Engagement

2013

Seoul Museum of Art, Republic of Korea

Projection Hut Design at Society of Architecture

 

 

Engagement: metaphysical intimacy with tension

 

Being more than one among which establishes a string, participants share intimate but tense linkage, which constraints and liberates the participants in a certain condition. Within the linkage, the participants reach a shell of a collective, building up a new meaning. Defining the linkage is the beginning of peeling off the nature of individuals; how the linkage was formed, how strict it is, how it controls the distance between participants, and what it becomes after it links the individuals.

 

 

“I was not in charge. In Rest Energy we actually held an arrow on the weight of our bodies, and the arrow is pointed right into my heart. We had two small microphones near our hearts, so we could hear our heartbeats. As our performance was progressing, heartbeats were becoming more and more intense, and though it lasted just four minutes and ten seconds, I’m telling you, for me it was forever. It was a performance about the complete and total trust.”

 

 

Introducing a string into stackable chairs finds a new engagement, among the individual chair and for the whole collective as well. The cross tie at four feet gives a margin between two individual chairs; it gives a bit of liberation, which allows staked chairs to be flexible and unstable. The back tie, on the other hand, entangles the chairs as a spine, which limits the parameter. The ambivalence of two ties builds a new shell of collective as the chairs respond to gravity. The liberating and entangling tensions draw an arch, which consequently creates a new space of projection hut.

 

Interacting between experimental films and experimental architectures, SOA participated in an exhibition called “Total Theatre: Interface Dialogue”. Originated from a multi-purpose theater designed by Walter Gropius in 1927, ‘Total Theatre: Interspace Dialogue’ realizes projection huts in neutral space. This exhibition embeds fundamental concepts of “recycling or upcycling” into architecture; renting mass-produced industrial materials or sponsored inferior products during manufacturing. Four participated artists create each space out of familiar industrial material such as a plastic outdoor chair, pallet for forklift, felt and tire so that built space induces active physical interaction with spectators.
The performance artist, Marina Abramovic, is well known for her work exploring the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Active for over three decades, she has been described as the “grandmother of performance art.” She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of her observers. Her art focuses on the theme of “confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body,” while relying on the extent of these discomforts based on the actions of her audience members.