Focused on the principles of belonging, knowledge sharing and developing infrastructure for more resilient communities, artist Hwa Young Jung has developed Wild Natures – a long-term project connecting under-represented communities and the climate crisis.
Wild Natures began as a co-created initiative with artists and young adults on probation. Sessions with the group resulted in the creation of an interactive, Grand Theft Auto-inspired board game using fossil and renewable energy as a springboard to connect the group’s interests of cars to climate issues. Wild Natures was selected to be part of the inaugural WORLDING programme developed by Unity Technologies and the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab – a series of intensive workshops to develop the project with researchers and makers from MIT, Unity team members and expert collaborators from gaming, music and the performance industries.
Wild Natures K-pop
In the next phase of the project, inspired by the rise in K Pop in the global zeitgeist during Covid-19 pandemic, Jung is using the popular cultural product to platform the under-represented perspectives of migrant communities. Wild Natures K Pop will be co-created alongside the participants that engage with the project, offering radical alternatives around how knowledge can be constructed and shared across cultures and different lived experience. Using critical provocation around the concept of belonging, and who gets to belong where, the international collaboration across the UK and South Korea aims to result in an elaborate K-pop music video about how to live harmoniously with urban wild animals on a changing planet. Intentionally slow in its development, Wild Natures gives much needed time for rich connection and trust to build amongst its co-creators, a key focus of Jung’s socially engaged practice. Through experience of working closely with the public to create work, Jung will build a vibrant space that encourages the vulnerability to learn something new.
Jung is currently seeking collaborators to be part of Wild Natures with an interest in illuminating the shared human and animal need to find a place to call home, paying particular attention to the migrant experience. If you are an expert or have lived experience in any of the above find out how to participate on her website.
Wild Natures is led by socially engaged artist Hwa Young Jung. The WORLDING workshop was supported by Angela YT Chan, and produced by Abandon Normal Devices. Wild Natures was developed in partnership with The Howard League for Penal Reform and criminologist Dr. Will Jackson from Liverpool John Moores University.
Wild Natures K-Pop is a collaboration between Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Crane (SK) and Hwa Young Jung.
About Hwa Young
Hwa Young Jung is a socially engaged artist artist working in the arts, culture and sciences, facilitating collaborative projects and workshops. She works with people to co-create projects, often using games and play to explore social issues. Based in the Northwest of England, she has been producing work internationally with a range of people including care workers, microbiologists, young people excluded from mainstream education, men on probation and criminologists for almost ten years.
She has worked with Universities (Liverpool HOPE University, Liverpool John Moores, Manchester Metropolitan) and cultural institutions (Tate Liverpool, FACT Liverpool, Metal Culture,, ) to create a mixing ground for diverse disciplines and divergent communities to come together and make something new.
Hwa Young is a Creative Associate at AND. Find out more about the Creative Associate programme.