If You Can’t Retaliate, You weren’t Attacked 2010

Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, May 2010

This performance developed during “If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution”, a project in collaboration with the Dutch Art Institute in Gdansk, Poland. At that time, there were two major national tragedies in both Poland and Korea. The two countries have a similar historical context, whereby both have suffered under a dominant power. For this performance I asked a Polish child of 7 years old to read extracts from an article from New York Times that reconstituted the parallel recent events of Poland and Korea. This article was quite incomprehensible for the child with unfamiliar words and difficult sentences. The child was trying to control his pronunciation, tone and dynamics of speed, but his lack of knowledge caused him to stutter and struggle with the task. 

 

Performance & installation view

 

If You Can’t Retaliate, You Weren’t Attacked

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me speak a today’s newsflash from Poland and South/ North Korea.

As you all know, both Poland and South Korea have currently faced a national period of mourning. Everyone has cried about the deaths in front of the television and participated in the funerals as if they had been our bloody connection.

Yes,

We all have been,

Mourning,

Mourning,

Mourning,

AND

Mourning,

 SEOUL — On the evening of March 26, Cheonan, a 1,200-ton South Korean corvette, was on patrol in coastal waters near the disputed border with North Korea when its stern was suddenly torn away by a powerful explosion.

The warship sank within a few minutes, taking the lives of 46 sailors. The South Korean government initially assumed the warship was attacked by a North Korean submarine and put its military on high alert.

And after 2 weeks later, 

WARSAW — On the morning of April 10, A plane carrying the Polish president and 94 of the country’s top political and military leaders to the site of a Soviet massacre of Polish officers in World War II crashed in western Russia, killing everyone on board.

President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tried to land in a thick fog, missing the runway and snagging treetops about half a mile from the airport in Smolensk, scattering chunks of fuselage across a bare forest.

SEOUL – The command also warned that the North Koreans were vowing retaliation for a naval skirmish last November. That battle was considered a South Korean victory because no Southern sailors died while a North Korean ship was heavily damaged with an uncertain number of causalities.

The Defense Ministry in Seoul refused to comment on the Chosun report, citing its policy of not commenting on intelligence matters.

The human torpedoes were developed by the Japanese military and, along with kamikaze air attacks, were employed in the last, desperate stages of World War II to overcome the allies’ increasingly effective defenses.

WARSAW – The plane that crashed was a 20-year-old Tupolev Tu-154, designed by the Soviets in the mid-1960s and operated by the Polish Air Force. Russia halted mass production of the jet about 20 years ago, and about 200 of them are still in service around the world

 OK,

Let me complete today’s newsflash,

and finally,

All the things are unlikely to be affected by all the things.

Thank you very much.