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Hamel’s Sailing Diaries: Transitioning between Crises and Opportunities and Observations of Korea’s Cultural Strategies

2023/02/15 Views：636

 

By｜Chang Chih Chung

In July 1653, after living two years in Batavia of the Dutch East Indies (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) as a bookkeeper, Hendrick Hamel (1630-1692) boarded the boat “De Sperwer” of the Dutch East India Company and set off for Deshima of Nagasaki, Japan. Throughout his voyage, he passed Taiwan, which was under the jurisdiction of the Dutch Republic (De Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden) but was unfortunately met with a storm on the East China Sea. The boat sank, and Hamel, along with 35 other sailors, survived the disaster and ended up on Korea’s Jeju Island, which at the time was referred to as “Quelpaert” on the Dutch marine chart.

Hamel and others became prisoners and were sent by the local Jeju prefect to Hanyang (present-day Seoul), the capital of the Joseon Kingdom, which was still closed to the world. The group of Dutch people was detained in Joseon for over ten years but finally managed to plot and escape in the 1660s when the Joseon Kingdom was devastated by drought and famine, reuniting with their people at the Dutch trading post in Dejima Nagasaki, Japan. After twists and turns, Hamel and others managed to return to the Netherlands in 1668, and at the same time, the Dutch East India Company published Hamels’ diary under the title Hamel’s Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653-1666, which became an instant bestseller across Europe.

Hamel’s detailed accounts exposed the regime of the Joseon Kingdom and the culture of the then closed-off Korean Peninsula to Europe through writing, and the book made Hamel the “Dutch Marco Polo.”
 

 

 

Map of the Hendry Hamel and the Sparrowhawk.
Image source: https://kingdombythesea.nl/site/en/blogs/dutch-marco-polo-discovered-korea/; 

Cover of Hendry Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea (1653-1666).
Image source: https://www.amazon.com/Hamels-Journal-Description-Kingdom-1653-1666/dp/8972250864

Since ancient times, ocean currents such as the Kuroshio Current and Oyashio Current, as well as monsoons and trade winds, have existed in the junction of the Western Pacific and the Eurasia continent, which is included in the coast and the extensions of the continental shelf in Monsoon Asia. Apart from the maritime networks and tributary political trade system that the surrounding countries set down on the basis of nautical routes, the drastic changes in moisture and tropical cyclone created by the monsoon trough added uncertainty to the already perilous waters.

Known by people as the “Black Ditch,” the Taiwan Strait and waters surrounding East Asia have devoured countless ships from all over the world for ages; today, there are still historical records or accounts of shipwrecks and lucky castaways who managed to climb onto the shore of foreign lands. The frequency of shipwrecks created alternative international networks and geopolitics for East Asia, and Hamel’s diary also became a great reference point for Interdisciplinary literary and historical research, as well as contemporary art in contemporary Korea and the Netherlands.

Hamel’s encounters were comprehensively preserved, documented, and popularized in today’s Korea. Apart from the “Hamel Museum,” which was established in 2003 in Yeosu, Jeollanam-do, the location Hamel escaped and boarded the boat in 1666, a life-sized replication of De Sperwer was built in the outskirts of Seogwipo of Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, which was where Hamel and the others boarded the land after the shipwreck occurred in 1653. The replica is included in the “Hamel Ship Exhibition Center,” and the display space is connected with the culture and history of Jeju Island, integrating the famous natural sites of the outskirts of Sanbangsan on Jeju Island.

At the same time, Hamel remained relatively unknown to the people of the Netherlands. Since the 1990s, the Hendrick Hamel Museum, built in Hamel’s hometown Gorinchem and opened to the public in 2008, played an active role in allowing the name that was famous in foreign lands to enjoy the same fame in Hamel’s hometown through joint efforts with researchers from Seoul National University and the Korean Studies of Leiden University. Through the “reverse cultural marketing” of Korea, this “Marco Polo” who contributed to connecting the eastern and western worlds fueled related academic research and exchanges to this day.

As I deepen my research on related historical records on Hamel due to a recent creative project, I also became aware that Hamel serves as the perfect keyword that can be compared with my experiences and observations of Korea’s recent development of performances and displays. This comparison showcases the depth, width, and features of the strategies of Korea’s contemporary art in terms of interdisciplinary fields and international connections.
                                                                                                                                                                         




 

The author participated in the joint exhibition "Visible Memories of Technology" at the Natural History Museum of Chonbuk University.

 

 

Ⅰ.One
 
In 2019, I was invited to attend the “International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia (ICHSEA),” organized by The International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine (ISHEASTM) and co-held by Chonbuk National University (CBNU), as an artist and independent researcher. Under the title “Contemporary Arts as a Field of Experimentation in Scientific & Technological Culture: The Possibility of Photographic Documentation as a Path toward Knowledge Construction,” artists from Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, as well as Korean researchers, shared their research and creative practices, and partook in the “Visible Memories of Technology” group exhibition at the Chonbuk National University Museum. The exhibition featured how the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in Japan, the changes in the Kaohsiung Harbour in Taiwan, and the electricity infrastructure in Korea intervened with the natural scenery, as well as the role of images amid the incident and social context.

What’s worth mentioning is that this conference on “science, technology and medicine” also marked the first time that the society approached a scientific conference through the intervention of art; the participants were academics in science, sociology, and medicine from all over the world. This arrangement resulted in an impressive scenario where many people from the audience encountered contemporary art for the first time and were astounded at how experts from the two disciplines that seemed so far away from each other were able to engage in dialogue. My presentation encompassed my light installations Glory of Kaohsiung and Father’s Ship, as well as a part of the research materials on the history of Kaohsiung Harbour. After my presentation, I also exchanged ideas with Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, director of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, and National Taiwan University Risk Society and Policy Research Center researcher Kuo-Hui Chang.

 
 
 
 

 

 Hamel Residency 2021 Program Results Group Exhibition's key visual design "Hamel" 

Disater Haggyo #1 Key visual  of the event.

 

Ⅱ.Two
 
In 2021, Korean artist and curator Donghwan Kam, who was based in the Netherlands and a former participant in a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, invited me to join the international “Hamel Residency” art project, which was envisioned and organized by his team during the global pandemic.

The project was funded by the Stimuleringfonds from the Netherlands, the ARKO Foundation from Korea, as well as the Dutch-Korean international consultancy institution the “Stichting Hendrick Hamel Foundation.” The project was rooted in the 17th-century nautical route and the works of Hamel and operated as a “relay residency,” connecting the artists from the Netherlands, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Korea along the route. Starting from the Netherlands, each artist would participate in a month-long residency in the nation they were in, during which they would use the cloud database to hand over the “baton,” their creative procedures and materials, in digital form as a reference for future creative projects. Finally, the participating artists would gather the works and ship them to Korea, where the works were displayed as a final group exhibition at Post Territory Ujeongguk, an art institution in Seoul. The display included curatorial records, documents passed down among the artists, and ensuing creative results.

Inspired by Hamel’s written accounts and by restoring the map of East Asia through his original nautical route, I added incidents in the gap between Taiwan, which was not documented, and the shipwreck: “If Hamel visited the Matsu Islands.” Through field records that intertwined space and time and textual simulation, my work explored the symbolic meaning of Matsu in the context of the Chinese Civil War and global dynamics of the Cold War while alluding to the connections and metaphors with the modern civil war of the Korean Peninsula. Sadly, due to the severity of the pandemic, I was unable to participate in more in-depth engagements and exchanges with the curatorial team and artists from other countries and was unable to join in the physical work of the exhibition. However, perhaps these limitations were like the 13 years that Hamel was confined in the Joseon Kingdom, which was then closed off to the rest of the world, and precisely the mission of the “Hamel Residency.”

The “Hamel Residency” will “set sail” for the second time in 2023. As the world enters the post-pandemic age with the opening of borders, we anticipate how this international exchange residency surrounded by and envisioned through keywords such as “geopolitics,” “relocation,” “national seclusion,” and “disaster” will unfold.
 
 

 

The Hamel Ship Exhibition Center is located near Seogwipo, Jeju Island, South Korea.
Image source: https://www.travel4history.nl/zuid-korea/jeju/hamel-ship-expedition-center-hiddink

 

Ⅲ.Three
 
The project was conceived through the practices of the “Anthropocene Curriculum” series of Berlins’ House of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, HKW). KAIST has long been dubbed “Korea’s MIT” and is known for its outstanding scientific and technological talents. The “Disaster Haggyo” integrates KAIST’s academic connections (such as New York University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Osaka University, and Yonsei University) and engages in a horizontal alliance with the curatorial projects of art institutions in Korea and the Netherlands to position “disaster” as a generalized proposition, connecting the exchanges between Korea and the countries of East-South Asia (including Japan, Taiwan, and India) and exploring innovation in methods of collaboration and research, while including researchers, local communities, NGOs, curators, and art projects in Daejeon, Ansan, Jeju, and other locations in Korea. At the same time, the project is tightly knitted with interpreting the core meaning and context of disaster, featuring and discussing issues through the “sites” of disasters such as the Sewol Ferry Accident, the 4.3 Uprising, the uprising in the US military base in Jeju Island, concerns of the marine ecosystem and environmentalism, and issues on energy as a means to inspire participating academics, the graduate students of KAIST, course participants, members of the art community, and visited figures to inspire and exchange ideas during the event.

In this project, not only did I display image works Fabricating Mandarin Duck and Marshal of the Sea in response to issues such as the history of the Shinyo naval suicide squad and state violence in Jeju Island, but I also hosted the art project The Catastrophic Coastline Shaped by Others, which guided participants to begin from the “Hamel Ship Exhibition Center” and proposes disaster as the composite quality of the historical turn of how the Joseon Kingdom accidentally entered the western perspective through the shipwreck of the Dutch East India Company. The project also took a step further and expanded the discussion to include areas outside of the Korean Peninsula from the external view of Taiwan, deconstructing keywords such as “map,” “illegal immigration,” “rewilding,” and “shipwreck,” allowing participants to reinspect the topics amid the context of global geopolitics and discuss its contemporary meaning.

The most impressive part of the course was the Sewol Ferry Accident, which at the time was approaching its tenth anniversary. The tragedy at sea took place in April 2014, shocking the entire world and resulting in the resignment of the then President Park Geun-hye. It also led to critique and the transformation of the political system and social structure of Korea. Through the intervention of related art and culture projects, the emergence of social movements and support systems, research and publication of the incident, and documentaries that were produced in Korea and other countries, I also found out during this project how the classes of students that passed away during the incident re-built a memorial display space by harnessing the preservation strategies of an area that was designated as a cultural and historical space. Chihyung Jeon, the assistant professor of KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy, has participated with the renowned Maritime Research Institute Netherlands and used large tanks and ship models to simulate and analyze the cause of the shipwreck, which remains unknown.

Hamel’s events can be seen as a multilayered complex of symbols. The legendary account of incidents shows enticing qualities, dramatic effect, and turn of literature through textual popularization, which not only serves the reader but can also be interpreted as an essential, even practical speculation: how can tragedy be memorialized? How can tragedy be sublimed? We seem to have found modern “diagrams” in Dutch Marco Polo’s travel to the Far East. [1]

The above examples can be further interpreted as Korea’s cultural strategy of “from East to West.” Take the residency that I just started in Jan van Eyck Academie, the post-academic institute based in Maastricht, and the Royal Academy of Art in Amsterdam for example: when the two internationally-renowned Dutch institutions selected Korean artists for its residencies from its highly-competitive selection list, Korea’s ARKO Foundation will be paying the full fees for the artists chosen for the two institutions as the foundation for its collaboration.

When I was invited to attend a residency at the Maltfabrikken of Aarhus and Ebeltoft in Denmark during the first half of 2022, similar parallel collaborative strategies between comparable institutions also made me realize how the co-organizing institution Kunsthal Aarhus and the Art Sonje Center in Seoul had long-established, tightly knitted collaborations in terms of institutional resources, curators, artists, and co-projects

And as we warily search for Taiwan’s place amid these events, we also discover that similar to Hamel’s nautical encounters, filled with uncertainty and change of events, the gaps in his works have perhaps revealed the possibility or predicament  of Taiwan.
 
 
[1]Diagram, translated from the Korean 도표 and Japanese Hiraganaどうひょう. The Korean and Japanese terms reflect Hendrick Hamel’s accidental encounters in East Asia.
 
 

 

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