Q: The title of your most recent piece contains the term “step-memories,” which is quite unfamiliar and strange expression. What does “step-memories” mean?

A: This piece was originally called Return of the Oppressed, but just before the release, on the day we were planning to print the posters, we changed the title to what it is now. On the previous evening I had read the book Islamic Butcher Shop by Honggyu SON, which inspired the change. The author talks about a “step-world”, and I built on this idea to coin the phrase “step-memories”.

The prefix “step-“ is familiar to us: we often hear the terms “step-son” and “step-father”. A “step-father” fulfills the role of a father figure to a child, despite the fact that his connection to that child is not biological. Similarly, the term “step-memories” refers to those memories that we possess through education and absorb from our surroundings, but that are not actually our own. Whether acquired voluntarily or instilled upon us, they are not originally ours. It was this line of thought that led me to add “step-memories” to the title of my piece. When I initially titled the piece Return of the Oppressed, I wanted to portray how memories of war are repressed and have become a taboo subject, and how talking openly about these memories is discouraged. Scholars like Sigmund Freud and Slavoj Zizeck talked about suppression of the subconscious mind and, in the same vein, I wanted to talk about the knowledge that we possess emerging as memories that are not our own.

Q: Tell us the story behind making Step-memories - return of the oppressed, and what message you wish to convey to the audience.

A: For a very long time, I wanted to talk about the Korean War. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2005 and, in the process of uncovering facts about civilian massacre, revealed stories about the war that were previously unknown. Following this, I began to delve into the once-hidden part of our history, putting aside the “official” version that we were taught. The actors and I collected excerpts from about thirty books on the Korean War, and took oral statements from the survivors of the massacre. Naturally, we ended up posing basic questions, like “What does ‘war’ mean for the current generation living in 2010?” and “What does the Korean War mean in this era?”. After that, we had trouble navigating through the discrepancy between the official history and the undocumented history, and this raised multiple questions, such as “Which side – North or South - was to blame for starting the Korean War?”, “What were the politicians like?” and “How can we make sense of events, like the April 3rd strife, that went on before June 25th, 1950?”.

It was against this backdrop that I started working on Step-memories - return of the oppressed I tried to comprehend the discrepancy between the war experienced by civilians and the war as described on paper. I looked into why such a discrepancy existed, and pondered upon how best to honor these undocumented memories. I wanted to convey that this was not merely a question of understanding events rationally, but rather an issue of restoring those memories that were undocumented. We must raise awareness of the fact that the victims of war are buried in the very land we walk on and, only when we are truly aware, can we hope to prevent such a tragedy from recurring.

Q: Step-memories - return of the oppressed is one of a series of greenpig’s 2008 “Harsh Reflections on Form.” Tell us about the story, the motivation and the process of planning for the series.

A: The series “Harsh Reflections on Form” was something I focused on to create a new format. The first piece in the series, So lonely, without binkerpremiered at the 2008 Chuncheon International Mime Festival, and was also performed at the 2008 Seoul Marginal Theater Festival. For the Seoul Marginal Theater Festival, we used the Arko Art Center and the Marronnier Park at the same time for our performance, so the audience inside the art center would listen to the audio performance while looking at something seemingly unrelated outside in the park.

Step-memories - return of the oppressed is the second piece in the series, and we premiered it in August 2010 at the Total Museum. The first thing that came to mind while working at the Total Museum was the multistoried structure. While performing, the actors move down floor by floor together with the audience. Throughout this process, because the group gets closer to the ground - the ground being the place where we bury the dead - the travel path is in itself a metaphor. Moreover, in the summer, the museum becomes very damp and humid. Of course, we had the option of turning on the air conditioner or opening the doors to let the air in, but we left it that way so as to create a space in which the audience would feel enclosed, as if they were underground; to arouse their senses while they watched the performance.

Truthfully, the “Harsh Reflections on Form” series is more about finding new performance venues than the format of the play. As part of my site-specific work, I have been planning the series to find new approaches to space and setting. I don’t have any specific plans for the next piece in the series, but I do plan to continue experimenting.

Q: Step-memories - return of the oppressed is set to be performed at the November Tokyo Festival. We can assume that there will be changes to the piece with the change in setting. What can we expect?

A: If the performance setting changes, it’s only natural that the travel path changes as well. After our premiere at the Total Museum, the travel path was different at the Post Theater, and again at Samilro Theater. Each of those performances led the audiences to the dark, damp and long-forgotten corners of each theater, to discover new spaces.

The setting for the November performance will be a closed down school that has a swimming pool full of moss on the rooftop, so the performance will adapt again to this setting. I’m hoping to recruit five Japanese actors, and I want to find actors who have living memories of the war or of spaces that have disappeared. Their memories will be visualized and made into lines, so I’m expecting a new storyline to come out of it.

Doubt: an essential part of the creative process

Q: greenpig has always performed pieces that study and deal with social issues such as immigration, minorities and religion. We understand that there are other series as well as “Harsh Reflections on Form”.

A: We finished the series on immigration in 2011. The series consisted of I’m Happy (written by Hwajin LEE, directed by Hansol YOON) in 2007, Ali vs. Ali (written by Jaeseung AN, directed by Hansol YOON) in 2010, and Yanbian-mother (directed by Sanghyeon PARK) in 2011. Actually, the pieces that we perform are not limited to one specific series. Step-memories – The Return of The Repressed is a part of “Harsh Reflections on Form” but, at the same time, it is also first in the “Korea” series. greenpig is planning to keep working on the “Korea” series, and we will create a five-part series dealing with the National Security Law, Communism, the constitution, religion, and other topics.

Q: From the aforementioned themes of politics, society, and history, we can derive a common thread - conflict. We can only imagine the arduous process the crew must go through – first studying the issues by themselves, then sharing their thoughts, coming to a conclusion on the subject and storyline, and finally applying it to the play to breathe life into it. Please let us in on how you work to create a new piece and the process involved.

A: Our work is hard - like any other performance art - and we have very long practice hours. We rehearse for over 3 months, and for co-productions it’s over 4 months. We took over a month and a half just to research and study the material for Step-memories - return of the oppressed. Even if the script is already finalized, once we start our work, we go through a long process of extensive reading and attending lectures to enhance our understanding of the subject. A relatively shorter amount of time is needed for going through the script, assigning roles, reading lines, acting and directing. The actors themselves feel that they cannot fulfill their roles if they don’t truly understand the subject, and they even say that it’s not as much fun without some level of personal knowledge. This method and process is used not only in co-productions, but in all of greenpig’s work. It’s not just a case of accumulating knowledge, but training yourself to doubt everything. Doubt takes up a lot of your energy, and harnessing that doubt in order to pose the right questions requires training.

We frequently run into conflicts of opinion, but we don’t try to resolve these differences. When actors disagree with me, I encourage them to act in their own voice. Of course, at times, I end up persuading an actor to see things from my point of view, and vice versa, but I don’t think it’s important to unify everyone’s opinions. What’s more important is that this discourse shows up in our performance, because the performance that we put on stage - or in a special setting - is an integral part of the artistic process of doubt and research. I don’t think we can expect to resolve our doubts, nor can we conclude the artistic process, just by putting on a show.

While we were preparing for Step-memories - return of the oppressed we all agreed on the issue of war-impoverished civilizations, and on the brutality of war, but the difficulty was that we were divided on how best to convey our ideas to the audience. I did not want to sugarcoat this story, nor did I want the audience to just sit back and enjoy the performance. Many disagreed with this view, reasoning that the audience might not appreciate these kinds of aesthetics, and that they had the right to be emotionally protected during the performance. Of course, I don’t agree with this sentiment, but I expect this difference of opinion to show up in the actors’ performance, and in their energy.

To create art is to choose a way of life.

Q: In these times, what role do you think art should play in our society?

A: Creating art is not an occupation, but a way of life. In our society, participating in the arts is not seen as contributing anything of real substance. In other words, you are not contributing to the fabric of society. Since participation in the arts is, therefore, primarily a political act, it is important to consider what story you will tell through your art. Our stories stem from the curiosity that my colleagues and I feel about the things that happen around us in our daily lives. For example, there are crackdowns on illegal immigrants, but at the same time our society has created an environment that cannot function without them, and this is an enormous contradiction Why is this? This kind of curiosity leads to contemplation.

At first, my work on the Korean War was driven by my anger regarding the massacre of civilians, but as I researched and studied, it became more about contemplating memory and awareness, and gaining insight into the overall structure and phenomena. The same goes for the subject of Immigration: it started with my personal outrage about migrant workers’ violated rights. I visited centers for migrant workers, participated in rallies, and in the process I learned about Koreans who emigrated to Hawaii and Mexico a hundred years ago, and of the Korean miners who were sent to Germany in the 1970s and 80s. I began to see the bigger picture of immigration as a whole, rather than apportioning blame for the violation of human rights. Even in Korea, we see a lot of the younger generation moving from provincial regions to bigger cities - Seoul in this case - and this phenomenon is linked to the allocation of capital. In smaller cities and suburbs, there are not even enough convenience stores to provide part-time jobs for the younger generation. These places do not provide the grounds for people to work to support even basic spending. Should we expect people’s living standards to improve once they move to Seoul to earn a living? Not really. While asking myself these questions, I was able to move on from my initial anger and start thinking on an entirely different level. Although this exploration is not yet complete, I have come closer to the essence of the problem.

Q: What are your principles as an artist?

A: The media fails to portray the world as it is anymore. I, personally, don’t like the program Theater of Life. When viewers see a documentary saying“family members strive to live as best as they can even amidst their tragic circumstances,” instead of posing fundamental questions, like “Why do these people have to live that way when we are all living in the same time and space?”, they shed tears of pity for the poor, and they give themselves a moral “get-out-of-jail” ticket. I call this the “Theater of Life effect.” Likewise, when an audience finds dreams and hopes in a performance, they wish to be consoled. As if watching Theater of Life, they keep their distance from the stage - they want to sit back and watch, safe in the knowledge that they are not the actors on stage. This only makes things worse, and I do not think this kind of attitude will make our world a better place.

Apart from the arts, nothing will give you reality straight up. This is why I believe that only through the arts can we depict the world as it is, and I refuse to talk about dreams and hopes on stage.

Q: Are you having doubts about something at the moment? Or is there an intriguing subject or topic you want to research?

A: I’ve always wanted to talk about dating. Not “love,” but “dating.” Why are men inferior to women? Why do men continually act so macho? It may not be just because of schooling and military service, but, in part, down to smart women pushing men in this direction. There is a sort of politics going on in a relationship. This could be referred to as ‘sex politics’, and is displayed in dating. Why do people continue to date when they keep failing? Why date when you know it will fail? Is it just a matter of sex, or is it impossible to make it just about sex? Shouldn’t life be easier than this?