ikkibawiKrrr <Sound, hole>, 2023 sound, gypsum, rubber, Variable Installation

ikkibawiKrrr focuses on practices for improving the wellness of the sea from an ecological perspective. The Incheon sea is dominated by industrial infrastructure as it is a major port in South Korea, which makes it difficult to find any traces of its life as a habitat. Reclamation projects have turned tidal flats into land, and apartment complexes have been built thereupon. Nevertheless, if you follow the traces of the sea, you can still find crabs that continue to call this area home. These crabs announce their presence by making small holes in the remaining tidal flats. A cast objét of this hole physically materializes the space occupied by the crabs, unearthing the ecological function of the sea which is still present. This piece is accompanied by a soundtrack of the artists singing fishermen’s songs. In years past, these melodies were sung by laborers fishing for yellow corvina, a practice that once thrived along the west coast of the Korean peninsula. These songs functioned as signals for a group of fishermen working together, and were passed down orally because they contain onomatopoeic words such as “eoideoha”. However, fewer and fewer people know how to sing these songs due to the yellow corvina fishing industry’s decline. Like the mudflats of the Aamdo tidal flats that have been covered up by the Songdo New Town developments, the fishing songs no longer spring from fishers’ throats. ikkibawiKrrr captures the vanishing tidal crabs and the yellow corvina fishing songs through casting and sound, and records their existence in the here and now as still valid lifeforms.