The Arts that Exceeds Scripts, Script that Penetrates the Arts
LIM Nare
(Curator, World Script Symposia 2016)
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‘World Script Symposia 2016 Haengnang’ focused on haengnang, the boundary space located in on the interior and exterior border of a house: it relates both the outside and inside of the house as well as accepts various subjects and cultures. By regarding the structures of the house and placing anchae at the center, haengnangchae can be applicable to the room that is attached to anchae and gyeotchae. This haengnangchae was the place where servants and traveler stayed and played a role of – living quarter, a stable, a storage, and even in Joseon period, it became a small shop as well. Haengnang belonged to the owner but was not occupied fully, so it was the space where various uses occurred.
Starting from the first workshop that began last April, ‘World Script Symposia 2016 Haengnang’ thrived for about six months, since it was the symbol of recording and delivering in language system; its emphasis was on the script which functions as anchae. The Symposia’s journey was expanding with various stories that script sets up in haengnangchae. As the anchae was not able to include all at once at the same time. As the script was structured and developed by coming in and out frequently numerous crossroads throughout the history of civilization, script could be regarded as the sign of an era and space that reflects language-script-ecosystem that is closed to life of the users. Hence, via endlessly wandering script, moving towards the haengnang road, possessing ‘here and now’ becomes finding the new cultural variety and expandability.
Meanwhile, the art becomes haengnang that embraces words that could not be attached to the script, and the crumbs of reason and knowledge. If the general script is closed language in aspect of expression and communication, art is the language with opened structure that seeks to find out the possibilities of script’s expanded meaning, which World Script Symposia refers to. If we turn this into Giorgio Agamben’s discourse, art can be regarded as the vacant space, in other words, it is the space where everything is originated from, and something activated in a space of ‘habitation as shelter’ of the language. Agamben did not regard ‘poetic language’ and ‘thinking language’ separately. And he argued that the unification of quantum can only be reached not by simple combination of the two but when intersects and mutual along are established. As such, by crossing over the gaps among scripts and scripts, script and art, past, present and future and loss and trace, World Script Symposia aimed to make diverse layers of public sphere for discussing ‘thinking language/disciplines’ and showing ‘poetic language/art’.
The specific process that discussed various points listed before via haengnang, was developed in the real world — Nakwon Music Mall and Ikseon-dong. The artists who participated in World Script Symposia, were strangers, unfamiliar with Nakwon Music Mall and Ikseon-dong at first, but gradually became wandering traveler, then soon turned into archivist in a loose sense. They read people, recalled the memories and saved them in their works. The works of about twenty teams show that they have interpreted script and haengnang differently- they could be roughly categorized by their ways of working and be introduced in the essay.
Starting from the first workshop that began last April, ‘World Script Symposia 2016 Haengnang’ thrived for about six months, since it was the symbol of recording and delivering in language system; its emphasis was on the script which functions as anchae. The Symposia’s journey was expanding with various stories that script sets up in haengnangchae. As the anchae was not able to include all at once at the same time. As the script was structured and developed by coming in and out frequently numerous crossroads throughout the history of civilization, script could be regarded as the sign of an era and space that reflects language-script-ecosystem that is closed to life of the users. Hence, via endlessly wandering script, moving towards the haengnang road, possessing ‘here and now’ becomes finding the new cultural variety and expandability.
Meanwhile, the art becomes haengnang that embraces words that could not be attached to the script, and the crumbs of reason and knowledge. If the general script is closed language in aspect of expression and communication, art is the language with opened structure that seeks to find out the possibilities of script’s expanded meaning, which World Script Symposia refers to. If we turn this into Giorgio Agamben’s discourse, art can be regarded as the vacant space, in other words, it is the space where everything is originated from, and something activated in a space of ‘habitation as shelter’ of the language. Agamben did not regard ‘poetic language’ and ‘thinking language’ separately. And he argued that the unification of quantum can only be reached not by simple combination of the two but when intersects and mutual along are established. As such, by crossing over the gaps among scripts and scripts, script and art, past, present and future and loss and trace, World Script Symposia aimed to make diverse layers of public sphere for discussing ‘thinking language/disciplines’ and showing ‘poetic language/art’.
The specific process that discussed various points listed before via haengnang, was developed in the real world — Nakwon Music Mall and Ikseon-dong. The artists who participated in World Script Symposia, were strangers, unfamiliar with Nakwon Music Mall and Ikseon-dong at first, but gradually became wandering traveler, then soon turned into archivist in a loose sense. They read people, recalled the memories and saved them in their works. The works of about twenty teams show that they have interpreted script and haengnang differently- they could be roughly categorized by their ways of working and be introduced in the essay.
Above all, Kim Yang Project’s worldscript.org, BAE Insook’s Hunt and Peck and Script Song, SHIN Hyocheol’s Give and Take, and IM Sun-hee’s Moving Ikseon-dong focuses on the primary purpose of script, the medium of communication. Kim Yang Project constructed the website which can analyze inner structure of script that has constant form, and this can be confirmed in relation to language distribution. SHIN Hyocheol visualizes present ways of communication by allowing random people to exchange traces of specific places in both real and imaginary space. Focusing on that the script is a social promise, and based on specific symbol and orthography, BAE Insook attempted to incorporate various media, including sound, syllable names, music scores, type writing and others into the script world. IM Sunhee applied map, one of the promised ways of transmitting meaning, in Ikseon-dong district. IM located chair-shaped object in all over Ikseon-dong and led the pedestrians to experience reading both the location of the object as well as Ikseon-dong as a whole are overlapped. Although their works began from the primary role of the script- by having communication based on closure of rule, these works show the openness of the script, so that it could turn the signifiers into the subjects to be understood of.
If we read the first group of the works, then we must treat the openness and closeness of the script at the same time; moreover, there are also the works confronting the other side of the world. They are approached only when looking at the script drew aside from the general characteristics and definitions. JUNG Seung’s Rainbow from Warned Land combine sound and light and LEE Changhoon’s Nakwon associate braille and speaker playing pop songs. Both works use symbols that are not categorized words as words, and with paradoxically expressive way, they suggest betrayal moment of real and ideal. By proposing regulation of cacography in reversed way, Cacography Project of Kim Park Project delivers not the value judgment that is made according to the aesthetic of shape, but instead, the truth involved in one’s own handwriting. Both LEE Kwangkee’s Kwangkee Script Print Center, which penetrates the rules of two different script systems and invents new styles of script, and Black Mt.’s Celebrate Your Freedom to Read, which features taboos of writing and reading, allowing one to experience the things that are discovered when we cross the rigid border of that we took it for granted without any doubts. KWON Dooyoung’s Strange IK Sun Dong builds the poetic world by encounter of physical space named Ikseon-dong and non-physical language by borrowing poet LEE Sang’s literary style. KWON uses his own developed software in order to create poems. The characteristic of this work is that the result does not belong to any particular side. For instance, it does not belong to the artist completely, who invented the software program, nor does it belong to the program, which has shown the poem on the monitor screen. Indeed, they are written with ordinary script, however these can hardly be affirmed that they belong to a certain literature genre. From the works of JUNG Seung to that of KWON Dooyoung are the experiments about to enter flexible haengnang, where the creators thought conformity of script separately. It is fascinating to see how the works allow an audience to participate actively in the art experiments in different ways too.
The site of World Script Symposia encompasses from the outside of Nakwon Music Mall, and the interior space – from the basement to fourth floor, the alleys from Nakwon Music Mall to Ikseon-dong and the shops, commercial spaces and houses of Ikseon-dong, and the allies that could hardly be defined. In that context, the works concentrated on the memories of different palces creat another group. SONG Joowon’s PungJeong.Gak (風情.刻) — From Sewoon Plaza to Nakwon BLDG will show the cumulated stories of about fifty years at the time of Sewoon Plaza and Nakwon Building into video of contemporary dances. OH Minjeong and IM Sunhee’s Love Story of Jinok and Byungun illuminates romance and sorrow of artists who used to be pleased in Nakwon-dong and Ikseon-dong in 1920s, by making complex media work. JUNG Jungho interprets Ikseon-dong as the place of numerous desires and needs that are piled and tangled: and with his photograph installation called Broken Words, he approaches the other side of complication of Ikseon-dong located like a scar. LEE Wonho’s IK-SUN-MUN-DAP replaces the signboards of shops that are noticed naturally when strolling around Ikseon-dong into Zen riddle-like reasons, which proposes augmented reality screen, and revealing the rapid commercialization of the district. Everyday Practice who participated as a team used a phrase from KIM Sooyoung (KIM was born in Jongno district)’s poetry “Why do I get upset by little things” into a pipe sculpture in the garden of the Ikseon-dong’s guest house. Word vanishes at the moment of ignition and writings are faded after being read. However, when words and writings deliver emotions after a visual structured process, this would leave a long echo to the readers and beholders who approach more directly.
If we read the first group of the works, then we must treat the openness and closeness of the script at the same time; moreover, there are also the works confronting the other side of the world. They are approached only when looking at the script drew aside from the general characteristics and definitions. JUNG Seung’s Rainbow from Warned Land combine sound and light and LEE Changhoon’s Nakwon associate braille and speaker playing pop songs. Both works use symbols that are not categorized words as words, and with paradoxically expressive way, they suggest betrayal moment of real and ideal. By proposing regulation of cacography in reversed way, Cacography Project of Kim Park Project delivers not the value judgment that is made according to the aesthetic of shape, but instead, the truth involved in one’s own handwriting. Both LEE Kwangkee’s Kwangkee Script Print Center, which penetrates the rules of two different script systems and invents new styles of script, and Black Mt.’s Celebrate Your Freedom to Read, which features taboos of writing and reading, allowing one to experience the things that are discovered when we cross the rigid border of that we took it for granted without any doubts. KWON Dooyoung’s Strange IK Sun Dong builds the poetic world by encounter of physical space named Ikseon-dong and non-physical language by borrowing poet LEE Sang’s literary style. KWON uses his own developed software in order to create poems. The characteristic of this work is that the result does not belong to any particular side. For instance, it does not belong to the artist completely, who invented the software program, nor does it belong to the program, which has shown the poem on the monitor screen. Indeed, they are written with ordinary script, however these can hardly be affirmed that they belong to a certain literature genre. From the works of JUNG Seung to that of KWON Dooyoung are the experiments about to enter flexible haengnang, where the creators thought conformity of script separately. It is fascinating to see how the works allow an audience to participate actively in the art experiments in different ways too.
The site of World Script Symposia encompasses from the outside of Nakwon Music Mall, and the interior space – from the basement to fourth floor, the alleys from Nakwon Music Mall to Ikseon-dong and the shops, commercial spaces and houses of Ikseon-dong, and the allies that could hardly be defined. In that context, the works concentrated on the memories of different palces creat another group. SONG Joowon’s PungJeong.Gak (風情.刻) — From Sewoon Plaza to Nakwon BLDG will show the cumulated stories of about fifty years at the time of Sewoon Plaza and Nakwon Building into video of contemporary dances. OH Minjeong and IM Sunhee’s Love Story of Jinok and Byungun illuminates romance and sorrow of artists who used to be pleased in Nakwon-dong and Ikseon-dong in 1920s, by making complex media work. JUNG Jungho interprets Ikseon-dong as the place of numerous desires and needs that are piled and tangled: and with his photograph installation called Broken Words, he approaches the other side of complication of Ikseon-dong located like a scar. LEE Wonho’s IK-SUN-MUN-DAP replaces the signboards of shops that are noticed naturally when strolling around Ikseon-dong into Zen riddle-like reasons, which proposes augmented reality screen, and revealing the rapid commercialization of the district. Everyday Practice who participated as a team used a phrase from KIM Sooyoung (KIM was born in Jongno district)’s poetry “Why do I get upset by little things” into a pipe sculpture in the garden of the Ikseon-dong’s guest house. Word vanishes at the moment of ignition and writings are faded after being read. However, when words and writings deliver emotions after a visual structured process, this would leave a long echo to the readers and beholders who approach more directly.
Recalling forgotten stories in specific places without knowing when it was forgotten, and looking back to the current changes that is slowly processed- are the act of making cracks in the time and space. In order to pick out the deserted in a small crevice, the crack needs to be opened and at last, the crack is required to be divided and it shall never be hidden. Hence, hiatus of time and space that are revealed by the works, sometimes accompany sense of loss and inconvenience.
Yet, declaring the ones that are definitely buried and hidden also implies its expanding extension and opening the investigating place. The following works are examples. SHIN Jungah and KIM Junho develope the virtue that HAN’s script sculptures have, into Ikseon Instruction Manual, Poem: If Come to Ikseon. HAN Jaejoon discovers the core value of design from Hunminjeongeum and shows in his There are no two reasons 2016: Hangul Installaion (理旣不二) series by materializing three dimensional Hangul script sculptures. HAN Jaejoon’s script sculptures examine Hangul’s elements of design and form to expand infinitely in order to find out Hangul’s formative art side. YOON Hyungmin’s The Cesture of Writing (When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you) is the work that combines alphabets embodied with hand-gestures: each character makes one line of a sentence and being printed out, and all will be displayed on the wall. Clearly, the artist makes readable sentences. However, because of not easily recognizable gestured-characters and the source of the sentence, (which is never revealed by the artist) the audience is forced out to the sphere of undefined and drift meanings. SHIN Hyocheol adds Hangul syllables, artificial flowers, and lights to make chandelier Placebo. Mioon and MOON Jeongju allows the audience to look back identity, social system, script and language and Ikseon-dong through interactive work Being Public, which is similar to stamp play. Their work tends to have a playful strategy to range over script and language, thereby probing that script and language operating mechanism in work-located spaces. Finding other meanings through the ones so-called rediscovery or reinterpretation, the works of last group allow us to guess the rich allure that script has. Just as a candle of haengnangchae, which is added and changed as occasion demands.
Nonetheless, works of participating artists told different stories of script bountifully to the audiences of World Script Symposia, in order to complete World Script Symposia as the village festival with making few steps into Nakwon Music Mall and Ikseon-dong, the roles of academic conferences, workshops, performances, and spectators participating programs were significant as well. Academic conferences that are introduced separately in the latter part of the catalogue put basis on haengnang of script and script of haengnang: it was the open space for the debates where the numerous academic scholars had a heated discussion on script ecosystem. This opened space aimed to escape from formats of other conferences that follows a uniformly stereotyped frame. Allowing encounters of academics and artists, and experts and non-experts to hold hands together, it offered the consilience, which itself gradually widened boundaries of (un)seen script. In addition, Kim Park Project’s live Silk Screening performance, non-latin typefaces applied in Granshan workshop, ‘Reading Children’s Books in World Script’ held in Multiculture Museum, and creating Hangul words using large script sculptures ㄴ.ㅁ.ㅇ are the events for everyone whoever could participate: the events have added persistence and liveliness to World Script Symposia. The programs with free form, spread all over the festival site helped World Script Symposia not just to be an art event ‘to be seen and to leave’ but ‘to be experienced and become enjoyable humanity art festival’ more firmly.
As Avital Ronnell has commented as follows, “I always arrive late writing’s encounter”- language, script and the attempt using both will always dance and may always fail. However, as the art flows flexibly around the script, the door that links the moment of failure to the new possibility will be able to be opened. In this case, it is expected that through ‘World Script Symposia 2016 Haengnang’, in diverse layer, script, disciplines, culture, art, and life that have met in countless ways are recovered and shown the way towards the new level.
Yet, declaring the ones that are definitely buried and hidden also implies its expanding extension and opening the investigating place. The following works are examples. SHIN Jungah and KIM Junho develope the virtue that HAN’s script sculptures have, into Ikseon Instruction Manual, Poem: If Come to Ikseon. HAN Jaejoon discovers the core value of design from Hunminjeongeum and shows in his There are no two reasons 2016: Hangul Installaion (理旣不二) series by materializing three dimensional Hangul script sculptures. HAN Jaejoon’s script sculptures examine Hangul’s elements of design and form to expand infinitely in order to find out Hangul’s formative art side. YOON Hyungmin’s The Cesture of Writing (When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you) is the work that combines alphabets embodied with hand-gestures: each character makes one line of a sentence and being printed out, and all will be displayed on the wall. Clearly, the artist makes readable sentences. However, because of not easily recognizable gestured-characters and the source of the sentence, (which is never revealed by the artist) the audience is forced out to the sphere of undefined and drift meanings. SHIN Hyocheol adds Hangul syllables, artificial flowers, and lights to make chandelier Placebo. Mioon and MOON Jeongju allows the audience to look back identity, social system, script and language and Ikseon-dong through interactive work Being Public, which is similar to stamp play. Their work tends to have a playful strategy to range over script and language, thereby probing that script and language operating mechanism in work-located spaces. Finding other meanings through the ones so-called rediscovery or reinterpretation, the works of last group allow us to guess the rich allure that script has. Just as a candle of haengnangchae, which is added and changed as occasion demands.
Nonetheless, works of participating artists told different stories of script bountifully to the audiences of World Script Symposia, in order to complete World Script Symposia as the village festival with making few steps into Nakwon Music Mall and Ikseon-dong, the roles of academic conferences, workshops, performances, and spectators participating programs were significant as well. Academic conferences that are introduced separately in the latter part of the catalogue put basis on haengnang of script and script of haengnang: it was the open space for the debates where the numerous academic scholars had a heated discussion on script ecosystem. This opened space aimed to escape from formats of other conferences that follows a uniformly stereotyped frame. Allowing encounters of academics and artists, and experts and non-experts to hold hands together, it offered the consilience, which itself gradually widened boundaries of (un)seen script. In addition, Kim Park Project’s live Silk Screening performance, non-latin typefaces applied in Granshan workshop, ‘Reading Children’s Books in World Script’ held in Multiculture Museum, and creating Hangul words using large script sculptures ㄴ.ㅁ.ㅇ are the events for everyone whoever could participate: the events have added persistence and liveliness to World Script Symposia. The programs with free form, spread all over the festival site helped World Script Symposia not just to be an art event ‘to be seen and to leave’ but ‘to be experienced and become enjoyable humanity art festival’ more firmly.
As Avital Ronnell has commented as follows, “I always arrive late writing’s encounter”- language, script and the attempt using both will always dance and may always fail. However, as the art flows flexibly around the script, the door that links the moment of failure to the new possibility will be able to be opened. In this case, it is expected that through ‘World Script Symposia 2016 Haengnang’, in diverse layer, script, disciplines, culture, art, and life that have met in countless ways are recovered and shown the way towards the new level.