Why did you choose food as the central theme of this show?
Eating is a fundamental activity through which we can remember who we are. When we taste a dish, we can immediately assess its differences or similarities with other dishes we know. Food is essential, and that is why I wanted to bring it to the stage. After living in Europe for about fifteen years, when I returned to South Korea I was treated as a Korean who had been away for a long time. I felt uncomfortable and did not know how to reconnect with myself. Food was the most obvious answer. As an artist, I create performances that incorporate video and sound, but also taste, smell, and touch, senses I am interested in bringing into the performance. That is why I designed Haribo Kimchi. The title comes from the superimposition of this traditional Korean dish with the well-known German candy brand.
Why kimchi specifically?
In recent years, I have traveled with touring productions and had the opportunity to meet Korean women and men in exile, part of what is called the Korean diaspora around the world. Most of them had left against their will, for political reasons. Some had been living for three generations in a country whose language they mastered perfectly and whose way of life they had fully adopted: they no longer had many things in common with Koreans in Korea, yet they continued to make kimchi. They had invented their own recipe, their own kimchi, replacing the original ingredients with local ones. It was neither good nor bad; it simply was. I came to think that the Korean diaspora is really a diaspora of kimchi. Ultimately, this is quite similar to the history of theatre as I tell it in The History of Korean Western Theatre. How do we survive? How do we remember our origins while continuing to move forward? We write our own history, but that history is not without paradoxes. What is authenticity? What do we call Korean food? Just as Koreans have defined North Korean and South Korean food, should we speak of Korean-American, Korean-Russian, or Korean-German food?
You left the Republic of Korea to settle in Europe. You currently live in Belgium. What made you decide to leave your birth country?
When I was in Korea, I was studying theatre theory. I was doing research, writing a thesis and articles for academic journals. At the same time, I was already a musician and was making my own videos. I wanted to become a multimedia artist and make a living from my art. I was drawn to performance. I wanted to appear on stage while developing a transdisciplinary theatrical practice. I created my first performances, but I struggled to find my place because the Korean scene at the time was very conservative. In secondary school, I remember composing a song titled “Where is my Confidant?” because I couldn’t find anyone with whom to share my work and my passion. Moreover, both theatre companies and artistic institutions were very hierarchical and authoritarian, reflecting Korean society at large. I found it difficult to create and to thrive in such environments. I decided to leave in order to see the world and broaden my horizons. I went first to Berlin, then to Amsterdam, where I enrolled in the DasArts Master’s program at DAS Theatre. I spent four years in the Netherlands, during which I had time to think about what would become my Hamartia Trilogy. I later moved to Brussels, where I began working professionally within Belgian institutions. Living in Europe gave me a certain distance from which to look at my own country. I was able to compare its problems with those of other countries. I also came to reflect on my identity as a non-European, a cultural exile escaping the conservative and capitalist society of South Korea. My interest in politics naturally merged with the artistic means I was using—performance, music, video, robotics.
Although you appear on stage, you say that Haribo Kimchi is less autobiographical than your previous works—including Cuckoo and The History of Korean Western Theatre, also presented at the Festival. Would you say it marks an evolution in your artistic trajectory?
The two shows you mention form, together with Lolling and Rolling, my Hamartia Trilogy, whose common thread was to observe how an autobiographical narrative can become History, particularly through back-and-forth movements between my personal life and the global political situation. I belong to a generation that was hit hard by the consequences of the economic crisis that struck South Korea in 1997, causing unemployment and youth suicide rates to soar. I myself lost several close friends. My theatre seeks to trace events back to their origins in order to clarify their causes. With Haribo Kimchi, I began to ask how to take on a fictional narrative that still includes documentary material. What is real? What is not? Spectators who follow my work and know my interest in robotics may be surprised to see characters reappearing from my previous creations: Seri, the rice cooker that already appeared in Cuckoo and The History of Korean Western Theatre, or Toad, the origami robot who played the role of my child in the latter play. There is also a new arrival, an eel robot. My small non-human company keeps growing from one project to the next. The use of culinary art turns the performance into a multisensory form. As an artist, I ask myself how, through my practice, I can progress, innovate, and create a theatre for our time.
Interview conducted by Simon Hatab in April 26