I PARKING / II BUILDING / III ...
I Parking / II Building / III Crossing / IV EscalatorIn his stories Gulliver recounts his travels into unknown worlds. He includes an official local protocol in his description of the Land of Liliput, which consists of a precise documentation of the contents of his trouser pockets on being taken prisoner. There, the most mundane articles take on an obscure mystery, as a handkerchief turns into the carpet from a banqueting hall, and a snuff box, which is initially impossible to open for the tiny people triggers a collective asthma attack when one intrepid Liliputan finally enters its insides and disturbs its dusty contents. Changing the scale has changed the observer's perception. The regularity of certain processes becomes apparent, the observer enters a position of control almost of a higher order. On the other hand details, as you zoom in on them, are acknowledged more concretely, change their purpose, and problems are posed differently, as is evident in the question as to how the monstrous meat mountain that Gulliver's body represents should be fed.
In his short films I parking, II building, IIIcrossing June Bum Park plays around with these shifts in scale: everyday scenes such as parking a car, constructing a building, or crossing a road are animated by gigantic hands (the artist's own), and people and objects turn into playthings of a higher power. The manipulations appear tiny, their movements seem pre-determined, and all the figures do not let themselves be distracted from their goal. Cleverly they evade the intruder's hands and continue on their way with the determination a column of ants. June Bum Park re-organises the realm of human beings through the film medium. Repetitions, with slight adaptations and shifts in scale create a new environment, transferred onto virtual images, which then expose the structure of that environment.
In IV escalator the roles are reversed. The human hand becomes an independent agent walking upright along the handrail of an escalator - or is this just a child's game, a figment of the imagination, a journey into a far-away land of the unknown?
Elke Gruhn, Nassauischer Kunstverein