Goeun Bae
‘I have been living in the Bijlmer, on the edge of Amsterdam, for over six years. Trivial incidents that I have experienced in my daily life as an immigrant have been conducive to building a relationship with society. Amsterdam is like a fixed arena. Behind the stage, there are stories of invisible residents. It calls for a careful examination of economically, historically, and ethnically motivated municipal policies.’
Blue Ocean (2020)
In the film Blue Ocean, Goeun Bae deals with the personal disaster of a recurring leakage in her social housing apartment in the Bijlmer district. She consciously creates a personal memory of this place, as an ‘excavation of the future history of the Bijlmer’.
In the work, Bae is an explorer, a witness, and a dancer. She takes on the roles of exploring the past of the Bijlmer, examining its current status, and previewing its future. In a poetic way, she connects a recurring daily experience to issues and topics such as housing policy, migration, gentrification, and architecture. She also uses a method of excavating and predicting the structure of time, as this structure is intertwined with urban space and history. Humour and tragedy go hand in hand as the artist takes picnics in Amsterdam with a portable ocean made from the leaked water. During the picnic, Bae scoops up the trivial stories which have sunk under the city’s surface.
Goeun Bae
Goeun Bae (Seoul, South Korea, 1984) is a multimedia artist based in Amsterdam. Her work tackles historical and political issues, always departing from what might seem like trivial personal experiences. By examining situations from daily life, she illustrates how the hierarchies and structures of society, such as the position of migrant women in Amsterdam, do not exist separately from ourselves as individuals, and that we are all interconnected.
This project is partially sponsored by
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