Anne Duk Hee Jordan

http://www.dukhee.de In Duk Hee Jordans Stone Series she explores and criticizes the theme of guilt and memory. Guilt, whether lived or imagined, relates both to culture and memory. One of her most recent stone installation pieces has its roots in Kandahar. The stones, originally from the US military KAF (Kandahar Air Field) in Afghanistan, that she has used stand as witnesses of the current conflict in Afghanistan. KAF is not Afghanistan; it is considered American land, site of the final major battle of the Taliban. The stones bear witness to the preceding and ongoing conflict. They tell of the atrocities of war and carrying the stains of battle. The stones tell one of countless stories that took place in the past, transporting them to the present-day viewer. Independent of local situations, the work brings to mind associations of mortality and destruction.

The stone remains represent something that once was and is now irrevocably lost. The mechanical action in the piece reinforces those associations: the stones are chaffed together in a mechanical and asymmetric choreography, producing dust and sound. This dust becomes a bridge to perception, and symbolic of a lengthy process. Obsidian from anne duk hee jordan on Vimeo. Obsidian , 2014 The newly produced piece of Anne Duk Hee Jordan shows an obsidian, a volcanic rock characterized by its intense and glassy black color. In a slow and automatized choreography, a translucent quartz crystal is grated onto the obsidian surface. Over the course of a hundred years the quartz stone will polish the obsidian into a mirror. The lascivious movement of the two contrasted stones portrays a mute poetry. Once again, the obsidian’s origin reveals a broader meaning within a precise context. Anne Duk Hee Jordan picked up the stone alongside the mountains of Iceland after the infamous Eyjafjoll volcano eruption in 2010. This disaster, immobilizing global air traffic, was felt in all layers of society, from the economic to the social. The unexpected disruption compounded the global economical crisis auguring the collapse of Island’s and other banks, a particularly devastating event for the island and the rest of Europe. Over time however what happened are bygone days, and what remains are memories and broken fragments of obsidian. With her performance “Atlas” Duk Hee Jordan expands further on the symbolical meanings intrinsic to stones, their geographical origins and diffused myths. The ruins of several ancient civilizations – from Stonehenge, the Easter Islands to the pyramids – show that they used massive stones to construct their monuments. One might wonder why use stone pieces of such colossal size and weight when the same structures could have been constructed effortlessly with smaller blocks? The answer in all probability is that they wanted to realize a simultaneously everlasting and momentous memorial. It is recorded knowledge that these ancients had a method of lifting and moving these massive stones that made the task as easy and manageable as lifting a two-pound brick. Some researchers hypothesize that the ancients may have mastered the art of levitation, through sonics or some other obscure method that allowed them to defy and manipulate gravity. In her telling action orientated narrative, a massive stone (1,5m x 1,5m) from the Atlas Mountains is pulled up with a crane up right till about 20 meter hight. Then it is dropped from approximately 17 meters high, where due to gravity, it falls down and smashes on the ground in a hole. „Thus I try to create a synthesis with my performance between old mythologies portrayed in a modern technical form – the crane as the form and the stones as historical mythologies of cultural memory. The stones originating from the Atlas Mountains mirror a dual symbolism. On the one hand the Atlas is the first vertebra of the neck, which carries the head and is a component of the neck, forming thus one of the most crucial elements of our supporting apparatus. A neck break is often fatal and can result in total paralysis of the upper and lower limbs as well impairing vital organ functionality. If one were to approach the “neck break” of cultural memory figuratively as embodied in the stone here, it is impossible to transform learning from past experiences for acts into the future. If one extinguishes past experiences by erasing all memory of them, then no reflection or transformative change, both in the present or future can take place. Thus the historical path would be interrupted and thousands of years of accumulated wealth laced with cultural experience irrevocably lost. The ominous threat of a cultural neck break is delicately balanced against another historical myth, as the stones are aptly named after the Greek Titan Atlas. Atlas participated in the revolt of the Titans against Zeus and was defeated. As punishment, he was destined to undertake the cumbersome task of supporting the sky, carrying the immense weight of the world on his shoulders. So, too does cultural memory have the cumbersome task of absorbing and echoing the historical development of our cultural history not only to itself, but also to future civilizations looking to the past for the truth. Arguably the future of civilization, depends on our consciousness of cultural properties as a wealth of experience with which to forge new paths into the future.” This performance took place Saturday 1st of March 2014, 16h – location 15km outside of Marrakech, at route de l’Ourika, in collaboration with les Laboratoires OUF, organized by Akram Haissoufi Anne Duk Hee Jordan was born in Korea and lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Arts, Berlin Weissensee, and obtained a Master of Fine Arts at the Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin under Olafur Eliasson. She has had solo exhibitions in Taiwan, Japan, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin, including “Metrotopie” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, as well as part of group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Modern Art (Tokyo), the Goethe Institute (Sao Paolo), and the Reykjavik Art Museum.