Imagine Nabin begins with the journey of the Navin Party Chairman visiting Seoul to see his best friend Pandit who is  depressed after breaking up with his Korean lover. Along the way Navin encounters Nabin, a young Korean woman who is an old friend of Pandit from when they were students in Honolulu. Erecting a Navin Party office in Seoul, Navin and Nabin set about gathering the Nabin of Korea. When they attempt to connect with Nabin in North Korea they are turned away by the authorities. Distressed by the rejection, Navin goes off to drink and disappears. Meanwhile, with a relationship emerging between them, Pandit and Nabin, who has been inspired by Quotations from Comrade Navin the central text of Navinist ideology, join forces to devise a plan to evade border authorities and send leafleting balloons north. Nabin and Pandit are arrested as the first balloon is released. The disturbing news causes Navin Party’s members and friends to rally and connect Navins of the world in campaigning for Nabin’s release. All the while, a world away, a lone leaflet changes the life of Nabin from North Korea who decides to leave her motherland to join the Navin Party.

Included as part of the annual contemporary art festival, Platform Seoul 2008, the Navin Party’s Imagine Nabin is presented in an abandoned room inside the old Seoul Station, one of the exhibition’s major venues and the site where the Party’s rally takes place. The entrance welcomes visitors with the Imagine Nabin movie poster painting. The room is filled with red balloons with “Are you Nabin?” written across in Korean. Feasting around the circular meeting table which is centred with the Quotations From Comrade Navin ceramic bust and book set, visitors discover the tale of Imagine Nabin through a 96-page comic by Navin Production. Some of the comics were tied to balloons, and visitors were welcome to take both away. On a red wall behind, a propaganda poster painting shows a post-comic scenario of the two Nabin from North and South Korea standing together against the back drop of Mt. Paektu, the sacred mountain on the Korean peninsula. Nearby, a docu-performative video with a dramatic music score presented the journey of the lonely Chairman in Seoul looking for Nabin. Imitating the old propaganda technique that is still popular among immigrants and protesters in South Korea for sending their messages by balloon to the Northern territory, the Navin Party Chairman released 99 “Are you Nabin?” balloons that lifted a stack of comics into the sky above the Seoul Station without any attention from the public.

Gallery

Imagine Nabin