“IAS Issue Fighters” is the program made available every year by Insa Art Space, Arts Council Korea to pay close attention to the most urgent and vital issues in visual culture and the society-in-general. This program attempts to develop and expand the agenda proposed by the artists in the exhibition in order to discuss a wider scope of relevant issues in different perspectives and to let the audience directly experience the range of issues through collaboration with other programs in different format such as workshop, talk, and publication.

For the past five years since hosting the International Alternative Space Symposium entitled “Memory of the City, History of Space” in 2002, IAS has been discussing the relationship between “Art and Politics” based on the consideration of Korea’s specific geopolitical and historical context. Under the current situation in which neo-imperialism, neo-liberalism, nationalism, polarization of society appear as the main agenda in our society, and the expansion of the art market as well as the commercialization of art re-appear as the keyword in our art world, IAS feels the need to reflect on the structure of “Economy” lying at the bottom of this enormous ideology.

Regardless of the kind of regime or society, every human relationship is structuralized by the “economic” logic that seeks maximum profit out of limited goods with a rational mind. Although lamentable, this is a very natural situation. The problem lies in the fact that despite the diverse economic subjects and contexts and the particularity of capital, the economic logic is dominantly oriented toward the market, market goods, and market labor. After all, can we say that man’s every action is an economic activity? Is the economic subject man’s only social subject? How do the principles of economics and the current economy occupy and distort our thoughts, behaviors, and everyday life? Is an activity outside the market nonproductive? What kind of economic structure, activity, and above all, subject, does the counter-market idea produce? What are the new values and attitude that the alternative economic thought propose to the cultural workers, and what kinds of awareness, criticality and self-discipline does this alternative economic thought demand to us? All these will be the issues to be addressed and discussed through this program.

Heart and mind kneads thought and the mouth gives it birth. Thought that comes out the mouth grows in-between mouth and mouth. Thought grows and deepens when it’s shared. “IAS Issue Fighters” would like to share thoughts and ideas with those who want to examine more the notion of ‘value’ in art and economy, the issue of artistic labor in economic structure, and the status of cultural worker as economic subject.


Chung Haessen, “give me all your money”

In her new work, Chung Haessen inscribes a text in bullet holes by hiring a professional gunman to shoot with an air gun on a wall. The phrase written in bullets, “give me all your money” is quoted from the song, “MA BAKER”sung by BONEY M, the German pop group in the 80s. This disco song is about a kind of ‘bandit queen’ figure who drills her sons how to shoot the gun and makes a notorious bank robber band and is finally shot to death.

Chung Haessen’s singularity is found in her intense critical mind to the society and its direct, bold and concrete
manifestation. She is an artist who performs, confronts and copes with the social mechanism. Back in 2000, Chung Haessen has presented the project “MAFI ORGANIZATION” in which she set up a promotion and management agency of an underground musician in the gallery of IAS. By intervening into the operating system of entertainment business, she exposes the social, economic structure and system embedded in the practice of cultural production and distribution. She carries out her own system that complements and modifies the paradox of the social system outside the art world. In her new piece, Chung Haessen displays a discontent and resistance to‘the ugly and the bad’ through powerful confrontation.

Selected Exhibitions: 2006 “A Tale of Two Cities”, Busan Biennale, Busan Museum of Modern Art; 2005 “Municipio di Biella 2005”, Festival delle differenze, Biella(sol); 2005 The "Inner-Soul" Island: The Art of Survival, Venice International University, Island San Servolo; 2004 “Nature(s) Unique(s)”-“Everywhere but nowhere”, Le lieu unique, Nantes; 2000 “MAFI organization”, Insa Art Space, Seoul(sol)
www.haessenchung.net


Bik Van der Pol, Traveling Magazine Table

Bik Van der Pol(Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol, based in Rotterdam) is two-person artist collective and organizers who have collaborated since 1995. They examine and excavate rich context of a site by setting a simple historical and architectural intervention in the everyday surroundings. Their projects take the form of urban public research projects by running research programs with the local participants. To Bik Van der Pol, a creative artwork operates as a social investigation method that allows the approach, discussion,
and examination of concrete issues of a particular region as well as a strategy to bring out critical thinking, open discussion, and public interface.

In 2000, Bik Van der Pol and fellow artists initiated Nomads&Residents(N&R), a network of artists, writers and organizers. N&R has a special interest in projects that are developed on a collective basis and in artistic practices that involve making resources and ideas available for common use. With this in mind, N&R initiated the Travelling Magazine Table(TMT) in 2001 during the first Lecture Lounge at the Clocktower of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York.

The TMT archive consists of a collection of a broad variety of national and international magazines, journals, and similar printed publications, produced by non-profit and alternative spaces, artists’ collectives, groups, teams,
and other forms of collaborations. The TMT grants an unexpected insight of the discourses and networks existing
outside the mainstream channels of art. As a way to defy the modernistic notion of originality only ascribed to one
individual and the notion of intellectual ‘property’, TMT actualizes the circulation of information that is shared,
utilized, and distributed.

The TMT was hosted by CAC Vilnius(2003), Art in General, New York(2004) M.I.T., Boston (2005), IASPIS, Stockholm and Kulturzone06, Frankfurt(2006). First started as 30 items, the TMT has been updated with new materials by each participating venue, and made available for public consultation. After TMT Seoul, the prints and publications of Korea will also participate in TMT collection, thereby meeting with the network of Nomads&Residents.

IAS invited Hyung Ju Lee, a visual artist and production designer of film for the interior design of TMT archive
presentation and workshop space.

Selected Exhibitions/Project: 2006 “Fly Me To The Moon”, New Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; “Past Imperfect”, Casco, Utrecht; 2005 “Ford Boxes”, Cork Caucus, Cork; 2004 “Mobile Home”, Virtueel Museum, Amsterdam; 2003 “No 19/Nomdas in Residence”, Beyond, Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht; “Sleep With Me”, Rooseum, Malmo; 2002 “Married by Powers”, TENT, Rotterdam; “Lobby/Office Piece”, The Studio of Young Artists Association, Budapest; 2001 “Loompanics”, White Box, New York
www.bikvanderpol.net


Traveling Magazine Table Workshop by Bik Van der Pol

How is information distributed within the economic system?
Who delivers it with what intention?
How is knowledge produced?
What is ‘open’ source? What is the opposite of it? What kind of information is not publicly ‘open’?
How functions the knowledge distribution system?
Have you met an information wandering in secret outside the formal economic structure?
Have you ever discovered the information that had been ‘hidden’ or ‘disappeared’?
What is piracy? Who defines it? What is its objective?

Bik Van der Pol runs a TMT workshop with the participants in Korea based on the Traveling Magazine Table archive. The workshop is open to those who are interested in the production of prints/publication/web zine and those who want to trace hidden or ‘disappearing’ information.

The participants will research and collect printed materials made by a variety of cultural producers in Korea, and question and discuss the monolithic circulation structure of information and the formative process of knowledge. The workshop will be running in various ways including talk & discussion, site visit, field research, etc. Bik Van der Pol and the participants will produce a printed material as a way to suggest a collective as a new creative subject that seeks distribution of information and diversification of communication channel.

TMT Timetable
2006. 11. 10. Fri. 3pm, Introduction of TMT archive & workshop by Bik Van der Pol, IAS TMT room
2006. 11. 13. Mon. 2-5pm, Input Meeting I, IAS TMT room
2006. 11. 14. Tues. 2-5pm, Input Meeting II, IAS TMT room
2006. 11. 15. Wed. Site Visit
2006. 11. 22. Wed. 2-5pm, Production Meeting, IAS TMT room

* This timetable only indicates basic meetings held with the artists.

* For participation, please register by email/call Insa Art Space, ias@arko.or.kr, 760 4721, by Nov.10.


Shouting Session

In what concrete ways does the market mechanism occupy my thought, action, and everyday life?
What are the position, role, function of the cultural and artistic producers in society?
What kind of labor am I exercising in this society and what is a product of my labor?
How is immaterial labor(intellectual labor, creative work) commercialized, traded, and circulated by the mainstream economic structure that modern economic subjects run by the rule of demand/supply rule?
Are artworks, art projects and art practices appropriate goods for the market and production line dominated by such notions as competition, ownership, and accumulation?
What would be the specific economic principle or system that can be applied to such immaterial labor?
What kind of values and operating mechanism can be proposed in alternative economics?
What are the models of alternative economy that have been experimented, and what is the core value of the practices?
Can these models be applied and experimented in our artistic context? What is required to cultural workers?

Take #1, 11/11, Saturday 5pm
“Wayward Economy: Contemporary Art Practices in Informal Economy”
Manray Hsu(Co-curator, 2006 Liverpool Biennial)

Take #2, 11/14, Tuesday 5pm
“Alternative Economy and Theory of Co-ownership of Land”
Yoon-sang Kim(Department of Public Administration, Kyungbook National University; Co-president, People’s Coalition for Land Justice)

Take #3, 11/28, Tuesday 5pm
“Co-op as an Alternative Movement”
Seong-oh Kim(Researcher, Korean Research Institution of COOP)

Take #4, 12/1, Friday 5:30pm
“Towards the ‘Originalstream’ Beyond Mainstream and Non-Mainstream: Feminist Economic Perspective”
Tae-hee Hong(Department of Economics, Chosun University)

* The timetable and title can be changed. Please consult the IAS homepage, www.insaartspace.or.kr

Artist Book, "RE-MAPPING THE WORLD" by Chung Haessen
Chung Haessen will create her artist book with graphic designer, Sung Yeol Kim with her 45 pencil drawings(2005). "RE-MAPPING THE WORLD" is a cartographic project started from one stupid imagination of what will be changed and bring to us to now if two or more countries are located differently and their geographic features are reconfigured.

Document book of “2006 IAS Issue Fighters” will also be published in December.