At UP Vargas, Korean Artist Recreates Solitary Confinement via VR

(SPOT.ph) Years back, Korean artist and filmmaker Kyung-mook Kim was put into prison for refusing to do the mandatory military service imposed on all South Korean men by the government. When they found out he was gay, he was separated from the general prison population and put into solitary confinement.

This experience forms the basis for his installation work 5.25m2, which is part of the current exhibition Unfolding at the UP Vargas Museum. It is a virtual reality work that dutifully recreates the space that he occupied for over a year. “My memory is not perfect,” Kim admits, “but this is how I remember it.”

Visitors can try out the VR experience for free

Visitors to the museum can try it out for free. They will be led to an enclosed space that approximates the size of the virtual space itself. They will be handed a pair of virtual reality goggles, and they will then be transported to a solitary confinement cell in South Korea. The level of detail is extraordinary: there are posters and circulars taped to the walls, which are full recreations of actual documents provided by South Korea’s Ministry of Justice. There are books lining one side of the floor, and a writing desk on which Kim once wrote letters to the outside world.

And Kim is there as well, though not in solid form. There is a human form in the cell with the visitors, but it is a cloud made up of little shifting and sparkling dots. It sits, it stares in the mirror, and it paces around the room. It does all the things one might expect a person in solitary confinement might do. And it pays no mind to the visitor in the room, and will often pass through you.

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This is another strange aspect of this experience: there is a very distinct sense of disembodiment. In the virtual space, you cannot see your own body, and you cannot see your hands. There is a mirror in the small shower space on one end of the room, but you do not have a reflection. You instead see the wall and the toilet behind you. The Kim inside the room already looks like a ghost, but it is as though you are another level of spirit, able only to observe the happenings in this small, static space.

Kim reads a letter

Accompanying this experience is audio of Kim reading a letter that he wrote to a friend about his experience inside, piped through the built-in speakers of the VR headset. It is a letter that speaks of endless, baseless accusations, and a system intent on portraying the prisoner as a rabble rousing malcontent. The whole experience lasts about eighteen minutes, and though the space is small, people will likely find themselves exploring every corner of it, and falling into the strange reality that it presents: trying to step over objects that aren’t really there, and staring out into the empty void behind the faux-steel door.

This installation is just one part of Unfolding. Other video works by Kim are also on display, as well as a paper copy of the letter that’s read in the VR experience. He also shares the exhibit with artist Inhwan Ho, whose work speaks of what it is like to be gay in South Korea.

Most notable among Oh’s works is the series of paintings Ivan’s Party. Each one documents an event where the artist invited his gay friends for a celebration, with the names of the attendees listed along the bottom. Their names are blocked out if they aren’t out, maintaining their anonymity within a society that still has a complicated relationship with queer individuals. Every painting represents a party and a year, and as they move forward through time, there is an internal sense of triumph as more names are revealed.

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Unfolding is on view at the first floor galleries of the UP Vargas Museum until February 22. The museum is located inside U.P. Diliman campus in Quezon City.

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