Heavy Industries

Young Hae Chang

OPERATION NUKOREA

Computer, 2003

The work begins with the scrolling text: “The North Korean Military positioned along the demilitarized zone responded to America's preventive air strike that had just a few minutes earlier destroyed its nuclear facilities..” The artist duo describes in explicit details the fantasy of the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust - the final destruction of South Korea.

Cities, Countries and Borders is a series of maps of nine cities that have been destroyed, violated and, in some instances, obliterated. Five countries complement the cities: Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Holy Land. Each black and white map is a woodcut, a medium which is historically associated with forms of protest art, used by German Expressionists, Mexican political artists, and Chinese revolutionary artists in the 1920s and 1930s. The objective of the prints is to provide grim records of senseless destruction and violence. Hope lies in the memory of the event and the drawing of the ruptured places.