Intervals #2: The rhyme of memory and time, 2022-23
Ultra-wide 32:9 ratio screening in two-channel projection and six-channel audio
Duration: 45 minutes

Installation view at PLATFORM, Nikolaj Kunsthal, 2022. Photo by Mads Holm.

In a garlic factory, in a speculative future, the workers share their personal narratives about their mothers. The stories of the workers become intertwined with the Korean cosmogonic myth of Grandmother Mago and the memory of Jung’s grandmother; a reverberating voice proclaiming “Grandma, I don’t like raw garlic.”

The factory becomes the universe in Jung’s sound-video installation Intervals #2: The rhyme of memory and time; highlighting the invisible labour that takes place within the factory and centering voices that are otherwise drowned out by patriarchal bourgeoisie and other heavy machinery. Jung, as a storyteller, appear in the film, sitting alone in a reverberation chamber. Jung uses the technology of a reverberation chamber to echo and layer the voices of the workers, playing with the tension between the unity and individuality of the workers who remain nameless yet become personalised through their sharing of stories and memories. Speaking in overlapping voices, the factory workers embody Mago. The goddess Grandmother Mago created the universe and instructed a bear on how to become the first human through garlic, mugwort and endurance.

One day, a long, long time ago,
a bear and a tiger beseeched a spiritual tree.
They wanted to become something else,
as if they were desperate for a transition.

The transition of the bear into a human queers the work’s relationship to the broader theme of societal and technological change; transcending simplified narratives of deterioration. Planetary transition is indicated in the piece through the essential materials of the world (mugwort and garlic) going nearly extinct. The transition of the world has made time uneven, however, transitioning is an open-ended concept, and the piece is not concerned with apocalypse. Jung’s work is rather an investigation of ever-changing worlds that are simultaneously space and non-space, whether this is a factory or the entire universe. It is an analysis of matters of becoming; considering this as an on-going process of transition and transformation.

I entered the main hall.
I greeted all Mago, one by one.
We were here together to do one last task:
to provide the last garlic to the final generation of our species
before transforming into the unknown.

The piece continues the investigation begun in Intervals (2021), which explored Korean folklore and traditions surrounding death. That work was presented at Afgang (MFA Degree Show) at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Exhibition text by Eli Ståhl, PLATFORM, Nikolaj Kunsthal.

Installation view at PLATFORM, Nikolaj Kunsthal, 2022. Photo by Mads Holm.

Exhibition view at Platform, Stockholm, 2025. Photo by Lou Mouw

Installation view at UKS, Oslo, 2023. Photo by Vegard Kleven.

Film stills from the projected film.

Voice
Mago 1: Young-bun Lee
Mago 2: Young-hee Ryu
Mago 3: Hyang-Suk Gwon
Mago 4: Bok-yeun Lee

Special thanks to the working mothers in the Woo-il factory:
Bok-yeun Lee, Hee-ja Kim, Mi-ye Bang, Soon-je Yang, Jeon-ae Cheon, Jeong-ran Choi

Camera: Yujin Jung
Script: Yujin Jung
Editing: Yujin Jung
Additional writing: Gabriel Bott-Anderstedt
Proofreading: Eli Ståhl, Saffy Fulgoni
Sound recording, composition and mixing (5.1): Yujin Jung
Photogrammetry: Yujin Jung
CGI & 3D animation: Gabriel Bott-Anderstedt
Colour grading: Fabian Wigren
Double projections: Halfdan Mouritzen

Filming locations:
Woo-il Farmers Cooperatives, Uiseong County, South Korea
Technical University of Denmark

Production supported by:
UKS (Young Artists Society)
Arts Council Norway
Statens Kunstfond (Danish Arts Foundation)