Talks
Dialogue: Y and H
Sepember 21, 5 pm
Image of Women in Korean Folk Tales: Kim Youngok
Octorber 5, 5 pm

Book Club
http://cafe.naver.com/survivingthefuture

Insa Art Space Archive has opened its references and materials to the public and conducted an archive-based project for smooth photo collection and advance in its application. Insa Art Space redefined evr seoul branch and CDZA as the ‘Curators’ Locker’ in 2005 and 2006 respectively. Evr seoul branch rent over 500 video art works and CDZA directly confirmed references and materials actually used by curators in exhibitions.

“Surviving the Future” is a project planned by Insa Art Space Archive to ensure the flexible linkage between references and art works and experiment on the potential applicability of references by exhibiting books that served as the base of Y’s life and works. The title “Surviving the Future” is taken from the book of Arnold J. Toynbee, which was found in Y’s old bookshelves. The book “Surviving the Future” is a rewritten version of a dialogue between Toynbee and a Japanese professor, and it contains his creed for life, life and death, love, education, art and his view of the world. Hong Woo-hyeong re-interprets Y’s bookshelves and the audience share two writers’ books. This is an indirect form of a dialogue and also involves the audience.

Y has paid deep attention to women’s issues since the 1980s. Although it seems quite late to turn to the issues, Y has created his works depicting mothers and Korean women. In particular, elements existing in the other side of Y’s narrative works such as literate motifs, interest in women’s identity, culture, media, nature, shamanism and fables are found in Y’s books.

Hong Woo-hyeong, responsible for redefining Y’s bookshelves, participated in ‘Artists Upgrade Project’ at Insa Art Space in 2005. He is now seeking to propagate functions and roles of objects in daily life. He claims that objects in daily life are the clue that helps understand an individual and they are more efficient to ensure what kind of person he or she is than just relying on a wild guess. This time, through his work, Hong Woo-hyeong regards books are the key to explain Y. For each book has its own characteristic and content, he interprets that sorting out and identifying books is the object which is necessary to understand Y. For a starter, Hong Woo-hyeong classified books according to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), and then he further distributed them into several divisions such as women’s issues, art, poetry and novel.

In addition, Hong Woo-hyeong replaced admission tickets with Y’s books as a method to travel from reality to another world. With books wrapped and their titles covered, the significance and heaviness of books are transformed and reborn as thin and light tickets. The color of wrapping paper is determined according to a classification system and the desk is neatly organized. Such a process is well arranged like a monochrome work. The color distribution map created by Hong Woo-hyeong traces Y’s footage with books to tell what theme Y focused on. As the audience take a book out of bookshelves and turn it back somewhere else in the bookshelves, the location of books keeps changing, and at last, the color distribution of the bookshelves comes to different from the original one. Y’s bookshelves await more changes and seek to put more various interpretations on them by the audience.

Books are addictive and reading tends to accompany a sense of obsession to posses them. Regarding that Y never accepted possession or exclusiveness, Y may want to give away books. Hong Woo-hyeong hands out Y’s books to the audience as if multiplying his incarnation to reach out to the people hoping to resurrect and unfold a function.

The exhibit hall is cozy and comfortable with desks, chairs and photocopiers as if it is somebody’s study. The audience are allowed to read books as many as they want. During the exhibition, “Dialogue: Y and H” is scheduled and a talk on women’s identity in legendary literature, for example, Bari Princess, with women’s studies expert Kim Young-ok will take place. On the sidelines, a book club is recruiting members online. A book will be chosen among Y’s books to develop a motif for a discussion on art works. Members will be working on drawings as the outcome.