The Holy Water Bottle

 

TZUSOO

2016

performance

TZUSOO examines in her multimedial work practice the impact of social realities towards life and how we express our life through different mediums such as images and language.

 

The Holy Water Bottle(2016) follows in this logic two parallel narrations.

The 28 min video documents on the one hand her and other people’s participation in massive protests in winter 2016. From October till December several millions korean citizens nationwide expressed their anger in peaceful demonstrations against the government under former president Park Geun-hye until the succeeding impeachment of her in March 2017.

 

While participating actively in the protests in Seoul, TZUSOO on the other hand examines and observes her own participation during the protests on another level focussing on her social role as korean woman. The demonstrations have been said to be the candlelight demonstrations, most peaceful movement ever. At the same time participants could not protest without blaming the presidents female gender role and blaming this gender on a more general level, consciously and unconsciously.

 

As a fact of social realities in Korea, the wage difference of men and women is one of the highest among the OECD nations worldwide. The heavy weight of a water bottle such as the one used in the video is symbolically used by men to keep up this difference not only in wage difference but furthermore segregate men and women on other kinds of level in the social realm by claiming that women are not able to lift these water bottles.

 

According to that TZUSOO not only reacts physically against this social reality formed by language but marks a point of korean society that has to be overcome.

 

 

 

Text Stoll Johannes Hugo