1945–1999 Online Platform for Korean Modern and Contemporary Art

Media and Technology in Korean Art of the 1990s

Media and Technology This study begins by examining exhibitions related to media art—an area that has long been marginalized in research on Korean art of the 1990s. The exhibition histories has only recently begun to garner scholarly attention. Importantly, the aim of this study is not to propose specific frameworks or methodologies for writing exhibition history. Rather, it seeks to trace archival materials related to (media art) exhibitions in order to explore how we might revisit the irretrievable times and spaces of the past. Throughout this process, the study seeks to reflect on the historical conditions of that period. It should be noted that examining the history of media art exhibitions remains an uncharted domain that cannot be fully addressed through the mere collection of data or theoretical analysis alone. This raises the question of whether the term exhibition histories can, in fact, serve as a viable conceptual framework. How might a “history of exhibitions” be meaningfully constructed? Korean modernism, so to speak, has arrived at the present by piecing together a disjointed spine. Before attempting to write a history of exhibitions, we must first ask: what constitutes an exhibition, and how was it practiced? Only by recovering the records of these processes and the memories of those involved in the field at the time can we begin to develop a concrete and coherent narrative and direction. For this reason, this study should not be understood as an attempt to write a definitive history of exhibitions, but rather as a preliminary investigation that lays the necessary groundwork for constructing such a history. The study focuses on media art–centered exhibitions held from the 1990s to the early 2000s. The scope of research is limited to art institutions capable of sustaining ongoing exhibitions of media art—those in which the key characteristics of media art including exhibition planning, collection, and conservation can be examined. Given these criteria, only a limited number of institutions were qualified as eligible case studies. Priority was given to the long-term research viability of the selected institutions, leading to a focus on media art exhibitions organized by major public art museums. This decision was not intended to exclude exhibitions held in galleries or alternative spaces but rather reflects the perspective that museum exhibitions are more appropriate to constructing “history of media art exhibitions.” Technology as a Social Imagination Before proceeding with the main discussion, it is necessary to clarify certain terminological distinctions. In the Korean context, the terms media art and video art are often used interchangeable—a conflation largely grounded in the fact that video has long served as a dominant medium within the broader category of media art. The prevalence of single-channel video works in exhibitions around the early 2000s further contributed to reinforcing the general familiarity with the term video art. Yet this terminological ambiguity extends beyond the realm of semantics; it provides meaningful insight into the anthropological dimensions of Korea’s technological landscape and media ecology. Beginning in the 1980s, the Korean art scene began to witness the emergence of creative experiments grounded in media-based practices. A pivotal moment came in 1984 when Paik Nam June’s Good Morning, Mr. Orwell was broadcast domestically, which sparked heightened interest in artworks engaging with technological media as distinct from traditional artistic forms. This growing attention persisted into the 1990s, reflecting broader transformations in technology, society, and culture, and ultimately informing new directions in art historical discourse. Concurrently, a series of state-led international events, including the Asian Games Seoul 1986, the Olympic Games Seoul 1988, and the Daejeon international Exposition in 1993, served as catalysts for grand-scale cultural celebrations aimed at integrating advanced science with the arts. From this period onward, artistic practices expanded rapidly to incorporate not only video, but also light, sound, and internet networks in diverse and multidimensional ways.1 During this time, the concept of technology was understood and interpreted in a quite broad sense. Notably, many of these early experiments in technology-based art took place within the context of festivals—an aspect that deserves particular attention. The connection between media art and festivals is most clearly manifested in public art practices that incorporate media technologies. This aspect will be examined in Chapters 2 and 3, which focus on SEOUL in MEDIA and the Seoul Media Biennale, two major initiatives launched in the mid-1990s. While attempts to integrate science and art began as early as the mid to late 1980s, it was not until the 1990s that exhibitions explicitly adopted the term technology art (tech-art). Even a brief glance at Western modernist art reveals that artistic engagement with science and technology resonates with the developmental history of media, beginning with the advent of photography. Marcel Duchamp, for example, employed non-art materials, such as dust, wire, varnish, foil, and glue, in his work The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). He also produced explanatory pamphlets containing metaphorical and scientific reflections on technology, encouraging viewers to consult them during the exhibition. In the 1960s, kinetic artist Jean Tinguely staged Study for an End of the World (1962) in the Nevada desert, a performance that involved the detonation of old defunct computers and machine parts. At the time, kinetic art was less concerned with the act of recycling discarded materials than issuing a critical warning about the potential crises that machine civilization could bring to the planet. While technology can serve as a beneficial tool for human advancement, it also holds the potential for destruction—and for that reason, it cannot be uncritically embraced. Art historian Yang Eunhee notes that “the antiwar movement that grew out of student activism in the 1960s also expressed resistance to violence by asserting the incompatibility of technology and war.”2 Decades later, the technology boom that swept through Korea in the 1990s was shaped by a socio-technical imaginary—a vision of a progressive future made possible through the convergence of technology and art. Philosopher of science Kim Sang-Hyun defines the socio-technical imaginaries as a form of co-production,3 whereby “a collectively imagined social order is projected onto the meanings, roles, and objectives of science and technology, while at the same time that social order is shaped by those very technologies.” He further highlights that Korea’s socio-technical imaginary also took on the form of nationalist developmentalism.4 Meanwhile, art historian Lee Eunjoo interprets the concept of technology art in the Korean art scene of the time as encompassing not only the fusion of science, art, and technology, and the notion of open-ended works for audiences, but also the possibility of the artworks themselves becoming subjects of aesthetic interpretation.5 Artist Sim Cheowoong, who explored the relationship between media technologies and art in the 1990s, draws attention to the rapid transitional period during which the computer marked a critical shift from analog to digital systems. He notes that “computer graphics were not simply tools for representing technology, but rather engaged with analog concepts, and amid the sweeping tide of the so-called digital revolution, came to be replaced by the term ‘digital,’ which restructured the patterns of visual culture. As a result, technology art began to give way to the term ‘media art.’”6 In 1996, Sim conducted a notable experiment that staged the collision between digital and analog, as well as between technology and media, by combining 3D animation with video. Post-Media Discourse As the world evolves on a digital foundation, older technologies and objects are rendered obsolete almost instantaneously. As previously discussed, technology and art anticipated the transformation of the sociocultural landscape in the West, following industrialization in the 1960s. In the Korean art scene, a similar shift became more pronounced around 2010, when growing attention began to be paid to the various cultural and social mutations generated by scientific and technological developments. Boris Groys identifies one of the defining conditions of contemporary art as the production and circulation of images within today’s digital networks, which have undergone unprecedented transformation.7 These images became heterogeneous in ways that transcend the physical and technical distinctions of specific media. “In the framework of contemporary culture an image is permanently circulating from one medium to another medium, and from one closed context to another closed context.”8 In this way, images are continuously propagated and extended, ultimately stripped of any specificity tied to time, space, place, or medium—a condition that gives rise to what is now referred as post-cinema discourse. The death of cinema will inevitably be followed by the death of television and eventually, the death of the internet. The term ‘post-media’ denotes the dissolution of the relationship between the image (or event) and any specific site. The evolution of media—from screen to video, to computer monitor, to projector—unfolds in the overlap between emergence and extinction. As a result, consumers, viewers, and users inevitably find themselves caught between obsolete devices and emerging technologies, oscillating between a sense of nostalgia for old machines and the desire for the latest innovations. Today, media can no longer be understood merely as a product; rather, its materiality can be defined in terms of a form of materialism that exists not only within the realm of art, but also through continuous interaction with the surrounding environment. Siegfried Zielinski interprets the materiality of media, and the epistemological structures centered on human and cultural inquiry, as part of media archaeology—a theoretical and practical approach that aligns, at least partially, with the trajectories of philosophy of technology and the humanities.9 Lev Manovich, a leading figure in post-media discourse, has argued that the transition to digital representation, along with the rise of common modification/editing tools—such as copying, pasting, morphing, inserting, filtering, and compositing—has effectively dissolved the traditional boundaries between artistic tools and materials. These tools have blurred the distinctions between photography and painting, and between film and animation. In other words, the relationship between analog and digital is not one of binary opposition, but rather a continuity that spans past and future—a concept that can be understood as extending a posthumanist thought in the age of climate crisis to even include the material remnants of technological civilization. The intersection of these ideas with contemporary art resonates with the practices of the 1960s, such as Fluxus, Happenings, and Conceptual art.