ufolab

ufolab

UFOLAB RESUME

EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS WITH UFOlab.
2006 “Banana Power event”, performance at Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea
2006 “Banana Power event”, city event invited by Copenhagen art academy, UFOlab in collaboration with the artist Kate Hers, Copenhagen Denmark
2006 Screening and symposium about international adoption and postkolonialism,
Malmö festivalen, city festival, Malmö, Sweden
2006 Exhibition: Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: Act 3: Tórshavn, The Faroe Islands, NIFCA
2006 Workshop “The guilt of gratitude” with two high school classes, Bildmuseum, Umeå, Sweden

2005 Kunstnernes Efterårsudstillning, “Fall” exhibition, den fria udstillningsbygning, Copenhagen, Denmark
2005 Event at Artville, Konstmässa, Artist Messhall, Copenhagen, Denmark August
2005 Presentation and screening of artworks at Korea Klubbens 15th year anniversary, Valby Medborgerhus, Copenhagen, Denmark
2005Video screening and artist presentation at Gallery 60 and The Academy of fine arts,
Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
2005 Artist presentation and panel talk at Gallery Nørrebro Kunstsalon
Copenhagen, Denmark January 2005.
2005 Performance, Lyngby Cultural Centre, Lyngby, Denmark

2004Video screening, AREUM Neo Vessel, Kyoto museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan
2004Video screening, Showcase at International Adoptee Gathering Seoul, South Korea.

UFOlab EXHIBITIONS, initiated and curated by UFOlab.
2005 TV documentary about international adoption, hosted by Chamber of
Public Secrets, TV, Canal Copenhagen, Denmark
2005Video screening with invited artists at Gallery Pixel, Copenhagen, Denmark
2005 Exhibition and performance with UFOlab and the Korean artist group “Mixed Rice” at
Gallery Y.N.K.B, Copenhagen, Denmark
2005 Exhibition, artist presentation and lectures with invited artists and researchers at Gallery Q, Copenhagen, Denmark
Participating artists, writers and researchers:
Me-K Ahn (US), Honey Biba Beckerlee (DK), Maria Borgström (SWE), Tammy Chu (US/KOREA), Ingrid B. Faber (US), Adel K. Gouillon (FRA), Kate Hers (US), Katrine Dirkinck-Holmfeld (DK), Songmi Huff (US), Tobias Hübinette (US), Su-Yoon Ko (US), Nathalie Mihee Lemione (BEL/KOREA), Ellen Nyman SWE/DK), Lene Myung Pedersen (DK), Kim Su Rasmussen (DK), Mix Rice (KOREA) and Linda Skare (NOR)

Publications/media/writings
O.K.A.Y. Book Vol. 1, 2001
O.K.A.Y. Book Vol. 4, 2005
Article in ETC Magazine, Sweden, December 2005
Pictures in “Ilja feministic art calendar” 2006
Interview about UFOlab, Swedish National Radio P1, Gender 2006
“Fra det fjerne øst til det hvite nord”, a Scandinavian anthology of Korean adoptees 2006
“Beyond Identity: Activism in Korean Adoptee Art”, Kim Stoker

UFOLAB poster

bananapower, documentation from Copenhagen event 2006

BANANAPOWER, Gwangju Biennale 2006 http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?term=gwangju+biennale++&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/culture/200609/k

“BANANA POWER” for Art, Society

By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter



Jette Hye Jin Mortensen, a Korean adoptee and Danish artist, hands out a dish of baked banana to a visitor at the biennale. /Korea Times Photo by Seo Dong-shin
Visitors to the main exhibition hall of the sixth Gwangju (Kwangju) Biennale pause for a moment at the entrance. Some, shy and hesitant, ask if they could have some of the bananas piled up on the desk. More daring ones snatched a bundle and walked away.
Jette Hye Jin Mortensen, a member of Scandinavian artist/activist group UFOlab (Unidentified Foreign Object Laboratory), hands out as many bananas as she can, some baked in the oven with brown sugar, along with the yellow-white pamphlet titled ``Banana Power.''

``Baking of the bananas is a process of transformation,'' Mortensen said. ``Also, Koreans are not used to this kind of baked, sweetened bananas.''

But surely these bananas are meant to be more than what they appear _ or is it what they exactly appear to be? ``Yellow on the outside, white on the inside,'' just like Korean adoptees who were adopted and raised in white Scandinavian families. This is the message that UFOlab wants to highlight with their bananas. The group, which consists of Korean adoptee artists based in Scandinavian nations, mostly in Denmark, has installed an accompanying video clip placed inside the hall.

``As an Asian raised in a white family, he or she looks Asian, but feels white inside,'' states the video clip installed inside the exhibition hall. In it, ``Banana Power Milkshakes'' are handed out to citizens on a Copenhagen street from the table with the sign ``Now! Mixed!''

The group aims to highlight the issues relating to international adoption and the internalized racism the adoptees faced growing up in the mostly white Scandinavian nations. Unlike the prevailing portrayal of those nations as advanced socialism-based utopias, politicians in those countries do capitalize on racism, Mortensen said.

``International adoption is also about power relations,'' said Mortensen, who was born in Seoul and adopted at the age of two by a Danish family. ``I've heard that in the United States, the government is actually banning white babies from being adopted by black families. Also, there are no white babies being adopted by Korean families.''

Mortensen thinks South Korea should stop being part of international adoption, as the country is ``not so poor anymore.''

Working on the theme of international adoption helped her individually, and it also gets the issue more talked about in the society, the 26-year-old believes. Mortensen is to stay the coming six months in Seoul, where her biological father lives.

Park Hyun-mi, a volunteer at the biennale, said she liked the thought-provoking message that also resonates with her and her family.

``My father, who was a second-generation Korean living in Japan, used to be bullied by the Japanese because he was considered Korean. When he came to live in Korea, however, he was again ostracized, and his business counterparts deceived him, because they thought he was half Japanese,'' Park said. ``I think this performance has something to do with identity issue. As a third-generation Korean, I sympathize with it.''

In a broader sense, the ``Banana Power'' project tackles the diaspora issue.

``Bananas cannot grow in Europe. It used to be a symbol of something exotic and far away,'' the UFOlab states in the video. ``But it has become as ordinary as an apple or a pear, typical Scandinavian food.''




saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr

09-10-2006 17:07

ufolab ARTIST STATEMENT

ARTIST STATEMENT

Sharing the codes.

Raising the questions.

Another day and another place our thoughts and questions would be raised differently, to whom it may concern. But we are here now and at this place sharing this place thoughts and social codes. The history and the future could be our companions.

Imaginary conversation?
I’m asking you a question, a simple one: what’s your name? and if you have a name that I cannot relate to my following question would be : where are you from? And if you say: here and there, I would ask you a more specific question: where exactly are you from? And you with your laconic sense of humour would say: I’m from the same place as you are from, it’s both strange and well known at the same time. My frustration at this point, not being able to place your name in a specific origin and place, the frustration does that I have to grasp for the final blow. It’s actually two questions but my curios nature must have a satisfied answer: So were your parents from and were did you grow up? You surrender and answer my questions satisfactionally for me. I now have you here in my palm, I know where you come from and I feel safe and liberated that I can clear you from any suspicion of being foreign.

UFOlab
We could wait for the day when its not so important where we are from, if our gender are placed inside or outside, where our parents were born or worked with etc, things that are important but also things that we cant choose or mostly cannot do anything about.
As long as these questions are raised to put people in categories of hierarchy, we will be there, raising our own questions. Through art practise UFOlab attempts to renegotiate current codes of intercultural and socio-political issues both locally and globally.

A summary: UFOlab works with an “intercultural” thematic, for example: what is hybrid identity and how does that manifest itself? See UFOlab work “Banana power”.
We also ask ourselves: if “intercultural” artists have a certain position towards the art world and if they have, what kind of position? We try to figure that out by working and cooperate interdisciplinary with writers, researchers and other artists.

UFOlab: Unidentified Foreign Object Laboratory.
Five members, four active based in Denmark and Sweden.

BANANAPOWER, documentation inside the exhibition, Gwangju Biennale 2006