Artifact Intelligence: How do aesthetics with digital technology promote nonviolence and resilience in a peri-conflict country—South Korea?

• In Event: Higher Education and Technology: Tools for Mobilization of Political Action

Proposal

“About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have been identified, and there are certainly scores more” (Author, 2012, p.46).

This paper focuses on the role of aesthetics, from a political memory site in South Korea, while using digital technology, including artificial intelligence to promote nonviolence and resilience. Namely, how do digital technology and art support building non-violent movements in peri-conflict countries in the Global South (e.g., South Korea), and why does it matter?
The paper is an applied research study that shares insights and observations from a current project, organized by the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) and myself at the North Korean Human Rights Museum (NKHRM), Seoul, South Korea—the country’s first human rights museum. In this research, I propose a new term ‘artifact intelligence,’ to describe the role and use of artworks with digital technology, to shed light on ongoing conflicts that remain unresolved. Showing how political memory sites hold a unique capacity, using arts and technologies, to foster nonviolence and resilience, I introduce two cases—the Museum of Jewish Heritage and NKHRM of this collaboration. Importantly, artifact intelligence is crucial for protecting marginalized groups in peri-conflict countries with ongoing tensions, like North Korean refugees, many of whose families are still living in North Korea, therefore, not exposing their privacy and putting them at risk. This will prevent their families’ lives whose safety and privacy rights are endangered. Digital technology, moreover, will continue to share their stories on and off the sites of museums so that more public and international audiences can be aware of the human rights issue.
While scholarship regarding a study of nonviolence and the role of arts in nonviolent movements in post-conflict or post-authoritarian regimes has been growing, the case from peri-conflict countries in the Global South, like South Korea, however, has not received adequate attention, particularly human rights museums where it memorializes victims of war and implements Human Rights Education (HRE) in ongoing situations. Cultural institutions and memory sites like the Museum of Jewish Heritage and NKHRM have shown that digital technology can play a critical role in expanding wider audiences, mobilizing with stakeholders, and delivering information to the next generations. Many museums, however, lack details of why they should use digital technology, other than how to use it, to amplify their mission.
The proposal shares my emerging reflections after spending five months organizing and curating a special exhibition with NKDB at NKHRM. The museum consisted of three exhibitions: archives from the NKDB’s data, a special exhibition, featuring four artworks from a North Korean-born artist and educator, Woon-sik Lee, and an oral history from North Korean refugees or defectors.
In section one, I will introduce the notion of nonviolent movements and how arts and digital technology amplify nonviolence by bringing cases from the Museum of Jewish Heritage and NKDB. Section two describes a walk-through of the art collections in NKHRM, centering on the use and display of oral history, and a special exhibition, sharing selected artworks and highlighting how they are intended to be seen at the museum. In the final section, I will explore and offer the term ‘artifact intelligence,’ implicating how artifacts and digital technology can deliver powerful messages of peace and pursue non-violence in peri-conflict countries.

Author

• Seungkyoo Han, New York University