ch.256
(2018)
혁명과 강제이주를 다루는 민족주의적 접근이 참으로 마음에 들지 않아 시작한 삿대질이 나를 향하기 시작했다. 혁명광장의 쓸쓸함과 번잡함이 조금씩 익숙해질 때 쯤 기어이 고려인 집성촌인 우수리스크의 풍경을 눈으로 확인해야겠다고 생각했다. 만원인 기차를 타고 도착한 우수리스크는 추적추적 비가 내리고 있었다. 역시 비둘기의 배설물로 뒤덮인 레닌 동상을 지나 한적한 숙소에 도착했다. 호텔에 갇힌 채 창밖으로 보이는 마을의 풍경을 보면서 이것이 나와 이곳과의 좁힐 수 없는 거리인 것 같아 이내 씁쓸해졌지만 동시에 비릿한 안도감이 느껴졌다. 언제나 그랬듯이 “나는 이 대상을 온전히 이해할 수 있는가?”라는 질문으로 시작해 “그것이 가능한 관계란 존재하지 않는다.”라는 허무한 답을 거쳐 “그렇다면 나는 이곳에서 어떤 이해를 다시 생산해 낼 수 있는가?”라는 질문으로 돌아오는 지난한 과정을 또 한 번 겪고 나서야 블라디보스토크의 매캐한 매연이 조금 익숙해졌다.
혁명 광장 한 구석에 앉아 거대한 서사를 한 덩어리로 선언하는 일에 대해 생각해보았다. 어떤 장면 앞에서 너무 쉽게 가해와 피해를 규정하는 일에 대해 생각해 보았다. 뒤엉킨 시간들을 개별의 사연으로 파편화 하는 일에 대해 생각해 보았다. 무엇하나 편하게 수긍하기 힘든 이 상황에서 나는 무슨 말을 할 수 있고 무슨 말을 할 수 없는가에 다시 다달았다. 무엇을 알아간다는 것은 언어를 하나씩 잃어가는 것이라는 생각이 들었다. 하지만 아직은 배회화고 바라보며 나의 말을 찾아보는 무용한 일을 멈출 수는 없을것 같다. 아직 세상에는 말해야 할 것들이 너무 많고 말할 수 없는 것들이 너무 많다.
Vladivostok was, for me, a place defined by the fragmented terms of revolution and forced migration. At least, that’s how I saw it. Naturally, my steps led me to Revolution Square—a place where the Russian Revolution came to its final stop and the forced migration of Koreans began. It is a space where these two histories physically overlap. Now overtaken by tourists and surrounded by massive shopping malls, the square has changed its purpose. Yet my stubborn thoughts refused to fully embrace the current landscape. Sitting in the square of today while searching for the square of the past, I realized how precarious such an act was. This, I thought, is precisely what I’ve always done with photography—grasping at misaligned gazes.
I went to the square almost every day, using photography to confront these disjointed perspectives and sharing brief thoughts about revolution and forced migration with the people I met. Experiencing that gap became a process of recognizing how drastically trust in what we think we know can produce ignorance. It was also a process of understanding how selfish it is to turn the present into the past.
The nationalist approach to revolution and forced migration unsettled me, and the critique I had started outwardly soon turned inward. As I gradually grew accustomed to the loneliness and busyness of Revolution Square, I felt compelled to see the Korean enclave in Ussuriysk with my own eyes. I took a packed train and arrived in Ussuriysk under a light drizzle. Passing a Lenin statue covered in pigeon droppings, I arrived at a quiet hotel. Trapped in my room, I gazed out at the village landscape, feeling a bitter sense of distance—an unbridgeable gap between myself and this place. Yet, I also felt a strange sense of relief.
As always, I began with the question, “Can I fully understand this subject?” only to arrive at the inevitable and empty answer: “There is no such relationship where that is possible.” From there, I returned to the question, “What kind of understanding can I produce in this place?” It was only after going through this exhausting process once again that I began to grow familiar with the smoky air of Vladivostok.
Sitting in a corner of Revolution Square, I reflected on the act of declaring grand narratives as singular entities. I thought about how easily we define victims and perpetrators in a given scene and about the act of fragmenting tangled histories into individual stories. In this uncomfortable situation, where I couldn’t easily accept anything, I found myself wondering again: What can I say, and what can I not say? It struck me that to know something is to lose a part of language, piece by piece. Yet, I cannot stop wandering, watching, and searching for my own words. There is still too much in this world that must be said, and too much that cannot be said.