CONTEXTS AND TRANSFORMATIONS: KOREAN FILM AND VIDEO SINCE 1950
Actors do not behave or decide as atoms outside a social context, nor do they adhere slavishly to a script written for them by the particular intersection of social categories that they happen to occupy. Their attempts at purposive action are instead embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations. – Mark Granovetter, ‘Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness’. The American Journal of Sociology, 1985 p487
The term ‘embeddedness’ is borrowed from ocnomic historian Karl Polanyi who argues in The Great Transformation 1944 that human economy is not autonomous but subordinated to and constrained by institutions such as in politics, religion and social relations. The term is one of the core concepts of economic sociology as such it is salient to this series and our attempts to trace the history of artist moving image practices in Korea where early forms of mass media were employed as a means of social control and artists films with seemingly individual expressions were embedded within these social conditions. So much so that it is very difficult to find personal forms of expression in the medium of film until early 2000. Largely dependent upon film technologies supplied by the US and Japan, the Korean Film Industry has slowly developed from its beginnings during 1950s and the Korean War, through to the introduction of audio-visual education at Ewha Womans University with help from the US Information Service, to early 2000 when filmmaking classes opened in numerous universities and the Korean film industry established its current position as one of the central film and media industries in Asia.
As interest in new filmic languages grew during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of film groups and collectives were established. Amongst the most important of these were Cinepoem coterie (est. 1964), Film 70 (est. 1968), the Small Gauge Film Club (est. 1970), Image Research Group (est. 1972) and Kaidu (est. 1974). Many artists and filmmakers sought to find new modes of expression through utilising newly available 16mm and super 8mm cameras. At the time, only films made by government-recognised production companies could be screened in cinemas, so these collectives instead held their screenings at foreign cultural centres.
Due in part to censorship in Korea at that time, as well as the absence of established networks for presenting experimental film, many of the artists who had begun experimenting with film and had produced pioneering works in the 1960s and early 1970s such as Kim Ku-lim, Lee lk-tae and Han Ok-hi later returned to other art forms. The late Kim Jumsun, who took part in experimental filmmaking workshops at the Goethe Institute during the 1970s, stated that it was very difficult to access information on contemporary western visual art and film during this time. One of the pioneers of video art in Korea, Park Hyun-ki (1942-2000) first came across the work of Nam June Paik, who primarily worked outside of Korea, in the archives of the American Cultural Centre the in 1970s. Throughout this period the European cultural center played a key role as alternative cinema space for screenings, discussions and workshops.
Until the relaxation of censorship at the end of 1980s, the majority of the South Korean population had their access to international mass media strictly controlled. Without personal wealth, or good political connections, it was extremely difficult for Korean artists to become part of international networks, and gain access to contemporary critical theories that would nurture their practice. A figure such as Kwon Joong-woon, who studied in New York during the 1990s, is therefore critical to the development of artists’ moving image practice in Korea. Having discovered media theory during his time in the US, Kwon returned to Korea and went on to lecture at several universities and established the Korean Experimental Film Institute / 실험영화연구소. Kwon’s work examined the history of American avant-garde and looked into the possibility of filmmakers utilising new media technology, as explored in Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema 1970. In 1997 he published New Media Aesthetics and tried to create a form of continuity in the production, screening and archiving of work for artists based in the Korean Experimental Film Institute. Lim Chang-jae and Park Donghyun among others established their practice at this institute are still working in this field.
In the 1990s there were several production-based organisations such as the Underground Creative Group – Pajeok / 지하창작 집단 – 파적 and CP16R, which was connected to Culture School Seoul now Seoul Art Cinema). These groups attempted to find an alternative meaning of cinematic expression, focusing on either ‘independent film’ / 독립 영화 or ‘experimental film’ /실험영화 and issues of production, screening, distribution or funding. Emerging around the same time, they provided a sense that film was beginning to become important in the Korean cultural scene. Despite this up until the late 1990s, political and sociological interest and engagement was always deemed to be more important than personal expression in these alternative filmmaking projects.
During this period, the predominant view was that an alternative formal expression and exploration would detach independent films from the public. This led to a separation of ‘experimental film’ from the sphere of ‘independent film’ in Korea, leading to a number of film festivals no longer including video art and experimental films in their programmes.
Although there were various forms of experimental filmmaking practiced by artists / filmmakers such as Lim Chang-jae and Kim Yoon-tae, it’s a common perception that a significant proportion of experimental film began with the 1st Experimental Film Festival held in 1994 under the title ‘Ecstatic Visions: The Aesthetic of New Media Film’. The festival featured films by Hwang In-tae, Bae Ho-ryong, Lim Chang-jae, Kim Yoon-tae shown alongside work by Kenneth Anger, Robert Breer, Su Friedrich, Doug Hall and Jane Campion. This confirmed for many the suspicion that experimental films made in Korea from the 1990s onwards were ‘western’ in conception, rather than works emerging from a process of self-invention within the specific sociocultural context of Korea. Memory of Surface, Surface on Memory, Lee Jang-wook’s graduation film, became the centre of this debate along with works by Yang Min-su, Koo Donghee, and Park Donghyun. These artists had returned to Korea from prestigious art schools abroad — The Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University.
In the 1990s various events helped to introduce moving image into the context of contemporary art. These exhibitions opened this area of practice to a new generation of artists, from the Whitney Biennial in Seoul at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, 1993 to the – Taejon EXPO (1993), from ‘The City and Moving Image / 도시와 영상’ exhibition at Seoul Museum of Arts in 1998 to the first screening of video art at the Art Sonje Center in November 1998.
By 2000 the film industry, both independent and commercial, had become fully acknowledged as a key component of Korea’s creative economy, and universities began to provide training for people to work in the burgeoning film industry. In 2004 EXiS (International Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul was launched with a survey of the history of Korean experimental film. At the same time, Spacecell, the first artist run film lab in Asia, was founded to support the film community, and has been organising handmade filmmaking workshops since 2004.
Several celebrated artists have emerged in the last decade such as Kim Kyung-man who has used the documentary film as a means of political expression, the video and installation artist Byun Jae-kyu explores the subject of memory and place in photography and Park Min-ha who focuses on the problems of materiality and space through the use of special effects borrowed from the mainstream film industry. Other artists / filmmakers such as Park Chan-kyong, Jung Yoon-suk, Im Heung-soon, to name but a few, are all primarily working within the arts yet exploring the potential of documentary film as a way to engage with contemporary politics and to reinterpret Korean history. They have looked at different social issues from Korea’s recent past, such as the Jijon Clan case of the first serial killer that shook Korean society during the mid-1990s, to the development of the Cheonggyecheon area of Seoul, which has come to symbolise the modernisation and industrialisation of post-war Korea. Many prominent Korean artists now see film as their primary artistic medium, from the recent work of Park Chan-kyong, Yeondoo Jung, Koo Donghee and Im Heung-soon to the collaborative practice of Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, who represented the Korea Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
Hyun Jin Cho, George Clark and Hangjun Lee, September 2015.
EMBEDDEDNESS: ARTISTS FILMS AND VIDEOS FROM KOREA 1960S TO NOW 18-19 September 2015
Organised in collaboration with the Korean Cultural Centre UK, EXiS and supported by LUX.
Booklet edited by: George Clark with Hang jun Lee and Hyun Jin Cho.
Thanks to: Scott Miller Berry, Judith Bowdler, Ben Cook, Maria Palacios Cruz, Electronic Arts Intermix, EXiS, Independent Film & Video Association in Seoul, Indiestory, Joan Kee, Kabsoo Kim, Yoonha Kim, Korean Film Archive, Sook-Kyung Lee, Lightcone, Andrea Lissoni, LUX, Samantha Manton, Je Yun Moon, Junho Oh, Sangnyang Park, Hanseung Ryu, Seulki Shim, Maria Montero Sierra, Ji Hyun Song & Unseong Yoo.
RELATED EVENT: LUX SALON WITH HANGJUN LEE Monday 21 September, 19.00
Hangjun Lee will discuss experimental film and video practices in Asia from the 1930s to now. Lee will present various key works including pioneering documentary films in 1930s by Liu Na-ou from China as well as introduce artist film lab movements such as Spacecell (South Korea, founded in 20041, Lab Laba-Laba (Indonesia, founded in 2014).
Hangjun Lee is the Program Director of EXiS, independent curator and filmmaker. He programmed Letterist Cinema, film performance and expanded cinema events and retrospective programmes of Ito Takashi, Okuyama Junichi, Michael Snow among others. He initiated Asia Forum 2009 at EXiS, an annual platform for Asian experimental moving images. He curated numerous screening programmes for international venues including Guling Avant-Garde theatre (Taipei), Green Papaya Art Project (Manila), Nanjing independent film festival (Nanjing) and OX warehouse (Macau). Recently he curated the opening commemoration screening programme Cinematic Divergence 2013, live film and improvised music festival Mujanhyang (anechoic) 2014 both for National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul. He performed with many musicians such as Jerome Noetinger (France), Hong Chulki (Korea), Dickson Dee (Hong Kong), Martin Tetreault (Canada), Sandra Tavali (Taiwan), Kracoon (Indonesia) to develop live filmic language as filmmaker. He edited Anthology of Asian Experimental Moving Image 2009 and has written for several film and art publications in Taiwan, China, South Korea.