Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene) in 2024 Cultural Olympics Exhibition Program The Fabulous Stories to Save the Green Planet 10th January – 1st February 2024 Location: Sea Gallery, Gyeongpo Beach, Gangneung, KR
Opening 10th January on the occasion of the 2024 Youth Winter Olympics in Republic of Korea Gangwon Province, a new site specific installation of Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene) at the Sea Gallery in Gangneung. The work includes a very special soundscape using audio recorded in an abandoned shaft #850 in Samtan Art Mine, Taebaek, KR
Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene) is situated in the Palaeoplasticene speculative past and inspired by the scientific method of taphonomy, which looks at how bodies decay in the natural environment. For Palaeoplasticence, the method of taphonomy is applied to 3D printed PLA mushrooms, exploring what evolutionary advantage there would be to a mushroom if it had evolved to grow from plastic. The site specific installation for the 4th Gangwon Winter Youth Olympic Games joins four ongoing Palaeoplasticene taphonomy installations in Berlin, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Dublin, Ireland and Gijon, Spain.
Accompanied for this site specific installation by a soundscape drawing links between fossil fuel extraction and the slow process of the break down of plastic, Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene) helps us to realize that the enduring legacy of man-made objects like the plastic will bring about changes affecting both human and non-human beings.
Credits Artist: Kat Austen Initial concept: Kat Austen in collaboration with Indrė Žliobaitė, Laurence Gill Production: Ars Electronica Andrew Newman Palaeoplasticene was realised within the framework of the STUDIOTOPIA program at Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG with support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union.
This site specific edition of Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene) includes field recordings from Samtan Art Mine, Gangwon Province, thanks to Director Whasoon Son and with the support of Dongjoo Seo.
Exhibition opening ceremony at 14:00 on 10th January.
The 20 channel video installation This Land is Not Mine will be exhibited as a solo show at the new gallery of Cinémathèque in Leipzig. A complementary programme of events is planned under the name Łuža throughout the month of November, starting with the This Land is Not Mine | Album performance on 3. Nov for the exhibition opening.
Opening 19th October until 22nd October S-Factory D, Seongdong-gu, Seoul
“When I was a child, there were dragonflies everywhere.” The summer heat is smothering us as the group of elders shelter in the shadow of the Wondumak gazebo next to the village hall. One person proffers a folded over toilet paper, which I unfold to reveal a petrified, decomposing stagbeetle. The wooden shelter, so necessary in these hot summer months, lies on a track out of the village. Almost immediately beyond, the buildings give way to an incline tracing the bank of a dry riverbed up to terraced rice fields; the Gudeuljang.
These Gudeuljang secured Korea the country’s first ever globally important agricultural heritage site. The rice here is formed without pesticides, using traditional method that date back to the 1600s. The terraces of the Gudeuljang contain a network of underground channels, which feed mountain rainwater to the crops. Farmers control the flow by moving stones to stem the water, allowing it to warm in the sun before letting it into the fields. Many of fields at higher altitudes are out of use now, the crucial channels collapsing into themselves. Farmers know what’s happening higher up the mountainside from the changing behaviour of water in the fields they tend. Compared to other landscapes, dragonflies thrive here in this pesticide-free rural idyll. Yet even here the dragonflies are fewer, and come at different times of year than before.
People notice the change from their childhood. “It used to be a game when we were kids, we would catch the dragonflies in our hands and hold them their wings feel like paper like the Hanji in my grandparents doors. Crinkly but strong. Now you just don’t see them so much anymore.”
This year I’ve seen none of the swarms I saw last year. I hear the hum of traffic from the top of the hill. The smoke turns the blue sky yellow. I reach out my hand into the open air, against the sunshine, and I return to a hillside where the trees have grown back; they were felled for survival in desperate times. Now what threatens the humans here is an exodus. I wouldn’t mind moving to Cheongsan-do for awhile. I’d even like the experience of farming but as a foreigner, I wasn’t permitted to hire a car. There are various things that make a landscape in hospitable. We didn’t have so many dragonflies where I grew up. Now I’m somewhere the way they belong but I’m in the wrong time. Which begs the question: how do you touch a dragonfly that isn’t there?
Artist: Kat Austen Designer: Robin Andersson (RTA Studio) Digital Artist: Daniel Hengst Creative Technologist: Justus Erhas Production Director: Frank Lohmoeller Production Manager: Olive Okjoh Han Production Assistance: Hyeonhwa Lee Additional Filming: Sangwon Lee Hanji Funding: Jeonju Millenium Hanji Museum (전주천년한지관) Supported by: ZER01NE Creator’s Programme (Hyundai Motor Group) Thanks to: UN FAO KR, GIAHS (Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Site) Cheongsan-do, R. Glowinski
When Plants Migrate Sookyun Yang x Kat Austen As part of Homo Migratio, Jeju Museum of Art in Jeju Stone Culture Park 19th September 2023 – 26th November 2023
When Plants Migrate Austen’s 4 channel sound installation will be presented in collaboration with Sookyun Yang’s immersive video work of the same name.
Flow Over Water Borders (2019) Walls Have Ears ARS Art Factory Tallinn, Estonia
10th – 18th February 2023
“Flow Over Water Borders” by Kat Austen is presented as a 4-channel sound installation that explores fluidity of identity in relation to borders. Paracelsus famously said of all substances “It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.” Borders constrain and divide, they are often contested, policed, enforced. Yet they also protect, define, collect… Their value is in the way that they and their permeability are navigated.
Drawing parallels between urban life for young people and the changes to water as it passes through the city, this sound artwork sheds light on the meaning of boundaries, the fluid nature of the self and the eternal navigation of the individual as part of society.
The artwork is based on participatory artistic research focussed on the Panke River in Berlin with local school pupils. Realised through DIY Hack the Panke’s Science by Doing with Art Laboratory Berlin.
We’re delighted to launch the Seoul Rhythms project this week at the V&A Museum Friday Late: Making Waves on 25th November.
Video Artwork credits: Director: Daye Yang, Enseo Mo, Oh Se Ae Photography & artwork: Oh Se Ae Hair: Daye Yang Makeup: Min Kim, Jiwon Lee Styling: Eunseo Mo Model: Yanghee Han
Times and tempos within cityscapes coexist. These conversations – not just between humans but also with the creatures and natural processes in a place – are unique and in constant dynamic variation.
The 2-channel sound installation Seoul Rhythms | Summer (2022), premiering within the context of the Hallyu (Korean Wave) Late in The Globe at the V&A, brings together tempos of the capital city of the Republic of Korea at the height of summer, interweaving sounds of cicadas, mopeds, birds and busses in a rhythmic exploration of the metropolis’s character.
Seoul Rhythms | Summer (2022), released to coincide with the V&A Late, is the first movement from the ongoing Seoul Rhythms project, which situates the exploration of the tempos of daily life in the rhythm of the passing seasons.
Kat’s Arctic Symphony The Matter of the Soul (2018) will be on show at the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2022 in Changwon, Republic of Korea until 20th November 2022.
For the Changwon Biennale, The Matter of the Soul | Symphony video is shown in the context of the Joonam Reservoir, a protected and biodiverse haven for insects and migratory birds. Yet the reservoir is in a region also undergoing change, as the climate at the south of the Korean peninsula crosses over into being designated sub-tropical due to warming temperatures. Positioned in this context, alongside dire warnings from scientists in 2022 of the urgent need for climate action, The Matter of the Soul renews its imperative for degrowth, an end to extraction and prioritisation of addressing ecological crises.