1. Introduction
Yoon-Jung (Choi): I first want to express my
gratitude for being part of our opening exhibition. Since this is
your hometown, I'm sure this would be a particularly emotional
experience for you. Do you mind sharing with us your impression of
the participation? Is this your first exhibition in Daegu?
Kimsooja (Kim): I have worked in Daegu, perhaps in
the late 70s. It was the 'Daegu Contemporary Art Festival" hosted by
Daegu Daily. I was able to work with Kim Yongmin on an event for the
occasion. We took the train from Seoul, wore orange vests and went
about collecting things without saying a word to each other. We
collected anything and everything. The exhibition was at the Maeil
Daily Gallery, and our work involved installing collected objects. I
remember I made a small stone grave of sort with the pebbles, sand,
garlic and tree branches I found out in the field. So this is the
first exhibition since then, and actually a first ever solo
exhibition in Daegu. This certainly is an emotional experience, and
to be able to meet with the audience and citizens of Daegu through
my work makes the exhibition all the more special.
Choi: The exhibited work here is 'Needle Woman
(2005).' If the first Needle Woman series that took place from 1999
to 2001 were to be considered a kind of sacred ritual wherein the
Needle Woman perceives the body as a 'needle' in the midst of the
throngs of people, it seems as though the 2005 work confers
additional significance. How would you differentiate the two
projects?
Kim: In the early 'Needle Woman' my body would
operate as one symbolic needle or medium, a certain 'axis of space.'
This is why the sites I sought out were where I could meet many
people. Especially in the metropolitan areas like Tokyo, Shanghai,
New York and London, my performance was in real-time, carrying out
the mind of embracing the people I meet. The 2005 piece exhibited
here is similar in that it is also a performance, but this time it
is not a performance shown in real-time. Rather, it is in a kind of
'slow-mode' where my body is brought to point zero, now as an 'axis
of time.' In other words, it is a work where the temporal difference
among my body(Zero-time), slow mode(extended-time) and the
audience(real-time), and the changes on the psychological dimension
rising from such difference could be explored more in depth.
I looked into countries that symbolize factors of conflict in
politics, religion, culture and economics; post-colonial Cuba, Chad;
poverty-stricken, violence-laden Rio de Janeiro; Sana'a, Yemen and
Jerusalem, Israel where religious, cultural conflicts are ongoing;
Patan, Nepal where civil war remains. This is based on the very
question about condition of humanity. After Iraq-war, violent crime
was rampant in the world. So this work shows a longing for peace.
Despite the conflict, discord, poverty and strife, when the
performance footage from each city is brought into one space,
temporally extended into 'slow-mode,' one realizes that there is
human's universal nature to be found.
Choi: I'm aware that this work is originally
intended to be displayed consecutively alongisde each other on one
wall. I would like to hear more about the relation between a work
and the mode of installation proper to the work.
Kim: Every city has its own particular problems,
and when these problems are laid out on one wall in one space, and
when these are stretched out in time, I believe that real existing
problems starts to unravel and become allayed. And what remains is
the essential. Perhaps the work would be able to reflect the
universality and origin commonly shared by humanity as well as
express the possibility of reconciliation. Though it may be ironic
to display countries with elements of conflict in allayed form, it
contains my intention to portray the horizon of my viewpoint that
faces towards the possibility of such a world. So that is an
important visual element.
Choi: When we look at your work, we start to
understand the artist's body displayed as 'axis' and the work's
significance through the performance scenes. It's also interesting
to note the various responses of the crowd in different countries
and cities. I'm sure there were many happenings at the sites of
shooting.
Kim: The work in Yemen, for example, was at a vast
marketplace. Many merchants and pedestrians were passing by, and
there were a variety of shops including a music shop where they sold
CDs and cassette tapes. There was local music being played from the
shop, and since I had my back against them I was unaware of what was
going on. Behind me was an elderly man dancing with a croissant-like
sword which Yemenite men wear around their waists. At a glimpse, the
scene may look violent or dangerous, but I was told that the dance
was of Yemen's traditional ritual, performed at weddings and
festivals. A cultural act characteristic of the place. It was so
impressive to me.
Choi: Then I'm sure you were exposed to actually
dangerous situations.
Kim: Our work in Patan near Kathmandu, Nepal was
during the time of the civil war. Employees of the Korean consulate
office and other foreign consulate offices were being told to go
back to their countries. I did look into the situation beforehand
and concluded that it was not direly dangerous, so I decided to
proceed. When I arrived in Kathmandu, armed soldiers were placed in
every nook and cranny, and I frequently heard gunshots from the
hotel I stayed. The area was actually the site of ongoing contention
between the Maoists and the government, making it, in fact,
extremely dangerous.
sI was also a slum called Rocinha in Rio de Janiero. Being one of
the biggest slums(favela), the area was laden with topless young men
with guns around their waists and drug dealers. One day I went up to
the rooftop to take a view of the mountainside that was surrounded
by houses crammed against each other. Then suddenly I heard gunshots
right behind me as well as across from where I was standing. Uneasy
about not knowing what was happening, I later found out that it was
an occasion where drug dealers exchange signals when conflict is
triggered.
2.
Choi: In the process of researching data and
references of critical reviews and interviews, I personally wanted
to ask this question. There are cases where 'shaman' or 'shamanistic
act' is mentioned in relation to your work. I assume that this is
largely due to the fact that your performance itself takes on the
attitude of a medium, mediating between humans, between worlds. What
do you think about this expressions?
Kim: Well, during the act of wrapping and sewing
fabric(or fallore object) of primary, traditional Korean pure
colors, there were moments when I felt that the energy I had was
shamanistic. But since calling it shamanistic would mean it is a
religious activity, I think it is a bit closer to 'Zen' in Buddhism.
When I was in Shibuya, Tokyo to carry out my walking performance, I
saw throngs of people passing by Shibuya and could not but pause
where I was standing, and piles of outcries accumulated within me
besieged by like a whirlwind of silence. I'm thinking that to hear
that sound might be closer to an act of 'Zen' and that the decisive
moment of artistic act occurs from this experience. I believe it is
through this that the inexplicable energy and the creative act of
the artist as a transcendental act -- an act that seems to
completely demolish that energy, time and space -- could be better
explained.
Choi: Likewise, what I zeroed in on was the
possibility of interpreting this more in connection with the aspect
of cultural archetypes and elements of the humanities, rather than
with the shaman as an agent. In this respect, the historical origin
of shaman in Eastern culture finds its context in Confucian,
Buddhist and Taoist thought, also showing parallels to the Confucian
sage and the Taoist hermit. This surely isn't a common topic, though
very interesting. I'm sure that this also makes the interpretation
for the contemporary artist so fertile.
Kim: Because my work is a result of a general
rumination over the problem of how to obliquely present my viewpoint
in the larger context of contemporary art history and performance
art, thus it requires a consideration of diverse aspects that cannot
be tackled merely from the viewpoint of 'shaman,' energy, or
spirit-possession. Again, this must be contextualized in
contemporary art as well as incorporate different viewpoints, that
is, the four points of viewing the world. If I performed the Needle
Woman towards four, or eight, directions, there is also Sufism,
where the idea that this world-encompassing act is the act of love
for mankind and the extent to which this love should reach are
expressed in a kind of poetic language. In other words, I am saying
that rather than viewing this as one phenomenon in our culture, an
attempt to combine complex and multilateral interpretation is
needed. The combination of, say, the context of contemporary art,
both the position of obliquely expressing the performer's contextual
thought and the position of a medium, the position of Zen, Sufism,
the cruciform structure in Christianity, the viewpoint on sacrifice,
etc. Hence, I believe that it is possible to speak of various
viewpoints in a complex manner.
Choi: Because your performance incorporates regions
of conflict, some might think of your work as a journalistic effort
to bring awareness about certain situations.
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Kim: I am not interesting in tools of social change
utilized for direct incitement about the situation itself. But I
stand in the position of always being conscious of such problems, of
looking at the situations and of mediating to help look at the
situations. This has less to do with trying to solve the problems
through a direct, one-to-one contact with every state of affair than
the effort to help immerse oneself in the situation by means of
contemplation and taking a transcendental stance. The next depends
upon audiences. They will able to experience each different
dimension ,following their own memories, sensibilities, and
capabilities.
Choi: The word 'nomadism' also makes a frequent
appearance in references to your work. I was looking at past
interviews, and there were no negative mentions in relation to this.
I also remember you mentioned this as a 'life style' of the modern
man, whereas the critics had no hesitation in connecting nomdaism
with bottari(bundles) as a symbol of moving and relocating. At the
Whitney Biennale, you wrapped the table with traditional Korean
fabric, which was called nomadic(by Yi-Jinkyung). I agree with this
view. Rather than bottari symbolizing moving, relocation or
sedentism, it seems to be where new values are generated from the
collision under a table cloth with traditional patterns, covering
self-identity, familiar cultures which have been put in a different
culture,
Kim: Yes, I agree as well. But I also think that
the very process of my act can also be considered nomadic. In this
respect, whether it is fabric spread out in Whitney Museum or the
Bottari truck at the Venice Biennale, are they not all parts of a
nomadic act displayed? After all, contemporary people live in a time
where living a nomadic life is inevitable.
So now nomadism is not close to live in free and easy retirement and
echo-friendly but in hectic Urban-global-business as pragmatic
meanings. Constantly, world wide-communication and 'omnipresent
Nomadism' is rampant. I believe that my work is a natural result of
my real-life wrestling with personal problems and agonies. It was
not my original intention to fit my work into a specific framework
of nomadism or cultural context.
Choi: I got the sense that 'Needle Woman' (2005)
was in line with your preceding works such as 'Sewing into
walking'(1995) that commemorates the victims of the Gwangju
massacre, 'D'apertutto or Bottari Truck in Exile' (1999) dedicated
to the victims of the Kosovo War, and 'Planted Names'(2002) that
recorded the names of the black slaves victimized in the plantations
of South Carolina. This aspect was also noted in Oliva Maria Rubio's
review. I start thinking that your work might show an activist's
appearance already from the very content it contains.
Kim: That's possible. Some view my work as Minjung
art. It isn't entirely wrong, but I believe my work contains both
modernism and Minjung art elements. Aesthetically, my work always be
in the realm of the abstract(form) and the
representational(reality). Thus without connecting a certain
collective movement(Modernism or Minjung art) or any other groups,
In spite of all this, I adamantly refused to take a political
stance, thus independently going about my own way. In the case of
Minjung art in Korea, it rises from the basis of the absurdities of
the times and political realities, but for me, problems on a more
personal level, especially the ontological passion of an individual,
self-contradictions and self-love had priority. If those
ten-something years of passionate acts of sewing were to be viewed
as processes of healing within the self, once the healing was
thought to be complete, I turned to the healing of the other. Of
course even during the times of sewing, the individual as the 'self'
was, let's say, not so much a revealer of some hidden story or
identity. Because it was through the borrowing of the other's body,
the other's pain that I dealt with my own pains and passions, the
physical healing of sewing was transformed into 'Needle Woman,' a
way of healing without acting. The idea of the nomadic is also
something about emptying your space. It's not about setting your own
space and building your own territory. It's about constantly opening
and dissolving oneself to another world through self-negation, a
constant experience of numerous processes of this sort.
Choi: There is, of course a critical consciousness
that comes from internal situations as an artist before the needle
work times. Such process continues till now, and coupled with
'mediation', you cast it back to the relation between yourself and
the world, between humans, all the way to the relation between
elements in nature. I want to hear an elaboration on 'relation.'
Kim: The first work with sewing was actually a
visual expression of a certain relation. It is a kind of statement I
made as an artist, a statement which I still hold fast to, and
through fabric as tableau(surface), needle as a symbolic brush and
artist's body. The stage of my work was comprised of a passion for
surface I had as a painter, believing that such surface could be the
other as well as myself, a kind of 'mirror,' a study of otherness.
Thus, the act of sewing is one that traverses the division between
the self and the other, for it intends to question and subsequently
find the answers to the questions. In this sense, such an act may be
considered a personification of the problem of painting in its form.
That is, 'surface' became 'character.' Ontologically it became the
'other,' and in turn occupies an equivalent position as a medium. In
terms of the medium, this also made it possible to unfold upon a
surface the studies on form as well as questions of mankind and
essence. Thus this makes one, not two.
3.
Choi: The breadth of the genres in which you work
seems broad, ranging from installation to video and sound. You
approach such diverse genres and forms, and I want to know whether
there is something you intend to convey in your choice of each
genre?
Kim: Well. When I move from sewing to wrapping
objects, and from there to wrapping bottari, the passage is not
guided by a kind of logic or preconceived idea but rather by an
immediate response. It is an accumulation through an instant
impulse, an artistic will that is proper to me. But in retrospect, I
certainly see an internal logic or sensibility at work. Thus, the
wrapping work was possible because the properties of wrapping were
already implicit in the original questions I had towards flatness
and the properties of sewing. In other words, such things were
naturally unraveling out of my body. As a flat bottari, it was
discovered from within me, then naturally connecting to artistic
impulses. I frequently feel like I am being led by something.
Different from intending something, I feel led to a place where I
have no other choice but to act, and such an act becomes the ground
for the next project. After the bottari project, clues to the
problem of ideas and media fitting to the experience of a new space
were discovered. For example, what enabled me to think up the
weaving sound at a weaving factory was the experience of the weaving
factory space at 2004 Lodz biennale in Poland, an empty room similar
in structure to this project room. It was a case where I became
conscious of my body as it felt like I was hearing the sound of
weaving machines where weft and warp intersect. In the end, I
realized that our inhalations and exhalations are like weaving, and
started puzzling over their meaning beyond mere yin and yang, but
its connection to life and death. This is what led me to the sound
performance of 'To Breathe.' When it comes to choosing a new medium
and intending its application, I invoke a new kind of thinking in
the encounters with a new space, new culture, cultural archetype or
natural structure. In this sense, rather than merely calling it a
discovery of new media/genres, it might be more appropriate to say
that the medium is discovered in the process of attempting to deepen
the questions and concerns I initially carried. Thus my selection of
a certain kind of medium is triggered by the deepening of the
concepts behind my work, not about the medium or genre itself. This
is the same with my video work, where the camera lens confers a
conceptual meaning in the context of connecting the world and
people.
Choi: You mainly work abroad. Do you mind sharing
your exhibition plans for next year or projects you are either
working on right now or are interested in working on?
Kim: A few solo exhibitions and group exhibitions
are planned to take place for next year in Europe, Asia, and USA.
Especially I have to create the video project for the installation
in the IOC Olympic Museum and in the border between Arizona and
Mexico commissioned by USA Government. Thus, next year I will so
busy that I cannot take a rest. And another project I am working on
right now stands at the antipode of the Needle Woman project. While
the Needle Woman work centers on finding the trajectory of the
needle, 'Thread Routes' is a 16mm film project which traces the
trajectory of the thread. We had better guess the meaning of 'Thread
routes' as 'Thread roots'. As the Roots(nature) seems to lead us to
the Routes(road) on our necessary journeys.
- Exhibition Catalogue published by Daegu Art Museum, Korea, 2011
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