- Geonseolgwan #903, Busandaehak-ro 63beon-gil 2, Geumjeong-gu, BUSAN, South Korea (ZIP: 46241)
https://archi.pusan.ac.kr
Seunghan Paek
Pusan National University, Architecture, Faculty Member
This article explores the aesthetic dimension of contemporary South Korean urbanism by reading suspended judgment and formal analysis, which could generate a new way of seeing the city. Suspended judgment means ways of relating oneself to... more
This article explores the aesthetic dimension of contemporary South Korean urbanism by reading suspended judgment and formal analysis, which could generate a new way of seeing the city. Suspended judgment means ways of relating oneself to given situations without being preoccupied with prior knowledge or conventions, thereby prompting an openness towards the external world. With the claim that such a concept is crucial in rereading the historiographies of 20th-century architecture and urbanism, this paper aims to conduct the following. The first is to critically review Aron Vinegar’s I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas (2008), which entails an in-depth analysis of Learning from Las Vegas (1972), the classic text on postmodern architecture. And, the second is to expand Vinegar’s book in the context of Korean urbanism to conduct a case study on Choi Jeong Hwa’s 2006 installation entitled Anybody, Anything, Anyway. It is a work the artist installed a number of discarded commercial banners in the Arco Art Center (1979) designed by Kim Swoo-geun. This article claims that, despite the authenticity inherent in Kim’s architectural work, the installation prompts an urban atmosphere that is at once familiar and idiosyncratic in positive senses. It also brings forth a sense of community that is fragmentary and ephemeral, as well as one that mediates given aesthetic criteria and thus releases an assemblage in which both private affects and public discourses coexist.
Research Interests:
This paper proposes a new model of urbanism which is not limited to what I call ‘environmental moralism,’ through which to investigate some of the key debates around the ongoing plan of the Gadeokdo Island and its Anthropocenic... more
This paper proposes a new model of urbanism which is not limited to what I call ‘environmental moralism,’ through which to investigate some of the key debates around the ongoing plan of the Gadeokdo Island and its Anthropocenic implications. In doing so, I will focus on discussing the following two. The first is to explore two strands of architectural and urban studies in relationship with the Anthropocene. This includes a recent movement known as ‘climate urbanism’, and its corresponding trends in architecture such as sustainable architecture, biophilic design, and some individual works which refashion the spirits of the 1960s’ environmental avant-garde. Second is a critique of the Anthropocene beyond moralism, which entails the works of Donna Haraway who explores ways of living together with environmentally troubled situations, Gay Hawkins who pays attention to making relationship with plastic as a new material, and Mick Smith and Jason Young’s claim of ‘earthly indifference’ which reconsiders Earth as a nonhuman agent beyond its moralistic and religious force. This theoretical overview brings forth an opportunity to examine the new airport plan for the Gadeokdo in new lights. By examining the debate between developmentalism and environmentalism around the ongoing mega-project, I argue that both camps have limitations in dealing with the ineffable aspects of the island, as well as its entanglement encompassing both human and nonhuman agents as discussed in the Anthropocene literatures.
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This paper provides an overview of the work of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, often abbreviated as ds+r. It aims to explore the intricate relationship between ‘the politics of seeing’ and ‘the democratization of space’, which are two... more
This paper provides an overview of the work of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, often abbreviated as ds+r. It aims to explore the intricate relationship between ‘the politics of seeing’ and ‘the democratization of space’, which are two fundamental concepts embodying the firm's design philosophy. The politics of seeing reflects its focus on activating architecture by assembling various elements such as materials, ideas, images, and experiential dimensions. This approach challenges existing criteria and promotes institutional critique. On the other hand, the democratization of space, as articulated by Elizabeth Diller, addresses the architect's role in the neoliberal context. The firm's projects, characterized by their public engagement, including parks, lobbies, and squares, demonstrate their ongoing commitments to making architecture accessible to the public. While these two agendas may seem interconnected, this paper argues that this is not always the case. Some recent projects, such as The MoMA Renovation and The Shed, aim to achieve both dimensions but tend to lean towards conservatism or practicality. As a result, the criticality that was prevalent in their earlier works before 2000 is sometimes compromised in
ways that are not fully able to release their intricate capacities of mediating the neoliberal world.
ways that are not fully able to release their intricate capacities of mediating the neoliberal world.
Research Interests:
In this paper, I analyze the installation piece entitled Spring that Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen made in 2006 which is located at the starting point of the Cheonggye Stream, through which to explore the possibility of enacting... more
In this paper, I analyze the installation piece entitled Spring that Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen made in 2006 which is located at the starting point of the Cheonggye Stream, through which to explore the possibility of enacting the politics of things. While the work reflects Oldenburg’s style which provokes exaggeration, humor, and a sense of the extraordinary, it brought forth a number of criticisms due to the fact that it is not tightly woven together with its site and thus remains a cliched landmark. Attentive to such aspects, I question if such criticisms about the work could be sustainable in proposing an alternative politics, and if refashioning Oldenburg’s early experimental works before his commitment into large-scale installation could suggest new perspectives and ways of doing in speculating about the political in the present tense. In order to answer to these questions, I aim to conduct three units of research. First is to examine Oldenburg’s work in the 1960s in which he mediated the streams of contemporary art such as installation, performance, and pop art. During this period, he focused on expressing his critical perceptions about the lives of the metropolis such as New York and London with humor and exaggeration. Second is about the process in which Oldenburg met van Bruggen and Frank Gehry and then tried to expand his ideas about the relationship of object and monument. As Oldenburg already suggested various versions of large-scale monument through a number of sketches, encountering with those two colleagues worked as crucial opportunities to materialize his ideas in public space. However, it seems that such a process deprived Oldenburg of the politically radical attitude that he once had and rather made him focus on objects that look depoliticized. With such a transition in mind, in the last part of the investigation I will read Bruno Latour’s concept called Dingpolitik. His concept aspires to search for an alternative form of politics by proposing an assembly made by both human and nonhuman actors. By activating Dingpolitik in rereading Oldenbrug and van Bruggen, I aim to explore the present value of their work which is not limited to the artists and their thoughts, thereby embracing the dispersed and heterogeneous nature of things being assembled from the scratch.
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(co-worked with June-Seok Lee from Kyungsung University) In this article, we explore the concept of facade object. We will apply this concept to analyze some characteristics of an artificial intelligence. First, we will look at the... more
(co-worked with June-Seok Lee from Kyungsung University)
In this article, we explore the concept of facade object. We will apply this concept to analyze some characteristics of an artificial intelligence. First, we will look at the concept of facade in architecture theory, and will identify three aspects of facade. Then, we will look at the recent trend of object-oriented architecture and the debate with actor-network theory. After the background research is completed, we will explore the interaction between objects through facade objects. Finally, we analyze the artificial intelligence as a case study of facade objects. Since artificial intelligence is a blackboxed assemblage, we have to pay special attention to the technology in order to form a preferable cosmopolitics in our technoculture.
In this article, we explore the concept of facade object. We will apply this concept to analyze some characteristics of an artificial intelligence. First, we will look at the concept of facade in architecture theory, and will identify three aspects of facade. Then, we will look at the recent trend of object-oriented architecture and the debate with actor-network theory. After the background research is completed, we will explore the interaction between objects through facade objects. Finally, we analyze the artificial intelligence as a case study of facade objects. Since artificial intelligence is a blackboxed assemblage, we have to pay special attention to the technology in order to form a preferable cosmopolitics in our technoculture.
Research Interests:
The objective of this study is to explore the concept of flagship stores, focusing on what is deemed the affective brandscape. These flagship stores stand apart from regular retail stores by emphasizing the experience economy as a pivotal... more
The objective of this study is to explore the concept of flagship stores, focusing on what is deemed the affective brandscape. These flagship stores stand apart from regular retail stores by emphasizing the experience economy as a pivotal factor. Instead of merely being landmarks, these stores introduce fresh ways of experiencing commerce, blurring the distinctions between local and global, original and symbolic, and authentic and artificial. This blending of elements often referred to as hybrid or hyphenated designs, serves as a means to convey brand identity. To comprehensively understand how flagship stores function and engage potential customers, it is essential to examine how companies combine diverse elements related to the physical and intangible aspects of a store, including its location, ambiance, and historical context. These hybrid commercial models prompt an exploration of how flagship stores are intricately woven together, creating combinations that are both distancing and emotionally impactful. Through case studies, including a detailed analysis of the 2002 OMA-designed Prada Epicenter, this study also compares and analyzes four selected flagship stores of the globally popular cosmetic brand Aesop. This study aims to uncover how disparate elements are harmonized to create a branded world that extends both physically and conceptually beyond the store itself.
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In this article, I explore the intersections of the Anthropocene, animal studies, and visual culture through the investigation of theories and case studies of the cat. I aim to implement a claim that looks at the relationship between... more
In this article, I explore the intersections of the Anthropocene, animal studies, and visual culture through the investigation of theories and case studies of the cat. I aim to implement a claim that looks at the relationship between Stanley Cavell’s other minds, Graham Harman’s object, and Eileen Crist’s representation. First, Cavell’s other minds explores philosophical skepticism and the ordinary via the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is then put into conversation with Jacques Derrida’s speculation about cats’ gaze, and Donna Haraway’s criticism of Derrida. Second, the concept of object originates from Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology. It acts as a critical perspective to overview Haraway who focuses on the symmetrical relationship between human and nonhuman agents, as well as offering an opportunity to rethink issues of making relationships and communicating with the cat, which accompanies perception and sensation in a broader spectrum. Third, as a way to connect the notion of representation with Harman’s object, which is about imperfect knowledge of the object being encountered and remainders with which one cannot fully communicate, I will review Eileen Crist’s animal studies that cut across ecology and ethology, and the skepticisms of Cavell and Wittgenstein. If a cat does not know the fact that it is being drawn or photographed, how would one be able to claim that people and their cats are attuned to and communicate with each other? Rather, would one need a more rigorous way of investigation based on scientific understandings and facts? By critically reviewing the scientific approaches which ethology inspires, this article explores cats as other minds articulated through ordinary language and the object. In doing so, I will focus on analyzing the following two cases: a series called magazine tac that highlight discussions of various aspects of the cat, and The Moving Dunchon Cat, which deals with cats’ migration caused by the redevelopment of the Dunchon Jugong Apartment Complex.
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This paper explores Learning from Las Vegas, the classic text of architecture and postmodernism written by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown first published in 1972, through Scott Lash notion of technological phenomenology. Lash... more
This paper explores Learning from Las Vegas, the classic text of architecture and postmodernism written by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown first published in 1972, through Scott Lash notion of technological phenomenology. Lash claims that technology is not so much an externalized apparatus but rather a form of life in the sense of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy called language game. Inspired by Lash’s theories of technology and experience, this study argues that Venturi and Scott Brown’s book illustrated ways in which one experiences the city with various technologies such as the automobile, billboard, neon sign, photography, and street map. In elaborating the argument, this study defines the term technological phenomenology with the articulation of two strands of experience known as erfahrung and erlebnis; thereby addressing how these two concepts coexist in today’s information-saturated society. Additionally, this study takes Learning from Las Vegas as a threshold to investigate the relationship between the diverse forms of technology and experience to explore how the city is experienced in generative modes of perception and sensibility. Lastly, Neil Leach’s recent studies of architecture and artificial intelligence (AI) are read against the grain. Leach addresses a flexible notion of technology on one hand, which is however in part formed based on the dualism between technology and experience. By reading how Leach elaborates theories of technology with some of his examples, this study can glean from Learning from Las Vegas without heavily relying on either classic ontology or technological determinism.
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This article analyzes Maya Lin’s “last memorial” project entitled Ghost Forest (2021), through which to explore how one can make relationships and “stay” with the climate crisis without supposing smooth and immediate resolutions of the... more
This article analyzes Maya Lin’s “last memorial” project entitled Ghost Forest (2021), through which to explore how one can make relationships and “stay” with the climate crisis without supposing smooth and immediate resolutions of the Anthropocene. As the most recent work in the What is Missing? project, Ghost Forest consists of 49 dead cedars moved from New Jersey to Madison Square Park in Manhattan for around six months. Lin installed the trees in a busy public park, and thus generated an irony that people come across so-called ‘corpses’ as part of daily life, whether they are conscious of it or not. Meanwhile, Lin also conceives her project in terms of a linear temporality and causal relationship regarding climate change, which is conflicted with her speculative approach toward trees. The fact that Ghost Forest is rationally driven but also deeply affective is not easily resolved in her work. In order to rethink such a conflict, this article takes Donna Haraway’s claim of “staying with the trouble” as a threshold, thereby highlighting the instances of partial recovery and speculative practices with trees that are inherent in the work but not further articulated by the artist.
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This article explores a new model of urban practice that is not limited by environmental moralism by investigating theories of plastic, which is today’s prevailing environmental problem and also a ubiquitous strata of everyday life. In... more
This article explores a new model of urban practice that is not limited by environmental moralism by investigating theories of plastic, which is today’s prevailing environmental problem and also a ubiquitous strata of everyday life. In doing so, it investigates the following two things. The first is to speculate about the ontological dimensions of plastic. Often thrown away after a single use and thrown into the ocean in the form of microplastics, plastic is rubbish and also a toxic material influencing climate change on a global level. It is both a problematic material and an object to overcome. However, such an objectification is a result that does not pay enough attention to its ubiquity. By considering plastic as a crucial form of life, this article pays close attention to its ontological dimensions. The second thing is to examine “assemblage urbanism” as a new form of urban model that could be further explored in relation to the plastic ontology. Assemblage urbanism brings Gilles Deleuze’s notion of assemblage into urban discourses, thereby trying to rethink the conventional theories of the city, represented by its counterpart known as “critical urbanism” that highlights an analytical approach. This article examines the debate between those two camps, which appeared in serial issues of the journal City in 2011, as well as paying attention to the weak points of assemblage urbanism. What this article derives through the investigation is a theory called “plastic urbanism,” a new form of urban practice that is not subjugated by the Anthropocene as a grand narrative, but offers a microscopic and diagrammatic model of the city.
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In this article, I claim that everyday encounters with the strata of digital culture may evoke a sense of wonder and anticipation but also give rise to instances of hesitation and uncertainty, which places the individual on rough terrain... more
In this article, I claim that everyday encounters with the strata of digital culture may evoke a sense of wonder and anticipation but also give rise to instances of hesitation and uncertainty, which places the individual on rough terrain where he or she stumbles around painfully seeking a firm ground. In examining these types of experiences, I analyze four videos made by artist Kang Jungsuck (1984–). What is interesting in Kang’s work is that he neither defends nor naively embraces the pervasive character of digital culture. The videos reveal the ways in which he mediates everyday life as a digitalized realm, capturing its euphoric and fascinating atmosphere as well as its pessimistic and lethargic moods. Kang’s works open up an inflected world where forces and rhythms of the post-internet generate various forms of life. The constant back- and-forth movements between the digital and the ordinary and their stuttering audiovisual qualities reflect his hesitant mind, which seeks neither to completely negate nor passively acknowledge the inescapable character of the digitalized world.
Research Interests:
https://vmspace.com/eng/common/academia_view.html?base_seq=MTExOA== In this article, I claim that the issue of the ordinary/everyday cannot simply come to a conclusion, because one’s way of encountering the surrounding world always... more
https://vmspace.com/eng/common/academia_view.html?base_seq=MTExOA==
In this article, I claim that the issue of the ordinary/everyday cannot simply come to a conclusion, because one’s way of encountering the surrounding world always produces differences, which is most often entangled with his/her ever-shifting perceptual and affective resonances that exist beyond imposed representations and are left autonomous. The term ‘ordinary/everyday’ has been one of the contending issues in architectural studies, in which it is often used in reference to the Marxist critiques that emphasize the spectacular and alienating conditions of the city in the postwar capitalist society. However, the everyday is a more complex phenomenon in which one is at once skeptical and receptive, resonating with the myriad affective and perceptive instances in aleatory but consistent ways. In this respect, this article investigates how the seemingly chaotic cityscapes might actually be the terrain where meaning unfolds. In doing so, I take Aron Vinegar’s book entitled I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas (2008) as a threshold to explore the multiplicity of the everyday in contemporary South Korean cities. Vinegar’s book is not a simple review of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’ book on Las Vegas originally published in 1972. Instead, it offers an opportunity to rethink the implications of the ordinary in commercial environments with new lights. What follows is a case study of a roadside commercial building located in the Sinchon commercial district of Seoul, which this article refers to as ‘Seodaemun-gu Changcheon-dong 33-9 Building’ according to its administrative address. By analyzing the building that represents a typical keunseng typology in urban Korea, the article explores how one resonates oneself with the commercially saturated field of everyday life that is at once spectacular and ordinary, rule-following and deviant, and alienating but still sense-provoking.
In this article, I claim that the issue of the ordinary/everyday cannot simply come to a conclusion, because one’s way of encountering the surrounding world always produces differences, which is most often entangled with his/her ever-shifting perceptual and affective resonances that exist beyond imposed representations and are left autonomous. The term ‘ordinary/everyday’ has been one of the contending issues in architectural studies, in which it is often used in reference to the Marxist critiques that emphasize the spectacular and alienating conditions of the city in the postwar capitalist society. However, the everyday is a more complex phenomenon in which one is at once skeptical and receptive, resonating with the myriad affective and perceptive instances in aleatory but consistent ways. In this respect, this article investigates how the seemingly chaotic cityscapes might actually be the terrain where meaning unfolds. In doing so, I take Aron Vinegar’s book entitled I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas (2008) as a threshold to explore the multiplicity of the everyday in contemporary South Korean cities. Vinegar’s book is not a simple review of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’ book on Las Vegas originally published in 1972. Instead, it offers an opportunity to rethink the implications of the ordinary in commercial environments with new lights. What follows is a case study of a roadside commercial building located in the Sinchon commercial district of Seoul, which this article refers to as ‘Seodaemun-gu Changcheon-dong 33-9 Building’ according to its administrative address. By analyzing the building that represents a typical keunseng typology in urban Korea, the article explores how one resonates oneself with the commercially saturated field of everyday life that is at once spectacular and ordinary, rule-following and deviant, and alienating but still sense-provoking.
Research Interests:
(co-authored with Dai Whan An, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Chungbuk National University, Korea) This article explores the changing values of heritage in an era saturated by an excess of media coverage in... more
(co-authored with Dai Whan An, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Chungbuk National University, Korea)
This article explores the changing values of heritage in an era saturated by an excess of media coverage in various settings and also threatened by either natural or manmade disasters that constantly take place around the world. In doing so, we focus on discussing one specific case: the debate surrounding the identification of Sungnyemun as the number one national treasure in South Korea. Sungnyemun, which was first constructed in 1396 as the south gate of the walled city Seoul, is the country’s most acknowledged cultural heritage that is supposed to represent the national identity in the most authentic way, but its value was suddenly questioned through a nationwide debate after an unexpected fire. While the debate has been silenced after its ostensibly successful restoration conducted by the Cultural Heritage Administration in 2013, this article argues that the incident is a prime example illustrating how the once venerated heritage is reassembled through an entanglement of various agents and their affective engagements. Methodologically speaking, this article aims to read Sungnyemun in reference to the growing scholarship of actor-network theory (ANT) and the studies of heritage in the post-disaster era through which to explore what heritage means to us at the present time. Our synchronic approach to Sungnyemun encourages us to investigate how the once-stable monument becomes a field where material interventions and affective engagements of various agents release its public meanings in new ways.
This article explores the changing values of heritage in an era saturated by an excess of media coverage in various settings and also threatened by either natural or manmade disasters that constantly take place around the world. In doing so, we focus on discussing one specific case: the debate surrounding the identification of Sungnyemun as the number one national treasure in South Korea. Sungnyemun, which was first constructed in 1396 as the south gate of the walled city Seoul, is the country’s most acknowledged cultural heritage that is supposed to represent the national identity in the most authentic way, but its value was suddenly questioned through a nationwide debate after an unexpected fire. While the debate has been silenced after its ostensibly successful restoration conducted by the Cultural Heritage Administration in 2013, this article argues that the incident is a prime example illustrating how the once venerated heritage is reassembled through an entanglement of various agents and their affective engagements. Methodologically speaking, this article aims to read Sungnyemun in reference to the growing scholarship of actor-network theory (ANT) and the studies of heritage in the post-disaster era through which to explore what heritage means to us at the present time. Our synchronic approach to Sungnyemun encourages us to investigate how the once-stable monument becomes a field where material interventions and affective engagements of various agents release its public meanings in new ways.
Research Interests:
By examining the architectural debate set off by Xi Jinping’s 2014 remark, “no more weird architecture,” the article explores contemporary Chinese architecture – which has been marked by the coexistence of discipline and expression, order... more
By examining the architectural debate set off by Xi Jinping’s 2014 remark, “no more weird architecture,” the article explores contemporary Chinese architecture – which has been marked by the coexistence of discipline and expression, order and disorder, ordinary and spectacle – through the notion of weirdness. It analyzes a series of debates on one particular project: the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Its idiosyncratic form, consisting of two towers standing at an askew angle, has drawn significant criticisms since its inception. The Municipal Government of Beijing had allowed foreign architects to pursue highly experimental designs in preparation for the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the debates are not unrelated to the practice of contextualism and regionalism in Chinese architecture which, since the 1980s, has been aspiring to explore a “true” architectural identity fitting local needs and everyday lifestyles. This article claims that those debates rely on a set of clichéd binaries of weird and unweird, and regional and global. By challenging such binaries, as well as questioning whether it is ever possible to pursue ‘unweird’ architecture, the article contends that the strata of architecture, visual culture, and cityscapes in contemporary China have been shaped with tensions and dissensuses.
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This article aims to explore the ontological dimension of urban experience that is most often exploded by a plethora of neon signs through the lens of new materialisms. What follows is an in-depth analysis of the online exhibition called... more
This article aims to explore the ontological dimension of urban experience that is most often exploded by a plethora of neon signs through the lens of new materialisms. What follows is an in-depth analysis of the online exhibition called <neonsigns.hk>, which is run by the M+ Museum located in Hong Kong. New materialisms is an interdisciplinary strand of research that investigates the world where we live, in which both material and immaterial aspects are complexly entangled. Instead of relying on a set of strict binaries between material and immaterial, human and non-human, nature and artifice, reality and virtuality, and figure and ground, new materialisms pays attention to their mode of coexistence and imbrications. According to new materialisms, neon sign is considered not only a means of advertising but also a threshold enabling us to look at the phenomenological dimension of the city. While neon sign has most often been criticized due to its visually distracting and flickering qualities especially during the nighttime, this article highlights that such urban strata evoke the past urban memories and senses of nostalgia, although fragmentary and temporary due to its unstable but dynamic materiality.
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This paper aims to explore the spectacular forms of life in the digital environments and their ontological dimensions, by calling such conditions as ‘an ethics of flatness.’ What follows is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese... more
This paper aims to explore the spectacular forms of life in the digital environments and their ontological dimensions, by calling such conditions as ‘an ethics of flatness.’ What follows is an in-depth analysis of the Japanese experimental art collective known as teamLab (2001-current), which can be subdivided into three stages. The first is a survey of teamLab’s art historical contexts. teamLab represents a generation that has undergone a series of events which include the economic rise and downfall of the postwar Japan, and natural/social disasters such as earthquakes and the subway gas attack in the 1990s. Second, by analyzing the select works of teamLab made in the last ten years, this paper claims that their work prompts an unstable sense of community. Third, this paper proposes a theoretical framework with which to explore a world of flatness without being subjugated by its negative connotations. Bringing forth such a framework accompanies the following set of discourses: the concept of body raised by Baruch Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze, a new materialist approach to the world of experience by John Frow and Yuk Hui, and theories of the spectacle raised by Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Luc Nancy that read the Debordian idea against the grain.
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This article explores how philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the fold is extended to architectural design, and how such an extension prompts ‘event’ in both the conceptual and realistic senses. In doing so, this article conducts two... more
This article explores how philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the fold is extended to architectural design, and how such an extension prompts ‘event’ in both the conceptual and realistic senses. In doing so, this article conducts two case studies: 1) the Rebstockpark Master Plan (1990-1991), and 2) The Aronoff Center for Design and Art (1988-1996). These two projects have similarities in that both were influenced by a Deleuzian theory of the fold in one way or another, which highlights that the world we live in is not so much homogeneous and fixed but rather multiple and in a perpetual process of becoming. While one can detect the influence of Deleuze’s theory in these Eisenman projects, it becomes more prominent in the latter case—the Aronoff—given that it is a built project in which the architect’s design conception provokes a multitude of events through the entanglement of various individuals’ fabrics of everyday life. By looking at both the conception of the fold proposed by Eisenman, and my habitual encountering with his built project where his theory is actively implemented, I claim that the Deleuzian event is not just a spectacular kind prompted by Eisenman himself, but unfolds in more subtle ways.
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This article explores how idealized architectural plans are negotiated in relation to the practical concerns and socio-cultural conditions of modern and contemporary Korea. As a case study, it focuses on analyzing the masterplans of... more
This article explores how idealized architectural plans are negotiated in relation to the practical concerns and socio-cultural conditions of modern and contemporary Korea. As a case study, it focuses on analyzing the masterplans of Yonsei University, one of the key universities that illustrate the architectural modernity of Korea, as well as reflecting the continual interactions between different agents of power within and outside the country. Particular attention is given to the evolution of the university's masterplans at four different points in time: the plans proposed in 1917, 1925, 1957, and 1970 respectively, all of which are compared to the 2016 map. The 1917 plan is a product made by an American architect—Henry K. Murphy—who proposed a design without visiting the site. Such a process lacking tactile engagement resulted in generating an overly western-style and also an 'ideal' plan that does not adequately respond to actual site conditions. While the 1925 and 1957 plans are updated versions that are based on Murphy's site visits, they still seem idealized to a great degree. It is rather the last two maps—1970 and 2016 plans—where one can detect how they manifest themselves for the changing conditions of modern and contemporary Korea; a number of those working at the university participated in the design process, which focused on generating more realistic strategies in response to South Korea's 'compressed modernity'. Our in-depth visual analysis of the Yonsei masterplans shows how idealized plans are negotiated and reworked, thereby reflecting realistic demands for university life in material ways.
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This article explores the interrelationships between media facade, interactivity, and the public in contemporary Korean cities. A specific case that follows is the comparative approach to British media artist Julian Opie(1958-)’s two... more
This article explores the interrelationships between media facade, interactivity, and the public in contemporary Korean cities. A specific case that follows is the comparative approach to British media artist Julian Opie(1958-)’s two works of media facade located in Seoul. First, Opie’s Crowd (2009) is characterized by a visual spectacle unfolding in the city. It appears upon the facade of the Seoul Square, an office located across the Square of the Seoul Station, and activates it as a public sphere that is beyond simple representation. Whereas Opie’s another work Sara Walking in Bra, Pants, and Boots (2003), is located at the center of the Daehangno commercial district, and imbricated with the surroundings in more subtle ways. It is perceived at the level of pedestrians, and experienced not so much as a prominent spectacle but as part of everyday life. By paying attention to differing moments of interaction brought forth by various groups of people’s activities, events, or habitual encounters around Opie’s work, this article claims that one can explore the public (but most often private) nature of media facade by looking at its complex patterns and modes of experience that operate at multiple levels.
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This article explores the complex modes of experiencing the modern city that are engaging and disengaging by nature, which thus negates any simple ways of understanding what it means by ‘the urban’ in a Manichean comparison. What follows... more
This article explores the complex modes of experiencing the modern city that are engaging and disengaging by nature, which thus negates any simple ways of understanding what it means by ‘the urban’ in a Manichean comparison. What follows is an in-depth case study of Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1976 film titled City Slivers. Influenced by the countercultural practices prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, Matta-Clark produced a number of works roughly grouped together under the rubric of “building cuts.” Among many others, City Slivers is distinctive among Matta-Clark’s extensive cutting projects, in the sense that he actively utilizes film as a primary expressive medium and poetically reassembles fragmentary images of cityscape in order to bring forth an alternative urban scenario where the tension between institution-bound urbanization and dispersed daily urban practices is highlighted. Instead of simply being critical against the changing urban conditions of Manhattan in the 1970s, Matta-Clark aims to actively grasp ambivalent instances of urban life that are at once attractive and alienating, thereby excavating the subconscious terrain of contemporary urbanism that is prevalent but often dismissed over glamorous urban projects.
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Forthcoming at the journal, Trans-Humanities 11.1 (published by Ewha Womans University) /// In this article, I take French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussions of the city as a threshold, through which to propose a “singularly... more
Forthcoming at the journal, Trans-Humanities 11.1 (published by Ewha Womans University) ///
In this article, I take French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussions of the city as a threshold, through which to propose a “singularly plural” model of urbanism that could reflect the complexity and multiplicity of the 21st-century urban environments. In doing so, I pay particular attention to four concepts that are derived from Nancy’s ontological explorations: 1) community; 2) spectacle, 3) everyday life, and 4) the public. Followings are the summaries as to how I articulate each concept in its relationship with urban discourses. First, what Nancy means by the term ‘community’ does not necessarily mean a mode of being together that leads to a complete harmony and stasis. What arise instead are forms of life that enable the modes of being together in given urban settings in fragmentary and non-hierarchical manners. Second, Nancy critically reinterprets Guy Debord’s influential theory of the spectacle, through which he claims that the materialist urban conditions work as a crucial ground where one is able to speculate about and build the sociability and senses of community. Third, in a similar vein, Nancy explores the multiple meanings of the everyday in the capitalist urban world, in particular being attentive to its ‘singularity’ that cannot simply be represented or appropriated by other means of expression. Such a claim of the everyday is based on his critical overview of the scholarship of everyday life, which has long been the subfield of ‘Urban Studies’ in particular schools of thought; furthermore, it urges us to explore the multiplicity of urban life that operates through the entanglement of consumerist behaviors and media-driven practices. Fourth, Nancy’s ontology also encourages us to explore the meaning of the public (or publicness) in broader senses; ordinary experiences of urban infrastructures such as subway, airport, and shopping mall might look trivial in its semantic dimension, but nevertheless bring forth modes of ‘being separate but together’ in a loose sense. Nancy’s discussions of the public also resonate to the phenomenological surveys of ‘place’ in the age of globalization which has been the prominent zeigeist since the 1990s. By taking Nancy’s ontological explorations as a crucial impetus in exploring the ontological possibilities of city space under the overriding moods of globalization and consumer culture, as well as critically reviewing the key urban discourses of the late capitalism that are represented by the theories of ‘alienation’ and ‘commodity fetishism,’ I propose a more resilient model of urbanism.
In this article, I take French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussions of the city as a threshold, through which to propose a “singularly plural” model of urbanism that could reflect the complexity and multiplicity of the 21st-century urban environments. In doing so, I pay particular attention to four concepts that are derived from Nancy’s ontological explorations: 1) community; 2) spectacle, 3) everyday life, and 4) the public. Followings are the summaries as to how I articulate each concept in its relationship with urban discourses. First, what Nancy means by the term ‘community’ does not necessarily mean a mode of being together that leads to a complete harmony and stasis. What arise instead are forms of life that enable the modes of being together in given urban settings in fragmentary and non-hierarchical manners. Second, Nancy critically reinterprets Guy Debord’s influential theory of the spectacle, through which he claims that the materialist urban conditions work as a crucial ground where one is able to speculate about and build the sociability and senses of community. Third, in a similar vein, Nancy explores the multiple meanings of the everyday in the capitalist urban world, in particular being attentive to its ‘singularity’ that cannot simply be represented or appropriated by other means of expression. Such a claim of the everyday is based on his critical overview of the scholarship of everyday life, which has long been the subfield of ‘Urban Studies’ in particular schools of thought; furthermore, it urges us to explore the multiplicity of urban life that operates through the entanglement of consumerist behaviors and media-driven practices. Fourth, Nancy’s ontology also encourages us to explore the meaning of the public (or publicness) in broader senses; ordinary experiences of urban infrastructures such as subway, airport, and shopping mall might look trivial in its semantic dimension, but nevertheless bring forth modes of ‘being separate but together’ in a loose sense. Nancy’s discussions of the public also resonate to the phenomenological surveys of ‘place’ in the age of globalization which has been the prominent zeigeist since the 1990s. By taking Nancy’s ontological explorations as a crucial impetus in exploring the ontological possibilities of city space under the overriding moods of globalization and consumer culture, as well as critically reviewing the key urban discourses of the late capitalism that are represented by the theories of ‘alienation’ and ‘commodity fetishism,’ I propose a more resilient model of urbanism.
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This study aims to explore the meaning of square in the context of 21st-century urban Korea. A specific case study that follows is the Gwanghwamun Square, a 600-years-long civic space in which aspects of natural and built environments... more
This study aims to explore the meaning of square in the context of 21st-century urban Korea. A specific case study that follows is the Gwanghwamun Square, a 600-years-long civic space in which aspects of natural and built environments coexist in a palimpsest manner. Based on the in-depth analysis of a single square, which is inarguably the most representative public space in the country, we bring forth three key characteristics of the Square with the following coinages: (1) Physical Feature; (2) Transformative Environment; and (3) Expositional Space. First, the Gwanghwamun Square has established the country’s symbolic axis that cuts across the key locations of the milieu, including Seoul City Hall, Cheonggye Stream, Gyeongbok Palace and the Mount Bukak, as well as having functioned as the main street of the Joseon Dynasty called ‘Yookcho Geori’ since the 15th century. Second, the entire realm of the Square is activated by various practices and events, in a way that it functions as the ‘networked’ square which connects to other milieus and to various agents of power both physically and affectively. Third, through the compearance of new technologies and products that unspecified groups of individuals comes across in daily life, the Gwanghwamun Square provides opportunities for both citizens and visitors to experience new kinds of landscape that are not limited to 'Korean' sceneries in a traditional sense, although our study reveals that the role of Koreans is still more influential than others in defining the identity of the Square. One might argue that the Gwanghwamun Square is an elusive square type compared to other representative ‘Western’ exemplars, but the way that it is formed and experienced in the South Korean urban contexts does make it a distinctive case. Hence, we claim that the Gwanghwamun Square is a new urban typology which reflects the multiplicity of city space in the neoliberal Korea.
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This article explores community in contemporary South Korea's commercially saturated urban environments by investigating a recent government-run city improvement project in which the entanglement of institutional power and local... more
This article explores community in contemporary South Korea's commercially saturated urban environments by investigating a recent government-run city improvement project in which the entanglement of institutional power and local commercial forces created a peculiar form of community that is fragmentary and heterogeneous rather than organic and harmonious. The case study involves an attempt by the city government in Gunpo City, South Korea, to collaborate with private enterprise to regulate the dense signage on one specific commercial building, Kwangrim Plaza. The meetings and conversations between the government officials in charge of regulating urban signage and the plaza's forty-five shopkeepers were recorded in a four-part documentary series that was televised on the Seoul Broadcasting System in 2007. The documentary was intended to exemplify the government's effectiveness as well as civic participation in producing an attractive cityscape. Though the film emphasizes reconciliation and synthesis following the shopkeepers' strenuous objections to the renovation project, its scenes reveal a series of conflicts and disagreements among shopkeepers and between shopkeepers and government officials. Though the narrative of the film treats those conflicts as temporary obstacles to the inevitable achievement of this ambitious project, the author argues that interruptions, suspensions, and instances of dissensus in the smooth narrative are the critical moments in which a sense of community manifests itself in everyday urban life.
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In this article, I explore ways in which one can make relationships with the commer- cially saturated environments of contemporary Korea in nuanced ways, by taking the term “the Ganpan Republic” (literally, “the signboard republic”) as a... more
In this article, I explore ways in which one can make relationships with the commer- cially saturated environments of contemporary Korea in nuanced ways, by taking the term “the Ganpan Republic” (literally, “the signboard republic”) as a threshold. In doing so, this article offers three bodies of work: first, an introduction to the theories of enchantment; second, an analysis of the recent mega-scale urban project called Design Seoul with an emphasis on the ganpan; and third, a comparison of Design Seoul with French artist Manoël Pillard’s nightscape paintings of Seoul. While Pillard, as a non-Korean, pays full attention to the minute details of the signscapes with curiosity and revitalizes them through his painterly practice, Design Seoul strives to remove it from the domain of everyday life, thereby establishing a clutter-free cityscape. Instead of simply taking up the position of either Pillard or Design Seoul, I argue that reading the two together through the notion of enchantment encourages us to be attentive to the multiple sensorial dimensions of the ganpan, thus addressing the nature of the materials that are simultaneously distracting and sense-provoking.
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This article explores the hybrid modernity made through missionary architectural practices during colonial Korea, by examining how the master plan of Yonsei University, one of the earliest mission schools in Korea, has gone through a... more
This article explores the hybrid modernity made through missionary architectural practices during colonial Korea, by examining how the master plan of Yonsei University, one of the earliest mission schools in Korea, has gone through a unique evolutionary process throughout the convoluted modern history of the twentieth century. In doing so, this article conducts a thorough visual and spatial analysis of the given case with two emphases: first, analyzing three campus master plans—produced in 1917, 1925, and 2016 respectively—in a comparative way; and second, analyzing the layout and façade composition of major buildings that comprise the campus in great details. These master plans are crucial evidences enabling us to investigate the transatlantic architectural practices in early 20th century, as Henry K. Murphy, the architect in charge of the first two master plans of Yonsei University, was one who had long practiced in New York and greatly admired the values of Asian architecture through a series of field trips to major Asian cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Seoul.
While the 1917 master plan was in part influenced by the Western precedents, as well as ones from Japan and China some of which Murphy himself was involved in as a master architect—especially ones from Japan and China—the 1925 case deviates from it and illustrates multiple points of transformation that go beyond spatial symmetry and visual harmony. The 1925 one is marked by the rearranged spatial disposition and façade composition of dormitories and residential halls as influenced by the geographical peculiarities of Korea at that time. Long after the revision, the third, 2016, version illustrates the much expanded, triangular shape toward the south with added buildings and facilities, while the entombment area and other historical fragments in the upper part are well preserved. Hence, this article claims that the case of Yonsei University elicits the hybridization of missionary architectural practices and local Korean culture throughout the twentieth century, which is neither subsumed by the missionaries’ imposition of design ideas nor bound by the authentically Korean tradition of design.
While the 1917 master plan was in part influenced by the Western precedents, as well as ones from Japan and China some of which Murphy himself was involved in as a master architect—especially ones from Japan and China—the 1925 case deviates from it and illustrates multiple points of transformation that go beyond spatial symmetry and visual harmony. The 1925 one is marked by the rearranged spatial disposition and façade composition of dormitories and residential halls as influenced by the geographical peculiarities of Korea at that time. Long after the revision, the third, 2016, version illustrates the much expanded, triangular shape toward the south with added buildings and facilities, while the entombment area and other historical fragments in the upper part are well preserved. Hence, this article claims that the case of Yonsei University elicits the hybridization of missionary architectural practices and local Korean culture throughout the twentieth century, which is neither subsumed by the missionaries’ imposition of design ideas nor bound by the authentically Korean tradition of design.
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An article to be published at: The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art, June 2017: ----- This article explores issues of mood and atmosphere in contemporary art and architecture through the following two cases: 1) “The 21 –century... more
An article to be published at: The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art, June 2017:
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This article explores issues of mood and atmosphere in contemporary
art and architecture through the following two cases: 1) “The 21 –century
Museum of Contemporary Art” (2004) designed by a Japanese architectural firm known as SANAA; and 2) an installation project called “Pour Your Body Out” (2009) made by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. Both are cases in which the mood, or an atmospheric dimension of everyday space in the contemporary world is activated. However, it is noticeable that each case brings forth mood and atmosphere in different ways. SANAA considers atmosphere (instead of using the term ‘mood’) to be something that can loosely controlled and programmed, also a means to overcome the self-disciplined nature of modern architecture that does not fully respond to the fabrics of everyday life. Meanwhile, Rist’s installation shows how mood arises in improvisational and aleatory ways. In other words, while atmosphere in the 21st–century Museum tends to be reduced as a design element, in Rist’s work it becomes an affective driver that sets out a field in which various participants are passing through each other and entangled together without forming coherent senses of community.
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This article explores issues of mood and atmosphere in contemporary
art and architecture through the following two cases: 1) “The 21 –century
Museum of Contemporary Art” (2004) designed by a Japanese architectural firm known as SANAA; and 2) an installation project called “Pour Your Body Out” (2009) made by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. Both are cases in which the mood, or an atmospheric dimension of everyday space in the contemporary world is activated. However, it is noticeable that each case brings forth mood and atmosphere in different ways. SANAA considers atmosphere (instead of using the term ‘mood’) to be something that can loosely controlled and programmed, also a means to overcome the self-disciplined nature of modern architecture that does not fully respond to the fabrics of everyday life. Meanwhile, Rist’s installation shows how mood arises in improvisational and aleatory ways. In other words, while atmosphere in the 21st–century Museum tends to be reduced as a design element, in Rist’s work it becomes an affective driver that sets out a field in which various participants are passing through each other and entangled together without forming coherent senses of community.
Research Interests:
Under the final revision to be published at the Journal of Architectural Institute of Korea (Korean): This article examines what the term ‘good’ means in the 『Seoul Good Sign』 exhibitions, a vital constituent of the Design Seoul... more
Under the final revision to be published at the Journal of Architectural Institute of Korea (Korean):
This article examines what the term ‘good’ means in the 『Seoul Good Sign』 exhibitions, a vital constituent of the Design Seoul project led by the former city mayor of Seoul Oh Se-hoon. In doing so, it focuses on examining one particular work of sign design titled “Skyflower” (2008), through which to explore ways in which an idea of the good is theorized and practiced in relationship with the recent and ongoing urban design projects initiated by the city ministry. Despite the ministry’s attempts to theorize what it means by ‘good sign,’ accompanied by a set of manifestos and design guidelines, this article argues that the Seoul Good Sign exhibition uses the term in a narrow sense, most often morally charged and in reference to specific models drawn from certain historical times and geographical locations. What is thus proposed is the Kantian notion of aesthetic disinterestedness, which addresses an intentionally delayed, reflective psychological process that is attentive to the possibilities that a given object or environment could be perceived in indeterminate thus multiple ways. One’s perception of a given signage is a sort of proposition, which brings forth a set of other propositions in either agreement or disagreement. Thus, the seemingly top-down, linear way of signage design as implemented by the city ministry ultimately operates at the level of intersubjectivity and indeterminacy, which leaves possibilities of looking at the institution-bound urban project in flexible manners.
This article examines what the term ‘good’ means in the 『Seoul Good Sign』 exhibitions, a vital constituent of the Design Seoul project led by the former city mayor of Seoul Oh Se-hoon. In doing so, it focuses on examining one particular work of sign design titled “Skyflower” (2008), through which to explore ways in which an idea of the good is theorized and practiced in relationship with the recent and ongoing urban design projects initiated by the city ministry. Despite the ministry’s attempts to theorize what it means by ‘good sign,’ accompanied by a set of manifestos and design guidelines, this article argues that the Seoul Good Sign exhibition uses the term in a narrow sense, most often morally charged and in reference to specific models drawn from certain historical times and geographical locations. What is thus proposed is the Kantian notion of aesthetic disinterestedness, which addresses an intentionally delayed, reflective psychological process that is attentive to the possibilities that a given object or environment could be perceived in indeterminate thus multiple ways. One’s perception of a given signage is a sort of proposition, which brings forth a set of other propositions in either agreement or disagreement. Thus, the seemingly top-down, linear way of signage design as implemented by the city ministry ultimately operates at the level of intersubjectivity and indeterminacy, which leaves possibilities of looking at the institution-bound urban project in flexible manners.
Research Interests:
To be published in the January 2017 Issue at: Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering. --- This article claims that the recent mega-scale urban project Design Seoul is a case illustrating the entanglement of institutional... more
To be published in the January 2017 Issue at: Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering.
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This article claims that the recent mega-scale urban project Design Seoul is a case illustrating the entanglement of institutional interventions onto everyday city space and varying reactions from individual agents of power. Nominated by two international NGOs—the ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) and UNESCO—Design Seoul, which lasted roughly from 2007 to 2011, is the first extensive urban project in the history of Korea. In order to make the project move forward, the ministry of Seoul and groups of specialists from different sectors of society attempted to renew the entire city under a number of guiding principles in the hope of making Seoul a brand city. Despite the dominant views that Design Seoul is considered a pivotal exemplar of a top-down model of power in the urban realm, this article claims that such an ostensibly one-directional project in fact operates through more complex patterns of intervention and public experience, in ways that various agents of power related to the project read given design guidelines and practice them in aleatory and creative ways.
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This article claims that the recent mega-scale urban project Design Seoul is a case illustrating the entanglement of institutional interventions onto everyday city space and varying reactions from individual agents of power. Nominated by two international NGOs—the ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design) and UNESCO—Design Seoul, which lasted roughly from 2007 to 2011, is the first extensive urban project in the history of Korea. In order to make the project move forward, the ministry of Seoul and groups of specialists from different sectors of society attempted to renew the entire city under a number of guiding principles in the hope of making Seoul a brand city. Despite the dominant views that Design Seoul is considered a pivotal exemplar of a top-down model of power in the urban realm, this article claims that such an ostensibly one-directional project in fact operates through more complex patterns of intervention and public experience, in ways that various agents of power related to the project read given design guidelines and practice them in aleatory and creative ways.
Research Interests:
To be published at Journal of Modern Art History, Winter 2016: This article explores the affectivity of the contemporary city through the analysis of the work of video performance by Korean artist Park June-bum. In doing so, it... more
To be published at Journal of Modern Art History, Winter 2016:
This article explores the affectivity of the contemporary city through the analysis of the work of video performance by Korean artist Park June-bum. In doing so, it particulalry focuses on discussing three of his works: <3 Crossing> (2002), <1 Parking> (2001), and <The Advertisement> (2004). These works are characteristic for the oversized hands appearing in video screens, and the dynamic moods and the network of forces generated by the entanglement of ordinary urban fabrics. What these videos mediate are instances of daily cityscapes, which include scenes such as the awaiting and moving of pedestrians and automobiles at crossroads, outdoor parking lots, and a set of billboards and banners that are attached upon commercial buildings. Park considers these seemingly banal strata of everyday life to be objects of curiosity, from which to generate a new sort of power relations by re-mediating and recomposing given strata in various ways. What move forwards the narratives of Park’s videos are undoubtedly two hands, which are fragmented parts of certain bodies that do not provide further cues regarding to which bodies those hands are related. While reminiscing the Midas’ hands that are omnipotent and visually threatening, those hands in Park’s videos seem to solidify the logic of the binary between the practice of forces conducted by a strong agent of power permeating in the neoliberal urban settings, and the suppression and alienation of everyday life as thus generated in such settings. However, this article argues that Park’s videos do away with such a cliched binary, in ways that illustrate the complex entanglement of two visibly different forces without relying on strict hierarchical systems. The ostensibly threatening and omnipresent hands in his videos do not impose power onto the everyday in a top-down manner: Instead, those hands become part of the existing network of disparate forces within given environments. In other words, those hands as fragmented body parts prominent in Park’s videos are willing to adjust to the speed of given milieus, unfold new rhythms and moods, and ultimately instigate a myriad of affective instances that are reflective of the infinity of the world of everyday life.
This article explores the affectivity of the contemporary city through the analysis of the work of video performance by Korean artist Park June-bum. In doing so, it particulalry focuses on discussing three of his works: <3 Crossing> (2002), <1 Parking> (2001), and <The Advertisement> (2004). These works are characteristic for the oversized hands appearing in video screens, and the dynamic moods and the network of forces generated by the entanglement of ordinary urban fabrics. What these videos mediate are instances of daily cityscapes, which include scenes such as the awaiting and moving of pedestrians and automobiles at crossroads, outdoor parking lots, and a set of billboards and banners that are attached upon commercial buildings. Park considers these seemingly banal strata of everyday life to be objects of curiosity, from which to generate a new sort of power relations by re-mediating and recomposing given strata in various ways. What move forwards the narratives of Park’s videos are undoubtedly two hands, which are fragmented parts of certain bodies that do not provide further cues regarding to which bodies those hands are related. While reminiscing the Midas’ hands that are omnipotent and visually threatening, those hands in Park’s videos seem to solidify the logic of the binary between the practice of forces conducted by a strong agent of power permeating in the neoliberal urban settings, and the suppression and alienation of everyday life as thus generated in such settings. However, this article argues that Park’s videos do away with such a cliched binary, in ways that illustrate the complex entanglement of two visibly different forces without relying on strict hierarchical systems. The ostensibly threatening and omnipresent hands in his videos do not impose power onto the everyday in a top-down manner: Instead, those hands become part of the existing network of disparate forces within given environments. In other words, those hands as fragmented body parts prominent in Park’s videos are willing to adjust to the speed of given milieus, unfold new rhythms and moods, and ultimately instigate a myriad of affective instances that are reflective of the infinity of the world of everyday life.
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To be published at the Journal of the Association of Western Art History, August 2016 (forthcoming)
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To be published at Journal of the Regional Association of Architectural Institute of Korea, August 2016 (forthcoming)
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This article aims to examine the affective dimension of cityscapes in contemporary Korea through one particular artwork: Korean artist Choi Jeong-hwa’s 2004 installation work titled <Anybody Anything Anyway>. In doing so, it takes the... more
This article aims to examine the affective dimension of cityscapes in contemporary Korea through one particular artwork: Korean artist Choi Jeong-hwa’s 2004 installation work titled <Anybody Anything Anyway>. In doing so, it takes the scholarship of affect as a point of discussion, from which to explore the vibrancy and dynamism of ordinary commercial cityscapes in the country that most often consist of a myriad of billboards, neon signs, and banners prevalent throughout the entire urban realm, instead of considering them simply to be the exemplars of commodity fetishism and urban degeneration. Often known as an artist who freely meanders the lines between the artistic and the popular, the sublime and the vulgar, and between the spectacular and the ordinary, for this installation Choi collects a number of discarded banners from the storages of local authorities, in order to temporarily transform Arco Art Center, one of the representative art museums located in Seoul, into the space of festivity. What results is a flexible realm between the public and the private, in which unruly forces and affective intensities are released and thus generate an inflected sense of community that is commercially through and through. His installation is spectacular in the sense that it displaces all the various texts and images inscribed on banners onto the same plane, without imposing them any clearly defined hierarchies; furthermore, it sets up an interesting equilibrium between urban chaos and the poetics of space, as marked by the museum that was designed by Kim Swoo-geun, the renowned architect in modern Korea. However, Choi complicates what is meant by the spectacular, by bringing forth a visual and spatial recomposition through his work so that one is able to find instances of everyday life, or “smells of life” immanent in the space of the everyday. By closely looking at the details of the installation, also paying particular attention to the moods and affectivities that arise, this article claims that one would be able to find senses of ambivalence through the inflected cityscape that is at once spectacular and ordinary, distracting and sense-making, and resistant and enchanting.
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This article explores the affectivity of sign-filled urban environments in contemporary Asia by taking the French painter Manoël Pillard’s nightscape paintings produced during his trips to Seoul between 1998 and 2008 as a case. In his... more
This article explores the affectivity of sign-filled urban environments in contemporary Asia by taking the French painter Manoël Pillard’s nightscape paintings produced during his trips to Seoul between 1998 and 2008 as a case. In his paintings, Pillard scrupulously renders each commercial sign in great detail to capture the way the multiple neon signs create a particular mood and atmosphere in Seoul’s nightscapes, which ultimately sets up a world of sense that is social, physical, and communal. Pillard’s receptive way of seeing the nightscapes and his foreignness to the Korean language enable him to perceive the commercial environments afresh and thus to produce paintings that elicit the singularly plural, spectacularly ordinary, and distracting but sense-provoking aspects of the Asian metropolis.
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This article focuses on examining how the American novelist Henry Miller takes ‘bridge’ as a thresh- old from which to explore the multiplicity of the metropolis New York through his 1936 work Black Spring. Instead of treating bridge as a... more
This article focuses on examining how the American novelist Henry Miller takes ‘bridge’ as a thresh- old from which to explore the multiplicity of the metropolis New York through his 1936 work Black Spring. Instead of treating bridge as a passage or backdrop for his narrative construction, Miller activates it as a territory where his past memories and present experiences, as well as disparate and fleeting impressions and imagi- nations, meet altogether, which release a plethora of urban affects in aleatory and haptic ways. In this respect the Brooklyn Bridge is the very place that repeatedly appears in Black Spring, which plays as a critical point of departure enabling Miller to set up a world in which he weaves together instances of everyday life without sub- suming one over another. Although subtle and implicit, Miller brings forth a way of taking the capitalist city space as an affective terrain in a Deleuzian sense, which encourages us to be attentive to the vibrancy and dyna- mism immanent in the modern metropolis despite its alienating nature.
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This article explores an extended sense of autonomy in contemporary architecture activated through the practice of fashion, by taking architect Rem Koolhaas’ work Prada Epicenter in New York as a case. In doing so, it argues that... more
This article explores an extended sense of autonomy in contemporary architecture activated through the practice of fashion, by taking architect Rem Koolhaas’ work Prada Epicenter in New York as a case. In doing so, it argues that throughout the work Koolhaas sets up a world in which the corporate and the individual are entangled together in complex ways. Instead of considering Prada Epicenter to be the exemplar illustrating that the global company—Prada—institutionalizes the designed commercial space in a top-down manner, this article claims that such a space imbricates a multiplicity of meaning that is generated at the intersections of the local and the global, the ordinary and the spectacular, and the individual and the institutional. In this respect French philosopher Gilles Lipovesky’s fashion theory works as a critical point: his claim that the ambivalence of fashion—both as corporate power and individual freedom—is a threshold encouraging us to better understand the operativity of late capitalism in daily life is extended to Koolhaas’ case. In other words, Koolhaas’ Prada Epicenter brings forth possibilities that the ostensibly technocratic and institutionalized space in fact works as a resillient field where senses of individual autonomy arise in the aid of corporative practice of branding.
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This study explores the sense of place in contemporary commercial spaces in South Korean cities by analyzing Shin-chon, one of the major commercial districts located in Seoul. While studies of "place" have grown alongside critiques of... more
This study explores the sense of place in contemporary commercial spaces in South Korean cities by analyzing Shin-chon, one of the major commercial districts located in Seoul. While studies of "place" have grown alongside critiques of modernism and have played a significant role in fostering better understandings of built environments in the last few decades, the discourses of sense of place within dynamically changing metropolis remain relatively unexamined. Despite many criticisms of the distracting and placeless aspects of contemporary Korean cities, these aspects also reveal localized commercialisms, privatized public spaces, and material representations in everyday life. Advertisements are here perceived as the mode of communication and medium through which one can construct sense of place according to what one experiences. Signboards are the vehicles that reflect this psychological process. Through the application of Walter Benjamin's two concepts – flâneur and mimesis – this paper will discuss how the theory of signboards in everyday life is formulated, and how Shin-chon can be interpreted as a place where people find sense of place without being alienated from the built environment.