Primarily working in film and photography, Adrià Julià’s work engages collective memory and urban/ex-urban spaces as portraits that blur the lines between fiction and reality. Julià articulates the interdependence of individuals within their physical and social surroundings while negotiating concepts of memory, displacement, survival and erosion.
Notes on the Missing Oh began two years ago when the artist came across the Hollywood movie Oh, Incheon (1982), which depicts the Incheon Landing Operation orchestrated by General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. The film, having been criticized as the worst movie ever made, was never released on VHS or DVD and has since been forgotten.
After discovering the film at a storage facility in Burbank that houses “orphaned features”—films that have no registered owner on record, Julià took special interest in it, conducting research between Los Angeles and Korea and unveiling the convoluted stories behind the film’s production. The film, produced by Reverend Moon, pictures a war epic involving the questionable collaboration of the U.S. Department of Defense in the use of warships and soldiers as extras, while also using footage from the 1980 Gwangju Massacre as battle scenes for the film. Julià follows the surreal reality around the film’s production: the fiction of the picture making process, the real life casualties left in its wake and the desperate measures it took to stay afloat. In doing so, Julià unpacks the machinations of collective imagination and the infiltration of propaganda on popular culture.
