The COVID-19 pandemic we face today is a symptomatic event urging a fundamental change in perception of what this era and international society have defined as “normal.” In 2020, when a virus coaxed a tentative stoppage of the current civilization’s systems, agenda that had been missing or overlooked on account of arrogance and bias finally came into view. Thus, a collection of issues related to constant war and terrorism, refugees stuck between borders, resurfacing racism, ghosts of empires, socio-economic bipolarization, the ravaged ecosystem, and the sighs and cries that should never have been left out, were chosen as the theme of the 8th Daegu Photo Biennale, Missing Agenda: Even Below 37.5.

The Exhibition Missing Agenda: Odyssey, on Way to Post-COVID is an extension of the 8th Daegu Photo Biennale as well as an independent alter ego born from its roots. This means that although the two events take place at different venues, they share similar perceptions of the current situation in the world today, and similar awareness of contemporary photography. Thus, the special exhibition Missing Agenda: Even Below 37.5 at the 8th Daegu Photo Biennale, and Missing Agenda: Odyssey, on the Way to Post-COVID at the Seoul National University Museum of Art, are like identical twins. Such doubling and division of venues is also the response and strategic correspondence of curatorship with regard to the current COVID situation, particularly in two aspects. The first is the desire to secure and extend a communicative network under the inevitable situation of restricted physical movement, and the second is the wish to suppress the increase of entropy through the sharing of exhibition contents. Eight of the 14 artists taking part in this exhibition are also showing at the Daegu Photo Biennale. Meanwhile, the other six artists are the result of independent curating by the Museum of Art, Seoul National University. While it would be ideal to view both exhibitions, even a visit to one of the two, at either the Daegu Arts Center, or the Museum of Art, Seoul National University, will enable the viewer to become more broadly aware of the “missing agendas.”

Though not as obvious as the structural compatibility of the two exhibitions, there are a couple of other key concepts that merge their neural networks. These are the “journey” and “Odyssey’s Homecoming,” as in Homer’s poem. The recognition that Alighieri Dante’s confession “At the midpoint of the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest for the clear path was lost,” could serve as a touchstone to feel the phenomenological bottom of today’s civilization, became the conceptual hook upon which to establish the narrative flow and design of the two exhibitions. Could the recent pandemic situation be a temporary drifting, as we pass by the rocks where the Siren sisters live, or be caused by a storm stirred up by the enraged Poseidon? If such an analogy is “still” significant, where is the ultimate destination of contemporary civilization, or Odyssey’s Ithaca Island? Like life itself, the rise and fall of a civilization is also an unknown journey between its beginning and its end.

In terms of contemporary photography, I would like to comment on the photographic aesthetics that come from dialectic, reflective contemplation tempered by the world, its preceding history, and awareness of the situation. This is the act of photography that is coordinated by the will not to allow any aesthetic embellishment or aesthetics as embellishment, which leave out, conceal, justify or take part in the manipulation of truth; it is the photograph as the result of a consciousness that is the first to respond to injustice and violence, like a canary in a mine shaft. What is certain is that this is possible through the ability to know how to stand vigilant against the desire to be captured by notions of category, used to justify oneself or to give oneself privileged status.

It is my hope that the exhibition Missing Agenda: Odyssey, on the Way to Post-COVID will function positively in this sense.

Sim Sang-Yong, Director Museum of Art, Seoul National University

Media: Around 100 works including photos and moving images
Artists: Bruno Zorzal, Chung Chu Ha, Erwin Olaf, Fabrice Monteiro, George Osodi, Kim GyooSik, Koo Sung Soo, Lim Anna, Martha Rosler, Melanie Pullen, Pippa Bacca, Seung Woo Back, Won Seoungwon, Yann Mingard