Photography (Photography)

Ha Tae-Bum’s “White” series, started in 2008, begins with photographic images from the mainstream media depicting sites of conflict or crisis. The artist eliminates human presence, miscellaneous details, and all color from the images, then “rebuilds” them into quiet, achromatic models with thin white paper. Once complete, the models are photographed in a nearly identical composition as the original image.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Dud Effect is a film that revisits the fear of nuclear attacks during the Cold War by staging the firing of a R-14 missile by a solitary soldier on the site of a real Soviet launch base installed in Lithuania. For this film, Deimantas Narkevicius used no animation or 3D effects, instead it is the silence of the place interrupted by the voice of the Russian soldier (who truly served on a military base in Lithuania) that creates this worrying atmosphere in which the execution of such an act becomes possible. The War Game (1965) by Peter Watkins was a source of inspiration, since he displays a personal and collective concern about the danger of the nuclear arms race in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The video work Japan Syndrome is a continuation of his lines of inquiry, taking post-Fukushima Japan as a case study. The work constructs a theatrical space in which the conflict-filled life sphere of post-Fukushima Japan, and perhaps beyond it, is reenacted in a minimal yet condensed fashion. To conceive this work, the artists has recorded real conversations he had with shop employees in Kyoto, Yamaguchi and Mito from 2011 to 2013, which have been then reenacted as performances in a studio, and recorded as the final form of this piece.

Installation (Installation)

In this work, Omer Fast probes the feelings experienced by young people involved in an acts of war. Four monitors installed in the form a chariot of war relay the words and faces of four young Israeli soldiers. The installation shows a young generation confronted by the reality of danger, whether being attacked or facing death.