2019 KCCUK OPEN CALL: WAYS TO EXPERIENCE

2019 KCCUK Open Call

WAYS TO EXPERIENCE 11 June – 6 July 2019

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Associated Event Performance Dinner Time (2019)

by Boram Moon Saturdays 2pm 22nd, 29th June, 6th July Free

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Ways to Experience showcases a series of collaborative works by six international artists based in the UK and Korea. They creatively investigate and experiment with the notion of experience and constructed knowledge of the world through philosophical questioning and scientific research. The concept of this exhibition grew from the artists Boram Moon and Eunmi Mimi Kim who questioned the validity of our own perception of physical and psychological experiences.

Without realising it, our perception and knowledge processes limit the breadth of our reflection and constrict the way we regard and otherwise experience the world.

For the six participating artists the way we experience the world is largely determined by the systems of knowledge we acquire through culture and language. With these works the artists challenge the order of the existing knowledge system, encouraging the viewer to consider how the time and space we are living in can be varied, or how the moments we encounter everyday can be perceived as peculiar, or how our senses and reactions can be manipulated.

With an interest in reinterpreted experiences, memories and feelings, this exhibition embraces multi-media live performance, sculptural/digital mapping, audienceparticipatory installation, immersive sound installation and multi-channel video display. The range of different mediums and practices shown in the exhibition not only incorporate the various artistic interpretations of ‘Ways to Experience’ but also leaves open the door for a very personal, subjective experience.

Ways to Experience was developed as part of the KCCUK Open Call programme, selected by three jurors: Kirsty Ogg (Director, New Contemporaries), Dr Je Yun Moon (Head of Programmes, Liverpool Biennial), Matthew Pendergast (Curator, Castlefield Gallery).

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Taeyoung Choi

Choi has been researching the factors that influence the perception and interpretation of time and then experimenting with them in an experienceable form. The ‘Space and Time Study’ sees a cluster of uniformly rotating lasers dissecting a wall at different points. This work is one of a series of pieces that use lasers to explore the factors that influence our perception of time. For Choi when these lasers are installed in a well-planned configuration, one increases their understanding of time as well as asking new questions about the time that has already passed. Questions that invoke responses that are always determined by how the individual has experienced and interacted with the subject of time in their life.

Space and time study 300 × 400 × 100 cm Metal floor lamp stand, motor, laser pointer 2019

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Woojin Jeon

Jeon’s installations begin at the moment of ruin, namely when paper encounters water. When a thin sheet of paper evenly absorbs moisture, the water quickly adheres to the surface. However if that paper is thin as with toilet tissue, the saturated tissue is rapidly destroyed. This sense of destruction is at the heart of Jeon’s work, who questions the failed use of mundane household objects and the ‘inbetweenness’ individuals commonly feel in the modern-day world.

For Jeon, this simple physical but uncomfortable phenomenon of saturated toilet tissue evokes a thought that something is wrong and broken, it is a sensation he describes as ‘awkward’ – however this awkwardness is to be cherished as it is the very source of his imagination.

A material that has become mushy should be well drained and dried until it returns to a more preferred form. If the moisture isn’t removed, the material itself and its form will change over time. The condition of ‘being wet’ and ‘yet to be dry’ unfairly creates the impression that something is still in the process of being made or even incomplete.

As Jeon’s objects absorb moisture, they are slowly deteriorating and it is precisely here with a trace of contamination that they at first appear to lose all purpose, but for Jeon they are encountering ‘in-betweennezss’.

Artists often have a hyper sense of hygiene which pushes them, their senses and their work to the edge, for Jeon this area of anxiety is where a sense of ‘in-betweenness’ occurs.

This is because a substance that is in between a material absorbing moisture and a device supplying moisture is no longer stable or active.

Absorbing Objects Variable installation Sink, toilet paper, water dispenser, gypsum, coloured paper 2018

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Myungwoo Jung

Right next to a highway that snakes its way from Seoul to Seongnam one can regularly see cranes with their recognisable plumage motionless in the thickets. There are several cranes, those who have just landed, some searching for food, some resting. They are unaffected by the traffic, just still, never moving.

1200,2400 enter. 560,320 enter. 369,890 enter. 2987,500 enter. 398,564 enter. 954,500 enter. 950,800 enter. 400,2440 enter. 2440,810 enter. 600,357 enter.

Wallpaper Dog Bone. Blue Suede. Dark Green Translucent Glass. Spanish Roofing Tile. Plywood Knots. Square Glass Tiles. Polished Concrete. Rough Dark Brick. Dark Green Grass. Yellow Diamond Carpet. Corrugated Shiny Metal.

OBS. Wooden Bamboo Blinds

The SM5300-1 with pearl effect is one of the most subtle and luxurious interior films. It is bright and clean. It is not flat because there is a wooden pattern. It is possible to refurbish furniture and sinks with it.

The GM733 occurs as a perfect optical illusion, appearing as a solid surface to the user with a fine textured veneer.

People are easily deceived by the illusion. The special design needs to look real, even overly decorated. The computer-

OVER-LAY/PROPS, performance collaboration with Woonghyun Kim. Photo by The Docent

generated graphics which can never exist in the real world, not now at least, suddenly look plausible. People become deluded as if they are actually there.

A thin film, 0.35mm thick. The fingertips of users touch the surface with its tiny hole and shallow embossing on its thin film. A ridiculous and desperate effort. A fake trying to look real. A silly joke. A shallow effort. How happy our eyes are.

What a wonderful fake.

Fake Texture Single Channel Video 2019

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Eunmi Mimi Kim

As a person with Hyperthyroidism, Kim is a solitary being who can easily be pushed into a sensory overload. To counter her vulnerability, her artistic research project MeTime (4.0): mindfulness-introspection-void aims to align the mind and body back into balance by reducing sensory stimuli while experiencing and expanding awareness of the self.  Kim’s multi-channel video installations are a series of selfexperiments. They are conceptually led performances at various locations that use introspective, meditative and eccentric methods of REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy). As a coping mechanism, Kim chooses off grid locations that reduce sensory stimuli where she can have subjective experiences of self-isolation and avoidance, ultimately enjoying her own personal space, time and experience.  Suffering from hypersensitivity and under an avalanche of runaway thoughts, Kim often encounters an ineffable cognition, perception and sensation in various moments that are sometimes too elusive to define because of not merely the volatility of associated feelings but also the confined manifestation. For Kim, not all things can be decoded by the linguistic and the semantic, in what she calls yet-to-beverbalised senses.

Photo by YJ Mutter

Me-Time (4.0): mindfulness-introspection-voidCollective Video Installation and Semi-hemisphere & Water Installation 2018

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We often delude ourselves with the belief that we are in control of our lives. However, all of us are born into this world, and certain roles are imposed upon us, be they societal, gender or familial. We then live with these obligations as a member of a community, family, or an individual. Each day, consciously or unconsciously we remind ourselves to comply with social obligations and ultimately question whether we are fitting in. This endless cycle is deeply embodied in each of us.  Moon investigates this subconscious behaviour and systemised cognition through provocation and manipulation by reinterpreting habitual body movements. Boram’s sees the body as a living archive that relies on the belief that not only your mind, but also your body can store memories. For Moon this Body Memory recalls a particular situation in the past, and can come to the surface during her performance.

When the body experiences that movement again through similar gestures the memories are revived once more.

Body Memory therefore becomes a living archive, a form of retrospection with movement and so is the basis of her performance.

Boram Moon

Rock Leg Tights Single Channel Video 2018

Mirror, Fluids Single Channel Video 2018

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‘Space as a medium, poetic thinking as a tool’

Eriko Takeno

With the works ‘A clay in the distance’ and ‘Crafting Narrative’, Takeno introduces a method to respond to the introspective experiences that are commonly associated with anxiety and depression. The method uses space as a medium and poetic thinking as a tool, inspired by Italian theorist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s book ‘Breathing: Chaos and Poetry’ (2019):

“the poetical act is a revelation of a possible sphere of experience not yet experienced (that is to say, the experienceable).”

Like Berardi, Takeno takes poetry as a mode of thinking and tries to reflect on one’s own psychological experiences in order to discover how fundamentally an introspective experience can also help others in their healing process.

In ‘Crafting Narrative’, Takeno proposes somatic thinking with poetry as an alternative healing tool to defrost traumatic experiences. In her poetry, she uses her own body as a space to investigate emotions and feelings that have settled within her as traumas, wondering what they were and what they are. By following her personal journey of poetic discovery and emotional recovery this installation invites the audience to experience the healing power of poetic thinking. Working in collaboration with psychologists in Japan and Australia, she has developed the method of somatic thinking through poetry, which, by activating a mutual connection between the internal and external spaces of one’s own body allows the practitioner to deconstruct traumatic narratives of anxiety and to shape them into new narratives.

Through poetic discovery alongside counselling sessions, Takeno has found that anxiety and depression create a spatially strange state of mind. Being lost there, she tends self-isolate. In

Clay in the distance 820 × 188 × 200 cm Duvet (made with fabric and wadding cotton), audio, plinth 2018

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Crafting Narrative 240 × 84 × 0.5 cm Polyester film 2019

‘A clay in the distance’ this state of mind is spatially visualised and amplified to the audience as they walk through the space experiencing a sonic effect from wadding cotton.

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About the Artists

Taeyoung Choi

Woojin Jeon

(b.South Korea, 1989) is an artist and researcher who explores the intersection of art, technology, and experience. His practice and research that investigate tangible interactive forms of human computer interaction attempt to explore the symbiotic relationship between computational systems and humans that goes beyond the barrier between analog and digital. Rather than focusing on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable, his work opens debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want).

(b.SouthKorea, 1992) examines the contradictory situation of desire for production, pragmatism, and economic demand through his sculptural installations, based on his experience in the family environment of the working class. He talks about ‘in-betweenness’, revealing the unstructured state of an individual who is maladaptive to the industrial production-economic environment through objects and drawings.

Cutter Drawing (2017) is drawings that records the artist’s private time whilst the surface of office A4 paper is torn with a knife. His work was introduced through several events such as ‘Absorbing Sculptures’ (2018) and ‘Epicene objects’ (2017).

Choi received his BA from Daegu University’s Industrial Design department, his MA from Royal College of Art’s Information Experience Design programme. Choi has an international career in new media art practices. His works have been exhibited in United Kingdom, South Korea, and Germany, including Quantum Art conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), ACI conference at the Open University. He has participated in a two years design residency programme KDM at the DGDC, Korea.

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They consists of industrial materials and mundane appliances at home which are entangled together to show the status of failure of its original uses. He is based in Seoul, where he received Bachelor of Arts degree (B.A) from Korea National University of Arts in 2018. Currently, he is involved in various performances as stage director and dramaturgy to continue his researches on performance and medium dealing with time and physicality.

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Myung-woo Jung

Eunmi Mimi Kim

Boram Moon

Eriko Takeno

(b.1988) lives and works in Seoul; his practice deeply engages in performative processes, through which the movements of physical labour and computer programming is intertwined.

Based on his past experience working as a spacitial designer and technician, he incorporates the movements of physical labour and computer programming used as handling tools for the installations, and reappropriates them to create the sound and choreography for his own performative installation work. Each component of the performance takes inspiration from the methods and processes of communication between the physical labourers.

(b. South Korea, 1988) was born and raised in South Korea. She completed a BA Fine Arts, Multimedia & Interactive Design at Hanyang University, Korea and MA Experi-mental Design at Royal College of Art, UK. She works at the intersections of visual arts performance, digitally-mediated experimentation, installation and sound art. The artist explores contem-plative, technical and theoretical practices that tend to be research driven under conceptually-led approachesㅡespecially sensory-based artworks regarding sensory perception, experience and its corresponding communication under her own scientific & medical interest and her own physical, physiological and psychological feature.

was born in 1988 in South Korea, lives and works in London, UK. She has worked in performance, sculptural installation, and video focuses on the sensory responses evoked by power, pressure, posture, and gesture by interrupting the physical integrity of the materials.

She investigates how it could be supported by the triggers caused by memories of the unconscious and presents different ways of emerging retrospection through psychological and philosophical grounds. Her works are instructed by a performance score that is the literal translation condensed from the automated physiological (bodily) memory recording the movements of the body in relation to objects and spaces.

(b. London, UK, 1990) grew up in Tokyo, JP. Eriko is a London based artist and researcher. Her research focuses on a quality of art education in relation to mental health based on her own introspective experiences.

Inspired by Federico Campagna who talks about vulnerability as an endless possibility for resolution(2018, pp, 92-94), Eriko explores her own introspective experiences through her own art practice in order to discover a ways for how fundamentally an introspective experiences can help others in their healing process. She addresses her research with variety of media such as poetry, moving image, installation, artistic research method workshops and so on. The workshop has been developed collaborating with psychologists from JA and AU, and it has run several times in JP and UK for a range of groups. Eriko holds her BA in Arts in Literature from department of French Language and Literature, Aoyama Gakuin University(JP), and currently studying in MA degree at Royal College of Art in Information Experience Design, School of Communication(UK). She has exhibited her art works several times in UK, and her thesis was presented conferences in US and UK.

He is studying in MFA, Korea National University of Arts, Seoul and graduated BA(Painting) in Gachon University(2014). Recent exhibitions and performances include: Perform2018 -annual festival, Ilmin museum of Art(2018), Manlap(lev.10000), Seoul Museum of Art - Namseoul (2018), OVER-LÆY_PRØPS, Perform Place, Seoul(2018), Perform2017 -annual festival , Arario Theatre space (2017), do it 2017, Seoul, Ilmin museum of Art(2017).

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She is an early-career artist, of late her works, have been internationally shown in exhibitions and publications to highlight: ‘Thinking Through Sound’ at Design Museum, London, ‘Mundane Man-tra’ at St. John Church, as a part of First Thursdays that is organised by Whitechapel Gallery.

Recently, her group exhibition got featured by London Korean Link and London Live TV Channel, Art Rabbit also her own work got featured and had an interview by some of the magazines- Ele-phant, Create! And Murze magazine. She’s been a finalist including 2018 international contest of contemporary art YICCA, CICA New Media Art Conference (NMAC) 2019, Insatiable Mind SIAF (Salisbury International Arts Festival):WILTSHIRE CREATIVE 2019 etc.

She received MA in Performance pathway from Royal College of Art in London(2018), BA in Fine Arts Painting at Ewha Womans University in Seoul(2014). Boram Moon had her solo exhibition ‘A Forward Roll for Beginners’ in Lumen Crypt, London(2019). Her work has been featured in solo and group shows at such institutions at: Brick and Mortar on Strange Love Time-based Media Festival in Folkestone(2019), Flow 3 on Asian Art Activism, Raven Row (2018), Beyond the Body, Asylum (2018), Follow, Lychee One(2018) in London, Unknown Packages, Queens Museum, New York (2015).

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About the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) The KCCUK Open Call is a visual arts programme that provides support for emerging and early career artists whose opportunities of presenting their practices are becoming rare in the UK’s competitive art scene. The programme offers them an exhibition platform from where they can further establish their careers. In heightening the attention drawn to UK-based Korean artists through individual and collaborative works, the programme is open to various forms of creative artistic expression and communication.

2019 KCCUK Open Call Jurors Dr Je Yun Moon is a curator and writer from South Korea. She has delivered large-scale exhibitions and new commissions over the past 10 years. She has worked in various areas of art, architecture and performance at the Sonje Art Center, Anyang Public Art Project, Venice Architecture Biennale, Nam June Paik Art Center and the Korean Cultural Centre UK. Most recently, she was responsible for the visual art programmes of the UK/Korea 201718, a programme of extensive cultural activities which took place in the UK, presenting exhibitions, performances, residences and workshops and public art installations of Korean artists. She is currently the Head of Programmes at Liverpool Biennial. She holds a doctorate in Curatorial/ Knowledge from Goldsmiths College and an MA in curatorial studies from the Royal College of Art.

Kirsty Ogg is the Director of New Contemporaries, the UK’s leading organisation that provides professional development support for artists leaving formal and alternative programmes of study. Ogg worked as curator at the Whitechapel Gallery from 2009 to 2013. Prior to this, she was Director of The Showroom Gallery, London and was part of the organising committee of artist-led space Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. Ogg has taught widely and is currently a lecturer on the MFA Curating course at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Matthew Pendergast is a curator based in Manchester, UK. He is curator at Castlefield Gallery, established in 1984 as Manchester’s first public art gallery dedicated to contemporary visual art, where he works with regional, national and international artists at all stages of their careers.

He has delivered multiple self-initiated projects including: Hankering for Classification, New Art Spaces: Federation House (2014) co-curated with Elizabeth Wewiora; Rule of Three, Islington Mill (2013) co-curated with Jeni Holt Wright; and in 2011 he completed a Curatorial Residency at 501 Art Space, Chongqing, China. He previously worked for Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Manchester.

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