Belated Bosal

2019 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
55:00 minutes

Park Chan-Kyong’s otherworldly film Belated Bosal primarily follows two women as they navigate their way up a spectral mountain and through what appears to be a history museum or nuclear disaster bunker. They converge to jointly perform a funeral rite in a shipping container, which a group of artisans temporarily convert into a makeshift Buddhist temple, replete with traditional paintings. Shot in crisp and densely detailed black-and-white negative, each frame is lit by the format’s spooky incandescence: shadows are white and the sun is black, as if the world were being viewed through X-ray, infrared camera or a plutonium-sensitive film. Both the imagery of the film as well as its title reference a specific account of the philosopher Siddhartha Gautama’s death (who later became known as the Buddha), as well as the notion of pursuing a path toward enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, which is a foundational element of Buddhist faith and philosophy. By situating classical religious ideology and modes of visual representation against and within a frame of impending (or past, or present) disaster, Park seems to point toward the always-already present nature of catastrophe, as well as the possibility of non-dualistic and relativistic logics of Eastern philosophical systems to guide our approach to both scientific development and ecological catastrophe.

Artist and filmmaker Park Chan-kyong was born in Seoul under the reign of Park Chung-hee, whose authoritarian rule transformed South Korea from an impoverished, war-torn country into what the artist describes as a ‘militaristic, repressive, modern state.’ The shadows of Japanese occupation and the Korean War loomed large over the period, driving the call for nationalism and productivity. Park Chan-Kyong’s works quietly resist that drive—they recall the lives that modernization too often ignores. Most of Park Chan-Kyong’s multimedia installations—which incorporate an array of found footage, photography, and vintage cinema—are slow and understated, almost abstract works. But a closer look reveals a shrewd take on Cold War politics and the formation of modern Korea. Rather than using the dramatic power of film to restage the past, Park finds meaning in voids and absences. With a sly use of text and montage, Park resuscitates stories that have been repressed or hidden from the official accounts, reminding us how present they still are.

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