Korean Media Arts Festival 2019: Technoimagination
Technoimagination
KMAF 2019 aims to present the broadening intersection of art and technology through interactive and data-driven new media installations in 21st century Korean media art ensuing the era of Nam June Paik. The title Technoimagination, as coined by the late media philosopher Vilém Flusser, refers to the technical image culture made possible by the advent of post-text cultural apparatuses such as cameras, televisions, computers and cable networks.
Nam June Paik, a video artist from Korea who is often considered to be the pioneer of media art, was inspired by the period of technological amalgamation in America and the global utility network during the 1960s. He has brought over broadcasting network media into art extensively since the mid-1970s. From then on, media art has expanded into all sorts of apparatuses from radio and satellite telecommunications, video, television, film, photography, and now to the computer and internet in all its forms. In the 1990s, the digital revolution reshuffled the way of producing and distributing arts, and has redefined our social mindset and cultural paradigm, further proliferating through the language of new media spoken by the generations of the internet in the prospect of post-media.
Today, media has become an integral part in extending our senses to experience and interact with the world. In this context, media art has come to a position where it must be embraced by the contemporary arts scene. Art operating on a media device is not simply for the sake of utilizing the specific characteristics of a medium, but to explore and convey the renewed definitions of scale, speed, and pace of change in pattern for mankind.
Technoimagination introduces New York to the unique situation and characteristics of media art in South Korea, as a leader of IT in the post-media and post-digital contemporary art era. The media artists presented here engage with this new sociocultural change as they create technological forms as the apparat-operator. The techno code is a new zero-dimensional plane code that combines dotted text with pictures, where time and space cannot be separated as with linear history. Here, space is experienced as synchronized time while time is experienced as diachronized space.
Technoimagination will be presented in two sub-themes: Memories in Time and Space and Living Data. The seven Korean media artists will participate in this exhibition as the apparat-operators, crossing the boundary between history and post-history in the context of technoimagination, while creating a new paradigm of space-time at the intersection of art and science.
Memories in Time and Space
The exhibition Memories in Time and Space is presented in two parts across both the 4th and 5th floor galleries. On the 4th floor, Memories in Time and Space I features works by Cheol-Woong Sim , Chan Sook Choi, and Hahkyung Darline Kim, in which the artists reveal the story of the modernization of Korea—with its distortions, lost identities of evicted migrants, and forgotten memories of marginalized groups during the War.
Cheol-Woong Sim, through his interactive installation, exposes the historical distortions and propaganda latent in the English Almanac of the Chosen Government General. Chan Sook Choi reflects on the narrative of the displaced migrants of the village of Yangjiri, a community built for propagandistic purposes towards North Korea. Hahkyung Darline Kim reveals the lost memories of those marginalized during the Korean War. These memories of the past fluctuate between history and post-history as the viewer experiences them within the space-time of technoimagination.
On the 5th floor, a different Memories in Time and Space II is presented. Beikyoung Lee’s Thoughtful Space brings the viewer into the abstract and transcendental space-time between actual and virtual realities. In transcendental space-time, sensory memories extend the limitations of the world in which we exist.
Living Data
Ever since the advent of the internet, an influx of data has become available from a variety of sources. As an era of Big Data has dawned upon us, the amount of unstructured data and the methods of its analysis have greatly increased, thereby intensifying the imperative to know the types of data to extract and filter, today a common interest in all fields including the arts.
Living Data presents data based works by Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Yoon Chung Han, and Eunsu Kang and collaborators. As artists and educators who have combined art and data in the labs of universities, they explore post-information age themes including the ethical issues in artificial intelligence, the privacy of biometric data, and the living systems of virtual environments.
[Korean Media Arts Festival 2019: Technoimagination]
From Aug. 8th to Oct. 26th @ Sylvia Wald & Po Kim Gallery in New York.
Having worked in collaboration for over a year, FUSE Art Project finally announces the opening of KMAF2019. With the main curatorial theme of Technoimagination, the exhibition introduces New York to the unique characteristics of media art in Korea as one of the leaders of IT in a post-media and post-digital contemporary art era.
Technoimagination is presented in two themes. "Memories in Time and Space" features works by Cheol-Woong Sim, Hahkyung Darline Kim, Chan Sook Choi, and Beikyoung Lee; and "Living Data," featuring works by Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield, Yoon Chung Han, and Eunsu Kang & collaborators.
Originally, seventeen media artists from Korea were to be presented at two venues in New York: The Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery (SWPK) and the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), but due to an unfortunate and irrevocable circumstance, only seven artists have been presented at one location of SWPK.
KMAF2019 is organized by the Donghwa Cultural Foundation, sponsored by the Korea Foundation, and produced by FUSE Art Project and SWPK.
FUSE Art Project would like to thank once again all the artists who have participated in our undertaking and we wish that all future endeavors will be even more fruitful.
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