1945–2009 Online Platform for Korean Modern and Contemporary Art

Shifting from Technology Art to Video Art: The Early-to-Mid 1990s Video Landscape through the Work of Hong Sungmin

In March 1990, a Korean magazine published a special feature article on video art. The article introduced fifteen major video artists from both Korea and abroad and provided an overview of the current state and future prospects of video art.1 It presented early pioneers such as Paik Nam June, Richard Serra, and Ant Farm, positioning the emergence of video art as a critical response to the conservative aesthetics of commercial television. Based on the article’s emphasis on the aesthetic and formal classifications of video art, it may be inferred that the Korean art world at the time had a certain level of awareness of the Western discourse surrounding video art. However, the article served primarily as an introductory overview of Western video art.2 Given that Korean video art can be traced back at least to the 1970s, with artists such as Kim Kulim and Park Hyunki, and that the genre began to gain real momentum in the 1980s following the broadcast of Paik Nam June’s Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984), this lack of earlier engagement may come as a surprise. While traditional video art in the West began to decline in its narrower sense, specifically as a medium based on magnetic tape was gradually replaced by new digital technologies, in Korea, video art only began to flourish during this period. This contrast reflects both the temporal gap between Korea and the West and the contextual particularities of the Korean art scene. However, it was not until the late 1990s that works grounded in temporality—the most distinctive characteristic of video art as noted in the article—began to fully take shape in Korean contexts. In this context, Hong Sungmin, who studied Time Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and returned to Korea in 1992, serves as a representative figure of the early Korean video art scene. As one of the first artists to formally study video in the United States—the center of video art—Hong represented a rare case of direct engagement with the discourse of Western video art. Until the late 1990s, when a new generation of artists, including Park Hwayoung, Seo Hyunsuk, and Ham Yangah, who also studied video and film in the U.S., began their careers, he remained virtually alone in this regard. Following his homecoming exhibition of Mass Media & Multi Medium (Dongbang Plaza Gallery, 1992), he actively participated not only in solo exhibitions such as Sauna/Sound (Midopa Gallery, Midopa Department Store, Sanggye Branch, 1994), as well as major domestic and international media art shows and young artists exhibitions. These included Front DMZ (Seoul Museum of Art, 1993), Young Korean Artists '94 (MMCA, 1994), Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (1995), Ssack (Art Sonje Center, 1995), Rebellion of Space: Korean Avant-Garde Art since 1967-1995 (Seoul Museum of Art, 1995), The New Generational Tendency in Korean Contemporary Art: Body and Recognition (ARKO Art Center, 1995), InfoART (Gwangju Biennale, 1995), and the first edition of SEOUL in MEDIA 1988–2002 (Seoul 600 Year Memorial Hall, 1996). Hong Sungmin’s early works employed a variety of time-based media beyond video, including sound installations and slide projections. Notable examples include Appropriation of Appropriation (1992), a sound installation that replaced Roy Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots with 800 speakers, and Audiology I: Physical Education–The Body–Physical Education (1992), a complex installation incorporating computer-printed photographs, video, slide projections, and speakers. From 1994 onward, Hong Sungmin focused primarily on video works. Emblematic works from the mid-1990s include Man and Queen (1994) (presented in Young Korean Artists ’94), which juxtaposes the male-centered power structure—appropriating the images of the Seongsu Bridge’s collapse, the television drama The Third Republic, and the film The Bridge on the River Kwai—with commercial imagery that objectifies women; By King Bye! King (1995) (featured in the exhibition Ssack), which likens the vanity of power and the cyclical nature of history to the back-and-forth motion of a Viking pirate ship ride; and Windows’ 95 (1995) (shown in InfoART), which critiques the unilateral imposition of corporate systems that compel global users to conform, framing such systems as a form of violence. Hong Sungmin’s early works were largely understood through their message-oriented approaches, such as critiques of sociopolitical realities and the disclosure of ideologies in mass media. Because his early pieces were often mixed-media installations rather than long-length single-channel videos, the temporal and conceptual dimensions inherent in his work received less critical emphasis. As a result, his practice was classified within installation art or technological art movements, which were gaining prominence in Korea at the time. Hong Sungmin’s work, which engages with appropriation, mass media, synesthetic corporeality, and the relationship between high art and consumer culture, markedly differs in tone and approach from that of his domestically trained contemporaries, whose practices tended to be more existential and metaphysical. Despite Hong’s intentions for his work to be recognized as time-based art, it was often interpreted within the prevailing frameworks of the Korean art scene of the time. First and foremost, in the early to mid-1990s, the concept of single-channel video art emphasizing content had not yet taken firm root in Korea. In his essay titled “Seven Reasons Why TV Is Better than Video Art,” written for the exhibition T-V (Gongpyeong Art Center, 1996), Hong remarked that this show was the first exhibition in Korea dedicated to tape-based (single-channel) video. With the participation of Korea’s first generation of single-channel artists as well as commercial and animation directors—including Kim Sejin, ium, Kang Young Mean, Lee Jungjae, Cha Eun-taek, and Lee Sung-gang—this exhibition marked a pivotal moment in the emergence of a media culture that prioritized genuine engagement with video imagery itself.3 With the launch of cable television and M.net in 1995 in Korea, followed by the start of 24-hour broadcasting in 1996, an unprecedented proliferation of visual imagery saturated everyday life. This ushered in a full-fledged video generation, and it was during this period- mid-to-late 1990s when artists began producing single-channel video and content-driven video art began to establish as a unique practice in Korea. Another reason is that the early 1990s, when Hong Sungmin returned to Korea and began his practice, was a period when installation art and technology art were at the forefront of critical discourse in the Korean art scene. Art magazines at that time frequently featured special issues dedicated to installation art. One such issue, for example, introduced a range of new generation art groups like Museum and Sub Club; technology art figures, such as Kim Jaegwon and Kim Yoon; and more classical installation artists including Kimsooja and Lee Sanghyun, introducing them collectively as 1990s installation art in Korea.4 In the exhibition Rebellion of Space: Korean Avant-Garde Art since 1967–1995 (Seoul Museum of Art, 1995), curated by Yoon Jinsup as a comprehensive survey of Korean three-dimensional and installation art, both technology art and new generation art were designated as distinct sections alongside experimental art and postmodern small-group movements. As a result, Hong Sungmin’s video works were often classified narrowly as technology art and, more broadly, as installation art. Examples of the latter include the aforementioned Rebellion of Space exhibition and Instal-Scape (Daegu Arts Center, 1996), a curated installation exhibition by Hong Myung-seop. At the time, video art was often regarded as a subset of installation art. This perspective was largely shaped by first-generation Korean video artists like Yook Keunbyung and Oh Sang-Ghil, whose work rooted in installation practices emerged from the small-group movements of the 1980s. Moreover, leading mid-1990s video artists based in Korea, including Kim Youngjin, Yook Taejin, and Kim Haemin produced works in which video was deeply integrated as installation formats. (Many of these artists were trained in sculpture and primarily engaged in video installation.) Meanwhile, technology art flourished in the early 1990s, developing either as a subset of installation art or as a distinct practice, unified by shared concerns with postmodernism, globalization, and the prevailing zeitgeist. Although it was more closely aligned with Hong Sungmin’s work in terms of media, technology art differed significantly in both sensibility and contextual orientation. It began to take shape in the late 1980s under the influence of Paik Nam June and the return of artists who had studied media in Japan and Europe. Its momentum continued into the early 1990s, further facilitated by digital transition and government policies promoting the video industry (1993). Representative exhibitions include High-Voltage Line (Total Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988), 220V (Noksaek Gallery, 1989), Electronic Café (Ahn Graphics, 1990), Art and Technology (Seoul Arts Center, 1991), Science + Art Show (KOEX, 1992), and Technology Art Exhibition: Nature and Technology (Expo Culture and Arts Exhibition Center, Daejeon, 1993). What stood out across these exhibitions was a fascination with new media itself and a utopian optimism regarding the capacities and potentials of technology.5 In contrast, Hong Sungmin’s emphasis did not lie in a fascination with cutting-edge technology, but rather in a homeopathic strategy that employed media aligned with mass consumer society to critique mass media itself. This orientation was already evident in the exhibition Mass Media & Multi Medium (1992). In an interview with Lee Jun, Hong clearly stated that the media used in the exhibition served solely as a means of facilitating communication with the audience; using media for its own sake held no intrinsic meaning for him. Unlike conventional mass media, which disseminates content unilaterally, Hong aimed to create multi-mediated platforms that, through the artist’s intervention, fostered interactive communication with viewers and this, he emphasized, was the main purpose behind his use of media.6 A common theme through all of Hong Sungmin’s works is his critical engagement with mass media imagery and the mechanisms and structures through which such images operate. His playful sensibility marked by a mixture of seriousness and humor, cynicism and fascination resonates more closely with the ethos of new generation art than with that of technology art. In this sense, Hong Sungmin’s early works were, to some extent, misunderstood, partly because there were no contemporaries at the time whose practices meaningfully intersected with his own. For example, many of his works deal with themes of voyeurism. Sauna/Sound (1994) stages a scene of naked men in a sauna, seemingly being secretly observed through a glass door; Rear Windows, “ I said I’m not gonna hurt you” (1997) invites viewers to peep at selected scenes from films in which men commit acts of violence against women; and Peeping/People (1997) which displays imagery of cheerleaders whose figures are revealed only by the presence of the viewer’s shadow. In these works, voyeurism is employed as a strategy to appropriate the representational methods of television and film—much like Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977–80)—in order to make viewers reflect on the underlying structures of these media. By projecting images from the rear of the screen to simulate act of peering into someone else’s apartment window (a reference to the film Rear Window), by casting light from the opposite side of a video projector to use shadows as a screen, or by separating sound and image,7 Hong Sungmin’s work at times echoes the influence of artists like Peter Campus, who similarly intervened in the physical structure of video presentation. However, at the time of production, there was a lack of theoretical and practical frameworks within which such formal strategies could only be understood. As a result, his works were largely interpreted in terms of their messages—whether as critiques of pervasive gender-based violence or reflections on Korean social mores—while their formal and conceptual qualities were largely overlooked. It was only in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with an emergence of a new generation of artists and a deeper understanding of video art, that concepts inherent in video art such as temporality, narrative, and apparatus began to be shared and widely discussed. Yet by the mid-2000s, Hong had shifted his focus from video work to performance, and his early practice remained largely neglected in critical discussions. In this sense, Hong Sungmin’s work—arguably ahead of its time—not only reveals the transitional phase in which video art began to diverge its entanglement from technology art but also exemplifies the contextual particularities of Korean video art history, where artistic practice often developed in isolation from established critical contexts.