Excavations and partial rubbings
Bae, Woo-ri | journalist of Monthly Art
1_Camera terminology dictionary without camera
Artists Park Sung-duk and Park Inseong do not value the camera's ability to record in general or provide one-sided information. He is not even interested in capturing beautiful scenes. At least that's what the work results show. There is no doubt that the camera is a tool to look into the world, but the way it is used is a little different from others. One person becomes the film of the photograph, and the other uses the camera in a way to view the outside scenery that film can never capture. The two's exhibition, Dictionary of Camera Terms, held at the cultural space Cabaret Voltaire from September 11 to 25, was neither an exhibition about a machine called a camera nor an exhibition about well-photographed subjects.
The film itself
Sungduk Park himself becomes the film. Like a film that absorbs light into the whole body and transcribes the outside scenery, he absorbs the light, sound, environment and relationships surrounding him into his skin through long exposure, and then bounces them on the exhibition space that becomes the photographic paper. send it out It also resembles the childhood1) of photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), who believed that if there was a scenery you liked, you could capture it forever by quickly rolling over three times. There is no judgment or metaphor on the part of the artist in the work created with an animal sense. It has no meaning. Even though it is there, it doesn't look neatly cut. So, in order to appreciate artist Park Sung-duk's work, you must simply receive and digest what he reflects with your sense organs. Many writers cook the food with care and list the nutritional information, but this writer is essentially throwing in raw spinach that has not even been cooked. He doesn't know the ingredients and has to chew it raw. Maybe we need to absorb the work through our skin, like plants or film. One way or another, if you keep your head rolling, you won't be able to digest it.
〈Trouble in the Air〉(2017). One winter in Germany, the author, or rather the camera, moves through a crowded crowd of people. The only means through which the author can confirm his existence among people who live in the same space and time but in different dimensions - who have already lost their sense of commonality - is the telephone. When he arrives at a public phone booth and the call he made in an unfamiliar land travels back through the airwaves and rings on his cell phone, the author briefly encounters himself or time. No, I have a feeling it exists. (There are many ways to encounter reality. You can experience the passage of time in the exhibition hall being dislocated even by this unexpected ringtone while viewing.) However, when the film is printed, what the screen indicates is completely different from the actual event. As if walking down the street, the moment the artist asks, ‘Hallo?’, the reality that only a premonition was possible is forever trapped in the symbol of language. So the writer withdraws from ‘words.’ It was a video that wanted to point out that Christmas remains only a commercial tactic, but even a simple explanation is lacking. It is much more advantageous to draw a common sense, even if it is dull, to leave only the loneliness of a stranger and the loneliness of someone who has withdrawn from the symbolic world where everyone remains. The theme that Park Sung-duk has been pursuing from the beginning to the present is “Justice can change from time to time,” and he simply writes down each situation faithfully.
The road trip of the artist who returned to Korea by car across the continent after studying abroad in Germany is the Earth version of Trouble in the Air, a city walk between people. This time he rolled the van with his body. He moved in the direction where the sun rises, collected the energy it gave through solar panels, lived, passed through cultures that changed at each time boundary, and returned to the standard time of Seoul, South Korea. His body and van contain stories about the relationships he has formed over time. He intended to end his trip by opening an exhibition and dropping off a van, turning the clock of his life (which was slower than in Korea) back on its own, which had been off for a while, but he could not do so yet. If the exhibition takes place, it will create a moment as close to reality as a public phone ringtone. But the important thing is that he still hasn’t returned ‘on time’. He may be able to have his own time only when he is moving. Of course, even if he merges with real time, the ending is tragic. This is because the time and justice that led to life will disappear, and the artist will have no reason to work. Like the sound of 〈Relation〉 (2014), which spins around the exhibition hall and repeatedly bumps into visitors, Park Sung-duk will never return, being kicked out of the border and wandering outside of time.
Show the outside of the film
Inseong Park initially picked up the camera to make a documentary video. However, I soon realized that the art scene was overpopulated with ‘just apostle’ documentaries that dealt with all kinds of issues, and that bringing a mountain of issues from anywhere in the world into the exhibition hall was not helpful at all in solving the problem. Rather, the more serious an issue is, the more it degenerates into rhetoric of political correctness in art. It was natural for many academic writers to have doubts about the purpose behind which documentaries are produced and shown, and whether they are moving in a direction that is beneficial to everyone. He soon felt that being an artist was not his calling. Instead, he took a step back and began to explore the medium of film itself, which has given rise to numerous controversies that go back and forth between art and non-art, fact and lies, and is currently on the border between analog and digital, and real and virtual. He soon discovered the unique symbols of film that do not even allow for unconscious manipulation by the artist, and he actively utilizes them in his work. In the video 〈It is Plural〉(2017), he tries to piece together a film that would ultimately have no narrative because so many possible cases are possible, and in the 〈film〉(2019) series, named 'Scanography', he aligns it on both sides of the film. The film exposes the 'film holes' as they are, revealing its own formativeness. In the end, they make us intuit the status of analog film that will never fade away amid the ‘copy-and-paste’ and lack of individuality that is flooding the digital world.
Unlike Park Sungduk, Park Inseong never immerses himself in the case, that is, he never jumps directly into the case. Just as he finds documentaries outside the screen, at the outer edge of the film, he symbolizes even colors to push them outside the learned senses, which are close to prejudice. It is the artist's unique method of shaking up existing senses that have become rigid as notions. Therefore, colors that have acquired unfamiliar referents cannot settle anywhere, as in the title of the work, 〈floated〉, and have no choice but to float in situations that we each accept in different ways. In the midst of instructions to stop imagining things that are common and obvious, a structure that we do not normally see is revealed. This is the framework that ties all events together. The “complete scene” the author wants to show is revealed without explaining itself.
2_Archive without archive
Artists Park Sungduk and Park Inseong studied together at the Nuremberg University of Arts in Germany and worked together. This year, he was selected as an exclusive artist for the cultural promotion space Cabaret Voltaire, and will hold an exhibition in September with a combination of old works that are well known to each other, followed by a second exhibition with new works that highlight the identity of Cabaret Voltaire. Cabaret Voltaire is run by Yang Woo-chang, who carries on both work and planning, following in the footsteps of his photographer grandfather, Yang Soo-hak, and his painter father, Yang Hee-seong. It is located in a retro red brick building with one basement floor and two above-ground floors, with the same porcelain floor, gypsum board ceiling, and aluminum chassis. Starting with artist Yang Woo-chang's solo exhibition in 2018, it was officially launched in 2019 and continued to change the space by inviting two artists to exhibit. Exhibitions are mainly held on the first floor, and until last year, when face-to-face activities were possible, part of the second floor - once used as an art academy - was used as a community space. Active use of the second floor, whose purpose is now unclear, is expected, but the basement of this building is interesting. If you go into the entrance next to the first floor and go down the straight stairs, you will find yourself in a dark basement where the electricity has been left unattended. This is also the space where CEO Yang Woo-chang did his photography work in the past. Currently, works that provide a glimpse into Yang's father's vast world of work - encompassing portraits and abstractions, including paintings exploring Bangudae petroglyphs in Ulju - as well as newspapers and various books that supported his passion for learning are piled up in dust. Opposite the entrance there is another entrance. If you go out to the ground through there, there is an outside bathroom, and if you follow the path between the bathroom and the wall next door, you will be connected to the kitchen attached to the exhibition hall on the first floor. Inseong Park, who had already completed his exploration of the space, installed a video in this small kitchen with a remaining sink that was not used as an exhibition space in the September exhibition. We plan to strengthen circulation and space utilization at the December exhibition so that visitors will not feel regretful about their stay when they come to the exhibition hall in Sinjeong-dong, Ulsan, where there are few nearby attractions. In particular, the basement, which is an open space and full of historical materials, is a place that two bright-eyed artists would pay attention to. If Cabaret Voltaire has any power, I think that power will come from this underground place where treasures are buried. However, in the manner of the two artists who are not particularly involved in selecting the subjects themselves, they will not directly reveal the history of Cabaret Voltaire. The writers know that this is not the time to hastily awaken that power and put it to its place. They can't even do what they do. However, they plan to work to ensure that none of the past and present of this space, each seeking a new beginning in its own way, is missing.
Mixing space and time
Park Sungduk sets the basement as the past and the first floor as the present. The van, which rolled constantly and gave us a unique time that did not belong to the world, finally entered the exhibition hall and took its place on the first floor. The author seems to think that the van, which can no longer move, belongs to the ‘past’, but since the car itself is a film, like the author’s own body, it seems correct to say that it continues to produce the present even when stopped. A display like the ‘accident’ that brings a car into the exhibition hall and opens reality breaks the flowing time of the exhibition hall. Lights will be installed inside the car, which will be connected by wires to solar panels that will be placed underground. Solar panels absorb past light and history instead of current light. The time underground is unsealed through this exhibition. In the future, underground spaces will also occupy the present time. In addition to the time between the basement and the first floor, the artist also combines the difference in physical height. We plan to cast several stairs going down to the basement, lay the undulating result horizontally, and add urethane foam in between to create a ground floor and install it on the first floor. Although it is a building that is the ‘foundation’ of CEO Yang Woo-chang’s current activities, it is named Cabaret Voltaire and at the same time, ironically, the past, which was pushed into the distance and almost buried, is broken by intersecting with the present, the first floor. As the author puts an end to his journey to the continent, he begins a journey toward another reality through a relationship with a new space. This is Park Sung-duk’s “At that time” archive.
Shows outside of data
Park Inseong decided to leave the objects in the basement as an unfinished, future archive. The moment objects such as grave goods from underground tombs are brought out to define the space, the history of Cabaret Voltaire may be distorted in the wrong direction and the aura of the space may disappear. No matter how much you read between the lines of the materials, viewing archive work listed as materials selected by someone is bound to be inherently dull. Therefore, the author defined untouched materials as a ‘horizon’ that appears from a distance but disappears when approached. The ‘complete archive’ will appear like a mirage over dusty data. The work plan is as follows. First, take pictures of the dark underground scenery with a film camera. I look at the brightly captured underground scenery with my cell phone on film containing a blurry scenery, and then scratch and draw it. In other words, it is about waking up the past by scratching it in the most untouchable way possible. The scenery scratched and drawn like that is installed on the wall inside the basement. The artist does not select or change anything, and shows this space existing as an archive that will only emerge as overlapping scenes. The horizontal line, which appears and disappears repeatedly, will build a complete scene like the grid in existing works, which is an event but does not tell anything.
This article will remain in November 2020. This is an exhibition plan after all. In either direction, these two will encourage the viewer to see the outside of the film, allowing them to take the lead in reading space and time.
3_Rediscovered painting
It is no exaggeration to say that Ulsan, an industrial city that is considered a wasteland for art, has had an alternative space, almost the first generation, open in 2020. The somewhat radical and kitschy temporary name, “Cabaret Voltaire,” also shows how thirsty Ulsan is for culture. However, the texture of existence is similar to that of new spaces that have recently been created here and there in South Korea, in every corner, with the keywords ‘local’ and ‘autogenous’. This place will grow and receive attention from young artists and citizens in the future. The cleverly planned ‘Ordinary People Criticism Program’ opened the door. The personal history of CEO Woo-chang Yang will also begin to be explained in universal language by the space itself.
As you know, Ulsan is a place where the creative sense of the eyes and hands shine. Aren’t there prehistoric petroglyphs here? However, even after it was rediscovered in 1971, it seems that no one has awakened that sense yet. Considering that there is no clear connection point between the city of Ulsan and art (although the descendants of the shipbuilding industry may have been satisfying their desires with large sculptures called ‘ships’). However, the paintings by artist Yang Hee-seong discovered in the basement of the building were clearly an attempt to awaken it. Park Sungduk and Park Inseong have just discovered the attempt. And then, vaguely, I made a rubbing. So, I hope that the tapping to make this rubbing will awaken the spirit of art that has been 100 years old in the building site, and the spirit of art that has been 10,000 years old in this town.
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1) Paul Virilio / Translated by Kim Gyeong-on, 『Aesthetics of Extinction』 Yonsei University Press, 2004, 31-34.