History of Korean Performance Art on Display
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
On Dec. 14, 1967, a group of young artists circled around a woman holding a vinyl umbrella. In turn, they planted a lit candle on top of the umbrella, and kept walking in circles singing a folk melody. When the woman sat down in the center, they blew out the candles, shouting and tearing the vinyl umbrella apart to pieces.
That was officially the first performance art staged in South Korea, titled ``A Happening With a Vinyl Umbrella and Candles.’’ A newspaper article simply described the event as a ``weird art.’’ The artist who designed the event later explained that the vinyl umbrella represented the modern civilization that was becoming too much, or a nuclear umbrella, in contrast to the candles, which symbolized a pure mind.
Of course, following several decades of anything-goes-in-the-name-of-art, now the event may not be as particularly striking or cryptic. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to trace back the procedure of how the spirit of avant-garde and experimenting started out and has evolved here over the last few decades, despite the authoritarian rule and little interest from the general public.
For this purpose, the exhibition ``Performance Art of Korea: 1967-2007,’’ which opened last week at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, presents a good overview, marking the 40th year since the birth of local performance art.
The TV footage recording of the 1967 event, is on display to the public at the exhibition. Additionally, it also showcases about 100 pieces of artwork associated to the past performance art and records that document them.
The works are categorized in chronological order. The ``1967-1979: From Happening to Event’’ section, features early works that received sensational attention. Female artist Jung Kang-ja, was interviewed by Sunday Seoul, a leading yellow magazine at that time, after going topless for the performance ``Transparent Balloons and Nude’’ in 1968. Nam June Paik, late Korean-born video art pioneer, continued his performance streak with ``Sex on the Piano,’’ staged on the first day of the first Seoul International Contemporary Music Festival in 1970: the idea was that when the naked couple makes love on the piano, and finally collapse on it, the instrument gets played.
As social tension grew under continuing authoritarian regimes, the performance art also assumed a more gloomy, yet more socially conscious and resistant, tone. This trend is reflected in the works documented in the ``1980-1993: Action Drama’’ section, which were often inspired by, or borrowed the form of, protest, memorial service, funeral, or imprisonment.
The emergence of genre crossovers, and fusion of media also became notable in the early 1990s. Paik, for example, staged an art performance derived from a ``gut”, or traditional Korean shaman ritual for consoling the dead, as a kind of a memorial service for his friend Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), in Seoul in 1990.
It is perhaps a natural result that the last category for 1994-2007 is titled ``Performance-Variations.’’ The tendency of mixing it all together has accelerated, and performance art even collaborates with pop culture or the capital these days. Nancy Lang, a well-known young female artist, may be a leading case in this category. She will stage a performance piece titled ``Zoo in the Museum’’ on Sept. 15.
The exhibition continues until Oct. 28. Tickets cost 3,000 won, and a tour is available every 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. except Monday. For more information, visit www.moca.go.kr.