노동과 글쓰기

이지은(Ji-Eun Rhee) 현대미술사학회 2005 현대미술사연구 Vol.18 No.-

Xu Bing has been one of the most distinguished artists in the Chinese avant-garde art scene since the mid 1980s. Born in 1955, he has undergone China's turbulent social, political, and cultural changes in the second half of the twentieth-century. His art work, however, does not show direct references of such contexts. Seemingly aloof from the ideological conflicts and social criticism of the contemporary China, he experiments with writings as either graphic form or content that range from the format of ancient Chinese scrolls to the Western alphabets. Ironically, however, his characters and texts are mostly nonsensical. In an attempt to ridicule the way in which human perception is bound in the fixed world of signification, Xu Bing imitates the contours of Chinese characters and arrange them in such a way that confuses the reader's literacy. Drawing a cue from Xu Bing's time-consuming efforts in creating the world of fake letters, this paper aims to explore the meaning of 'slow' technology in high art, one that intends to revive the sense of craftsmanship and artistry in countering the age of mechanical reproduction. By the term 'slow' this paper alludes to a process of production that counters the logic of efficiency and mass production that underlies the modern consumerist technology. Works that are being considered in the paper include "A Book from the Sky"(1989), "Ghost Pounding the Wall"(1990), "Square Word Calligraphy"(1994), and "New English Calligraphy"(1998). ''A Book from the Sky" is a massive installation consisting of scrolls of paper, posters, and books. For this work, Xu Bing invented about 1250 pseudo-characters based on the authoritative Chinese dictionary compiled in 1710 A.D. And he carved more than 2000 wood blocks over a year. In terms of its visual impact, "A Book from the Sky" echoes the importance of the written word in all its forms throughout Chinese history. "Ghost Pounding the Wall" consists of 1300 sheets of chinese ink-rubbing attained from a painful, time-consuming labor of 'pounding' the Great Wall of China which involved some thirty people over a month. In the "Square Word Calligraphy," on the other hand, Xu Bing transforms the English alphabets into the pseudo-Chinese radicals and concocts them to look like Chinese characters. So the viewers can read these seemingly Chinese characters as English words. Overarching these works is the notion of slow technology and its effect of de-familiarization aimed at a culture that is saturated in the myth and authority of letters and symbols.

플럭서스의 탈시각중심주의 : 촉각, 후각, 미각을 위한 작품을 중심으로

이지은 (Rhee, Jieun) 한국미술이론학회 2008 미술이론과 현장 Vol.6 No.-

The 1960s is a decade that is marked by new concepts of art making and art appreciation. Starting from Fluxus, the new art in the 1960s such as Happenings and performance art pursued the process of art making as an integral part of artistic experience. The traditional concept of art works that only appeal to vision soon became a site of contentious experiments and innovations in which the experience of seeing is accompanied by other sensual encounters of sound, smell, touch, and taste. These attempts can be seen as a revolutionary move to restore the sense of corporeality to the act of seeing that has been disembodied by the way in which western art has built the unifying, homeogenous field of vision. This paper delves into the works of Fluxus artists Daniel Spoerri, Ben Vautier, Alison Knowles, Ay-O, and Takako Saito who were central figures in taking art into the new age of post-ocularcentrism. Exploring the sense of smell, touch, and taste, these artists led the viewer to participate in their art making with the incorporated vision.

음악, 소음, 그리고 침묵

이지은(Rhee Ji-eun) 현대미술사학회 2007 현대미술사연구 Vol.22 No.-

This paper charts the short history of sound as part of the 20th-century modern art. In particular, it seeks to explore ways in which sound functions in the realms of visual art. From abstract paintings in the early 20th century to the 2007 art biennale in Venice and Muenster, sound has taken a small yet distinctively important part in the development of modern art. The purity of painting in abstraction that painters pursued in the early 20th century was compared to the non-descriptive quality of music. Time and movement in varying rhythms and speeds also crossed over into the visual realm as the artists discovered new possibilities in film as ‘motion picture.’ In an effort to depart from the old tradition of representation and narrative arts, many artists thus adopted music as their ideal model, experimenting with its forms as a means of broadening our visual experience. Futurists were those who blatantly extolled machines and their noise. They explored symthesthetic functions of sound and the visual by employing words and sound in their paintings and sound poems. Dadaist also fused the visual with the aural in their performances during the First World War. Marcel Duchamp experimented with sound in his 〈Music Erratum〉 and 〈With Hidden Noise〉. Noise was everywhere in the art world, signaling the end of the dominance of the visual in art. In the mid-20th century, we come across John Cage who once again brought the noise into our attention. His famous 〈4'33''〉 inspired many artists working in the visual realm. Those who were active in Fluxus and performance art admitted to no small extent their debts to Cage. Including George Brecht, Benjamin Patterson, Paik Nam June. these artists made artworks out of the sound of everyday life. In recent years, we frequently encounter sound as an inseparable component of visual experience in art museums and galleries. Janet Cardiff and Susan Philipsz can be found among new artists who pursue so-called ‘Sound Art.’ In an attempt to challenge, if not do away with, the hegemony of vision in the experience of ‘spectators,’ these artists try to immerse their perceptual fields with whispering voices and music. By discrediting the visual at the heart of visual art, they deconstruct the ocularcentrism and seeks for the incorporated sensory experience in art.

이미지의 장소

이지은(Rhee, Jieun) 한국예술종합학교 미술원 조형연구소 2003 Visual Vol.2 No.-

From the Cave Paintings to virtual reality, the location of image varies. The space of the image has been subject to the ontological condition of the medium that contains the image. This sheerly visual space is also a product of our cognitive structure under the influence of the social and cultural context of the time. If the perspectival grids defined our vision of the world under the mathematical rules, the new visual environments such as video and virtual reality are rapidly changing our perception in an unprecedented way. This paper explores the locations of image as visual paradigms and traces the changing notions of vision in the social and cultural contexts. As Ren□ Descartes aptly acknowledged, out vision is not only a product of human eyes, but that of the cognitive system ruled by a mind. From the Renaissance paintings that employed the perspectival grids to the Baroque ceilings, the images of the two-dimensional space offered an illusion of a ‘real’ space that transformed the physical support to a virtual space. In the 19th century, image’s primary function as a representation of the world was challenged by its strongest rival, photography. As many art historians have been acknowledged, the invention of photography changed the directions of painting from the representation of a natural world to its ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ aesthetic formalism. However, the function of representation has been always at the core of the images. With the rapid development of new media, images found more effective way of representation with the unprecedented quantity of reproductivity and the speed of distribution. The virtual reality is one of the latest media showing the images free from the natural laws of our physical world. It opens up a new regime of vision, which I would call the ‘incorporated vision.’ Different from the traditional media in the visual art, the new media employ other sensory organs to maximize the effects of the artwork. The virtual reality allows us a fantasy world that one can fully immerse oneself. The loss of a critical distance is often discussed as the problem of this new media. Nevertheless, with the unbounded metamorphosis of its shape and medium, the image enjoys its renewal in more potential forms.

욕망하는 몸

이지은(Ji-Eun Rhee) 현대미술사학회 2003 현대미술사연구 Vol.15 No.-

With an upsurge of criticism on Cartesian subjectivity and its foundation on logos, the discourse of body has emerged as an alternative focus in postmodern concerns. Although the mind has been previously privileged over, more recently body has become increasingly important as a locus of redefined subjectivity as well as a site of intersubjectivity. The notion of intersubjectivity is well traced from the phenomenological discourses of Merleau-Ponty. In his vigorous attack on the Cartesian subject, Merleau-Ponty criticizes vision-oriented theories that legitimate the rigid dichotomy of subject and object, which eventually engenders the binary opposition of mind and body. By using the term coexistence, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the reciprocity of the subject/object relationship in which subject is contingent on his or her others. The discourse of body necessarily involves issues such as gender and race, but above all, it concerns 'others' and (re) defines the subject"always in relationship to others." This radical departure from the Cartesian transcendental (indeed, solipsistic) subject and the emergence of body have been witnessed in phenomenology and the artistic movements of the 1960s such as Minimalism and performance art . Especially in recent artistic practice and criticism, the discourse of body prevails as the focus of the strategies, which use psychoanalysis, queer theory, or the technological effects of new media (such as three-dimensional video) as their bases. Body, both as a subject of inquiry and an interpretative strategy, is also a crux in postmodern critique of ocularcentrism and logocentrism, which have been considered as the parallel terms of modernism. In this paper, I will delve into Matthew Barney's Cremaster V (1997), an approximately forty-five-minute film, which I believe, touches the recently-focused bodily issues including sexuality, and subject-object relationship. Matthew Barney entered the art scene in the early 1990s with series of physically challenging performances, which demand strength and endurance. Barney pursues discipline and self-absorption through trained bodily movements. His strictly choreographed actions are replete with sexual symbols and connotations. The rich iconography of sexuality most evidently appears in the Cremaster series. The cremaster is the suspensory muscle of the testes. Male reproductive organs located in the scrotum need a system for temperature control. The cremaster is a sort of thermostat in this system. When the outside temperature is cold or too hot for the testicles the cremaster pulls the testicles up into the body. Barney sees this inside-body state as a "pre-genital... possibly regressive state and a downright possibly more developmental state." Even though he implies hierarchical binary opposition of the upright and downright movements that the cremaster generates, I argue that there is a yearning for the pre-genital state (which is supposedly considered as the primordial conglomeration of male and female sex) in the Cremaster series. The series of films feature intricate symbolism and dense iconography drawn from psychology, mythology, and Christianity. Despite its primary theme of transgression of normative definitions of male and female sexuality (with its seemingly balanced gesture), the Cremaster series reveal the limitation of the male artist in his attempts to achieve the pre-genital wholeness by subsuming the other (female) sexuality.

인류세의 미술: 토마스 사라세노, 피에르 위그, 아니카 이의 작업을 중심으로 한 사례 연구

이지은(Rhee, Jieun) 서양미술사학회 2021 서양미술사학회논문집 Vol.54 No.-

21세기에 들어서 인류는 전례 없던 기후변화와 멸종 위기를 비롯한 자연재해를 경험하고 있다. 인간의 활동에 의해 지구의 자연 환경에 유의미한 변화가 초래된 시기를 의미하는 인류세라는 용어는 지질학과 지구과학 뿐 아니라 이미 한 세대 이상 사회와 과학, 문화 전반에서 회자되어왔다. 본 논문은 인류세에 대한 논의를 이끄는 대표적 이론가인 부르노 라투르와 도나 해서웨이의 이론을 간략하게 소개하며 인류가 직면한 위기를 맞아 인간중심의 사고를 비판하고, 비인간과 자연 환경과의 공존을 모색하는 미술작품들의 사례를 들어 인류세의 미술이 보이는 몇 가지 양상에 대하여 논의하고자 한다. 인간중심의 문명과 과학기술의 진보에 무한한 신뢰를 보이는 태도나 인류세를 인간종의 종말로 귀결되는 것으로 보는 극단적인 태도의 이분법과는 다르게, 미술가들은 인류세를 인간중심의 인식을 전환하고 비인간 존재들과 환경과의 상호의존을 통해 더불어 살아갈 공존의 계기로 삼는다. 논문은 토마스 사라세노와 피에르 위그, 아니카 이의 작품을 통해 이런 인류세 시대의 현재와 미래를 담는 미술의 양상을 살펴보고자 한다. 사라세노는 미래형 주거를 위한 〈구름 도시〉 시리즈, 태양열 이동수단인 〈에어로신〉프로젝트를 통해 지속가능한 미래를 꿈꾸고, 위그는 〈무제: 인간 가면〉, 〈다가올 삶 이후〉를 통해 인간이 관여할 수 없는 비인간 존재들의 생태계를 제시하며 인간중심의 사고에 도전한다. 이는 《나를 F라 불러주세요》, 《삶은 값싸다》의 전시에서 의인화를 통해 곰팡이와 박테리아 등의 미생물을 작품 제작의 주체로 내세움으로써, 인간/비인간 존재의 이분법을 와해하려 한다. 본 논문은 이들 인류세의 반성을 담은 미술작품들을 분석하고 이를 통해 탈인간중심 미술의 양상을 전망해본다. The first two decades of the 21st century saw an unprecedented environmental troubles from climate change to the depletion of biodiversity The term ‘Anthropocene’ that was first introduced by geologists and Earth scientists suggests that the current crisis is caused by humanity. With a brief introduction of the two most influential proponents of the Anthropocene, Bruno Latour and Dona Haraway, this paper explores the art in the Anthropocene, which criticizes anthropocentrism and seeks a kind of symbiosis with the non-human and surrounding environment. In contrast to the two prevailing attitudes to the global plights—one endorsing the advancement of eco-friendly science and technology, and the second taking on a darker tone in suggesting human extinction as the natural sequence of this age of the Anthropocene—this mood of coexistence in art tries to reconsider the relationship between human and its nonhuman environment and moves toward a interdependent symbiotic relationship. By delving into the works of three artists; Tomás Saraceno, Pierre Huyghe, and Anicka Yi, this paper will explore the spectrum of art in the Anthropocene and its presentations of today and an imagined future.

우리도 그들처럼: 토마스 사라세노와 조안 조나스의 작품에서 보는 비인간 존재와의 조우

이지은(Rhee, Jieun) 서양미술사학회 2021 서양미술사학회논문집 Vol.55 No.-

지난 수십년 동안 우리에게 닥쳐온 급격한 기후변화와 생태계의 멸종위기, 그리고 최근 인류가 직면한 코로나 바이러스의 창궐은 이제껏 환경과 비인간 존재들을 지식의 대상이나 자원으로 보아왔던 우리의 인식에 대한 통렬한 반성을 불러왔고 이를 비판적으로 성찰하는 계기가 되었다. 인류세라 불리는 이런 시대의 변화에 반응하여 일군의 동시대 미술가들 역시 인간중심주의에 대해 비판하며 인간과 비인간의 경계를 묻는 작업을 선보이고 있다. 본 논문은 2019년 베니스 비엔날레 기간 동안 비인간 존재에 대한 사유를 풀어낸 두 작가, 토마스 사라세노와 조안 조나스의 작품을 살펴보고, 이들 미술 작품이 보여주는 인간과 비인간 존재와의 조우와 이를 통해 작품이 시사하는 인간중심주의에 대한 도전을 드러내려 한다. 사라세노는 각 나라를 대표하는 국가관이 들어선 자르디니 공원에 거미/거미줄 파빌리온을 세워 인간과 거미가 함께 만들어가는 작품을 선보였다. 조나스는 다양한 해양생물이 등장하는 비디오와 퍼포먼스 작업을 통해 문명과 자연, 인간과 비인간의 이분법에 대항했다. 논문은 인간과 비인간이 교류하고, 의인화된 허구를 통해 관계를 확장하는 이들 작가들의 작품을 분석해보고, 최근 인류세 논의를 이끄는 저자들 중 캐롤라인 존스, 도나 헤러웨이, 자크 데리다의 비인간에 대한 논의들을 통해 이들 작품의 의미를 추적하고자 한다. 이들의 작업은 우리에게 인간과 비인간 존재를 가르는 경계가 허물어질 때에서야 비로소 우리가 갖고 있는 인간중심주의의 편협한 시각을 와해시킬 수 있다는 가능성을 시사한다. For decades we saw an unprecedented surge of environmental troubles from climate change to the depletion of biodiversity, and now we are facing the threat of Covid virus. Living in the age of the Anthropocene, we are forced to examine the way in which humans have been incessantly turning the planet into an object of knowledge and exploitation. Among the noteworthy practices of criticism is the challenge of the distinction between human and nonhuman carried out by a group of contemporary artists. This paper examines the works of two artists who presented during the 2019 Venice Biennale, Tomás Saraceno and Joan Jonas. Saraceno opened the Spider/Web pavilion at the Giardini in marked contrast to other pavilions representing respective nation states. He provided works that both humans and spiders can participate. Jonas invited marine creatures in her works, challenging the binary opposition of human and nonhuman. This paper will explore their works in the light of the recent anthropocene discourses of major authors such as Caroline Jones, Dona Haraway, and Jacques Derrida. The works of Saraceno and Jonas provide insights that we could overcome the narrow perspectives of anthropocentrism only through the deconstruction of the binary opposition of human and nonhuman.

매체로서의 회화: 추상회화의 환원과 확장

이지은(Jieun Rhee) 명지대학교 문화유산연구소 2023 미술사와 문화유산 Vol.12 No.-

전환된 전통: 서구 국제 비엔날레 출품작을 통해 본 한국현대미술과 전통

이지은 ( Jieun Rhee ) 미술사와 시각문화학회 2022 미술사와 시각문화 Vol.29 No.-

한국미술의 해외 국제전 참가의 역사는 곧 한국현대미술사의 이정표였다. 그것이 국가를 대표하여 참가하는 국제 비엔날레의 경우에는 더욱 그러했다. 현대미술의 후발 주자로서 서구의 현대미술과 어깨를 견주는 동시대성의 확보에 목말라하던 국내 미술계의 열망은 국제 비엔날레를 통해 그 창구를 확보할 수 있었으며, 새로운 사조를 직접 목격하고 이를 따라잡는 숨가쁜 릴레이가 이어졌다. 참여 작가들은 서구 중심의 국제 비엔날레의 현실을 마주하며 서구의 모방이라는 오명을 씻고 한국현대미술의 존재의 이유를 증명하기 위해 분투했다. 이때 전통은 세계가 함께 겨루는 비엔날레의 치열한 경기장에서 한국 미술가들에게 반드시 필요한 방패였다. 이 논문은 한국현대미술이 처음으로 참가한 국제 비엔날레였던 1958년 국제현대채색석판화비엔날레를 시작으로 1960년대 파리 비엔날레와 1995년 베니스 비엔날레의 한국관 개관전, 그리고 2015년 이후 이어진 베니스 비엔날레 단색화 병행전과 최근 2017년, 2019년의 비엔날레 출품작에 이르는 몇몇 주요 사례들을 살펴보고, 이를 통해 한국현대미술에서 ‘전통’에 대한 담론이 변모하는 과정을 추적했다. 한국현대미술은 세계 미술계에서 입지를 확보하기 위해 전통의 수사학을 구사하며 서구 중심의 국제 미술계에서 오리엔탈리즘의 시각으로 구축되어 온 타자성을 충족시켜 왔다. 또한 전통은 국내에 서구현대미술 사조가 토착화되는 과정에서 우리 현대미술의 차별성과 독자성을 주장하는 기반이 되었다. 한국현대미술이 그 미감에 내재되었다고 여겼던 ‘고유한’ 전통을 찾는 과정은 곧 현재의 시점에서 과거를 소환하고 이를 재창조하는 과정이었다. 이전의 전통이 발굴해 내야 하지만 손에 잡히지 않는 과거의 실재였다면, 오늘 한국 동시대미술에서의 전통은 상상의 영역에 존재한다. 이제껏 한국현대미술에서 전통의 논의가 보여 주듯이, 전통은 취사선택되며 재조합되고 만들어진다. 이렇게 만들어진 전통은 과거가 아닌 현재를 반영하고 새로운 서사를 생산하며, 바로 그 전통의 허구를 드러내는 방식으로 전환된 동시대의 전통을 만들어 냄으로써 서구 중심의 국제 미술계가 요구하던 타자성의 전복을 도모한다. In modern Korean art, tradition has always been a double-edged sword. It is a cultural barrier that Korean modernists are trying to overcome in order to be accepted as key players in the international art world. Tradition, on the other hand, is also an index of locality whether in form or narrative, which gives Korean modern art a distinct sense of style contrasting with its western counterparts. This article attends to the creative acts of ‘invention of tradition’ occasioned by the way modern Korean artists have grappled with the range of local traditions and vernacular styles in an effort to integrate into the larger world of international art Biennales. What emerges from this global shift is the treatment of tradition as an object of stylistic or rhetorical investment ranging from the revival of traditional practice to “dissimulating” Orientalism, which all contribute to the making of Korean contemporary art as a point of distinction to be appreciated by Western viewers of the international Biennales while avoiding the possible charges of mimicking Western styles. The article claims that this complex, often interventionist link to tradition is at the heart of what can be construed as ‘inventing tradition’ in Korean modern art, a creative practice of self-fashioning one’s cultural belongingness at the local or national level. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which the act of invention is also designed to subvert the globalist system of representation in which Korean arts are essentialized as the sign of “Koreanness”, an orientalist construct of otherness cohering into the “world picture” that privileges the position of the occidental gaze.

먹는 미술

이지은(Rhee Jieun) 현대미술사학회 2011 현대미술사연구 Vol.0 No.29

This paper briefly charts the history of food as part of the 20th-century modern and contemporary art and explores ways in which food functions in the realms of visual art. From Russian Constructivists of the early 20th century to the recent practices of Relational Aesthetics, food has taken a small yet distinctively important part in the development of modern art. In an attempt to challenge the hegemony of vision in the experience of spectators, the artists including Daniel Spoerri, Ben Vautier, Alison Knowles, Allen Rupperberg, Tom Marioni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ben Kinmont, and Rirkrit Tiravanija propose as the important locale of artistic experience an extending field of perception brought on by the ritual of eating. Far from being a practice of quiet appreciation, eating for these artists serves as a nexus of shared talks and experiences among the viewers, and eventually shifts the focus of art appreciation from the object-oriented, private experience to the multiple relation-oriented, collective experience. In this regard, this paper examines this communal spectatorship in their works within the framework of Nicolas Bourriaud’s “Relational aesthetics”. Bourriaud argues that relational aesthetics is defined by the way in which art works represent, produce, and promote interpersonal relations between viewers. Released from the solitary confines of artistic experience, relational aesthetics awakens us into a festive mode of being, a mode that Bourriaud calls ‘conviviality’ in communicating and sharing. Likewise, the museum is no longer subject to the notion of “white cube” as it lends itself to a site of mutual experiencing and sharing. Food in art is at the center of this new experience.