Unlearning Space presents Oozing 雨徵: Islands in Islands, from July 15th to September 30th, 2023. Located in Hado-ri, a small seaside village on the east coast of Jeju Island, the project consists of an exhibition and a series of performances, workshops, and artist talk programs.

The porosity of volcanic rocks which comprise the terrain of Jeju Island allows even heavy rainfall to seep immediately beneath the ground. Water has historically been scarce in Jeju, making 우징 [ujing] (a sign of rain) a good omen. The people of Jeju Island could not use the abundant surrounding seawater for drinking or other domestic purposes. Even so, the deep sea surrounding Jeju has long been the lifeline for the island's inhabitants. Jeju Haenyeos, literally translating to ‘sea women’, dive underwater for the duration of a breath and gather the amount of sea life allowed to them by water and by air. In modernized societies, such habits of living in balance with the environment as part of the ecosystem are rare.

The meaning of water in Jeju has also undergone rapid transformation throughout the path to modernization. With the construction of water supply facilities and large-scale dams in attempts to control water, people have developed a completely different perspective on water in its natural state. Humankind has striven to escape the discomfort and uncleanliness of wet conditions. The construction of this material structure accelerated the establishment of an ideology that separates humans from other forms of coexisting life, to understand and reassemble them as rational and logical subjects. For most residents and tourists these days who get clean water from faucets and dispose of dirty water through drains, rain has become something that is merely bothersome and rather disappointing.

Jeju Island is home to various communities. There are people who have adapted to the modernized social system in Jeju, those who still live according to traditional ways of life, those who have relocated to discover alternative lifestyles, and those who have come seeking more intense competition in international corporations and schools. The boundaries separating the insides and outsides of these communities are more pronounced due to differing beliefs regarding competition and work-life balance, preservation and development, migration and settlement, and life and death. Each community, existing like an island in an island, resides within their own perception of the world rather than seeking encounters with one another, rooted in understanding.

Yet, we find new possibilities in the volcanic rocks and the water of Jeju. The geological stratum of the island, formed when lava erupted from volcanic activity 1.88 million years ago and collided with the sea, holds water to this day. Water permeates these volcanic rocks, and the rocks purify the water and then release it as spring water in coastal areas. According to Astrida Neimanis, water is the substance that allows for gestation and thus for us to exist as life forms, and that which simultaneously connects humans to other species. All forms of life have come from water, and our bodies continue to be created and to perish while symbiotically coexisting with countless other organisms through our permeable membranes. The water we take in and expel is also absorbed and excreted by other organisms on Earth, making us beings that breathe together within the same amniotic fluid.*

From the volcanic rocks and water of Jeju, we hope to learn about the interactions and connections that traverse species, generations, worldviews, and communities. Oozing 雨徵: Islands in Islands, with its multi-genre artistic practices and programs, aims to intersect the manifold island-communities and embrace the hybridity that emerges from oozing into, and throughout one another. We invite participants and visitors to become aware of the existence of various organisms living within their own bodies, to sense their surroundings not only visually but also through touch and hearing, and perhaps to perceive the world as other species do. In the process, we try not to fall into the fallacy of claiming a perfect understanding of each other or of promoting Jeju as an ideal alternative to contemporary circumstances. Instead, we listen to each other’s stories of unfamiliar environments and generations, and encounter one another, practicing hospitality. By exposing ourselves to different understandings of the world, we navigate the path of gradually discovering our own wet, hybrid state, and create new passages within and between the boundaries that separate ‘me’ and ‘you’.

*Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water (London: Bloomsbury, 2017) 
Project curated by
Unlearning Space Director Yo-E Ryou, Ru Kim, U Eun, Eunsoo Yi
Text written by Eunsoo Yi / Translated by Eunsoo Yi, Ru Kim, Yo-E Ryou

Sponsored by Jeju Foundation for Arts and Culture

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