Her method has expanded in this experiment as the participants observe their state, emotion, and experiment itself. Although someone pointed out the ambiguity in the experiment, we identified again that participants were able to perceive something during their own experience in the experiment. As the experience/feedback of participants became a part of the experiment, this experiment became a open-resources that is free to access for everyone. We hope some participants can conduct this in other contexts, like the metaphor of this project, Natsuko throw her letter to the others over the ocean.
workshop/experiment in Korea, the sensitive relationship between Korea and Japan was mentioned. In Korea, many people concerns about the colonial history of Japan. However, there was so little opportunity to compare or emphasize with other colonized land/ethnicity. For example. Koreans often compare Japanse colonialism with Holocaust or African slavery. However, none of European would compare the Holocaust with the European colonialism. On the one hand, this difference reveals that western colonial power differentiated the sovereign nation, middle sovereign nation, non-sovereign ethnicity. On the other hand, the colonial policy was different in each colonized land, such as India, Sri Lanka, East Indies, and Africa. There were no comparative studies between colonialism, and someone said it is too late to compare the difference between colonial policies. Although, Colonized research about the colonial history in their land, the land of post-colonial power does not teach their colonial history in public education. For them, colonial history is, sometimes, introduced as a national level of economic activity in the abroad. This kind of ignorance may bring out the continuation of colonialism into the neo-capitalistic colonialism all around the world. The discussion/comparison of colonial history in the project brought out many more things to think about.