Seoul-based artists Eunji Cho and Bona Park maintain separate practices but work collaboratively as the Michelangelo Pistoletto Band. The band writes and performs electro-pop love songs dedicated to the changing landscapes of South Korea, especially the regions of Daebu-island, Seongam-island, the port city of Incheon, and Seoul itself. Their songs convey the melancholy of landscapes rendered increasingly strange and alien through ongoing urban development.
This exhibition consists of six music videos made over the last two years, including the premiere of two new works. Park and Cho independently write a song for each location, before collaborating on the videos and performances. It is important to the band that their individual artistic practices are maintained but can come together, especially in light of a recurrent theme of their work—a questioning of the voice that the individual can find in an increasingly industrialised and globalised world.
The band’s ‘live’ performances extend these concerns and generally take place inside the contested landscapes they sing to: within or in front of vacated buildings, on urban rooftops, or on bus routes that connect particular communities.
The Michelangelo Pistoletto Band performed at City Gallery Wellington; Waikato Museum; St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland; and Dunedin Public Art Gallery
AARON LISTER 