Euyoung Hong

Constructed Landscape - 홍유영

• 2016Euyoung HongSeptember 27 - October 14, 2016NARS Foundation 201 46th StBrooklynNew York 11220From September 27 to October 14, 2016, new sculptures and installation works are presented in my solo exhibition at NARS Foundation, New York. This exhibition, entitled Constructed Landscape includes a large spatial construction, Spatial Construction of Ephemerality(2016), which is constructed from scaffolding and covered withgray scaffolding nets, which are frequently used in South Korea to cover the exteriors of scaffolding structures in construction sites. Scaffolding is a temporary structure, which is used to support workers during architectural construction. Although scaffolding functions as a supportive structure for the construction or renovation of a building, it forms an independent spatial system, which is fixed to the adjacent building and provides stability in the process of spatial changes and transformation. In this work, a temporary scaffolding structure is transformed into a new form of spatial construction, which creates a void space inside the structure.This installation work expands the idea of dwelling, space and territoriality in terms of the concept of ephemerality, particularly focusing on its contradictory aspect in contemporary conditions of capitalist production of space.In the shifting conditions of the economic environment in the post-industrial era in South Korea,for example, changes of industrial structure from industrial technology to information technology have become a fundamental factor that not only affects the tendency of de-industrialization at the centre of the city, but also constantly produces conceptual and material ephemerality in and through society. Industrial structure is dependent on changes of market, technology and social environment. Once a new product is circulated in market, demand for the old products declines. An example is the disappearance of the Sony Walkman cassette player and CD player from the market. From a spatial perspective, in the system of capitalism, a space encounters barriers or limits in the process of accumulation and (capital) flow, and tends to open up and transcend the difficulties of its existing systems and boundaries. In many cases, old systems and relations can be destroyed, leading to a course of crisis. Capital fixity thus produces capital mobility. This can be an aspect of successive systemic cycles of capital accumulation in space. In this respect, urban territoriality cannot simply be reduced to either a static spatial point or a movement; rather, it operates in the contradiction between mobility and fixity, which can be considered an essential factor for the formation and operation of ephemerality in the capitalist system of urbanism. In the interactive connection between mobility and fixity, territoriality constantly proposes and actualizes new ways of using, deploying and systemizing a space or spatial elements for the survival from competition between rival producers. By exercising its power expansively yet coercively, territoriality refers not only to the colonization of a space, but also to the transgression of boundaries and borders. The uneven and conflictual movements or powers observe and encounter zones of territory.Ephemerality in the space of capitalism, therefore, becomes a driving force, which produces the new in the contradictory relationship between construction and destruction.By expanding the concept of ephemerality, this installation work explores the complex relationship between urban space, capitalist production and politics, particularly concerning ways in which spaces are transformed in the process of capitalist urbanization in terms of the changing ideas of urban land use, the politics of space and social and spatial production and transformation. In the process of urban development in South Korea, dwelling spaces in the metropolitan area of Seoul have been changedconstantly and rapidly, transforming into new districts, filled with new luxury residential and commercial buildings. People make economic profitsthrough the competitivedevelopment of urban space, as the economic value of developed places israised dramatically. Accordingly, these places experiencea major social transformation.The removal or disappearance of oldhouses and buildings particularly in shanty towns and squatter areas has been a common scene, which includes the forced displacement of the urban poor to the outskirts of Seoul’s metropolitan area.By looking at the contradictory relationship between expansionary construction and destruction, between stability and fragility and between settlement and displacement in the process of urbanization, this installion focuses on the changes of the meaning and function of space in the system of capitalism.The disappearance of places and peoplein the process of urban development cannot be avoided, as the market always demands a new product, space and spatial relation. For survival, spaces are constantly developed to increase their economic value in the market through the deconstruction of old systems and relations. Ephemeralitybecomes a productive force in the system of capitalism.(Un)balanced (2016) is an installation work, which is composed of 11 rectangular aluminium plates of different sizes, usedto put together and construct a new platform or another level of ground in the exhibition space. These aluminium plates are assembled so that they functionas a seesaw or a scale, which is balanced on a fixed part in the middle and moves at each end; as one end goes up, the other end goes down. In the exhibition, different objects are placed at each end to make a slight unbalance on the plates.This work explores the changing meaning and function of objects in particular relation to the system of value in the regime of capitalism.Human society constantly produces new objects or products. These objects cannot be seen simply as being neutral, because once an object is produced; it necessarily enters into a part of the space of human society, having a particular value, meaning, function and action in relationship with people who use it for a particular purpose in many different ways.In particular, in the system of capitalism, people earn money through their labour for survival, which is sold by the workers in the process of production and circulation of products. People not only produce commodities, but their life is alsocommodified in the system of value. An objectas a commodity obtains a value in the process of production. The value of commodity changesaccording tocomplex social and economic conditions.The circulation of commercial goods or commodities is also unstable and changeable, because the process is dominated by various changing factors, such as wages, labour maintenance, technological innovation, the price of land use and market conditions, which not only influence and change the system of production, but also operate the means of commodity circulation, that is money. In and through the system of value, capitalism creates an abstract space of things, which makes people believe in it as real or intrinsic.This economic value system has a certain tendency to reduce or even extort the natural quality or potentiality of things. The territory of a thing is determined and changed by external forces, for example, capital. In relation to the system of economic value, (Un)balanced focuses on ways in which we understand a thing and its value and the complex relationship between things in the system of capitalism.In this respect, this work also examines a contradictory aspect of our reality. On the one hand, a thing and its value are determined and expressed through its exchangeability, reducibility or transferability into something else, such as a certain amount of money. This can be called the politics of balancing, in which the value of a thingisbalanced or equivalent toa certain amount of money or labour, each of which is independent of the otherand this amount of money or priceis apparentlynot proportional to value.It is the means of abstraction, which is essential for the process of circulation and distribution of capital throughout the whole world. On the other hand,capitalism can survive only by producing differences, that is, surplus value. Marx provides a different form of circulation, M-C-M or M-C-M′, which refers to the transformation of money into commodity by ending with a greater valueM′. The difference betweenM and M′ is seen as surplus value. In Marx’s theory, not only does the production of profit or surplus value become a driving force for systemizing the network of production, circulation, exchange and consumption processes; but also the process of accumulation is formed by the production of surplus value of capital, which can maximize its profits from the compression of time and space. It is the politics ofimbalance in the system of capitalism, in which the quantities of capital produce a particular form of intensity in the space, which can be considered the process of differentiation.In the reality of our life, balancing cannot, therefore, be separated from unbalancing. Balance unbalances the social; and unbalance arouses the power of balance.This exhibition presents a wall piece, which is entitled Squeeze (2016). A white shelf-like structure is attached to the upper part of awallin the exhibition space, creating a small room, only just large enough for a planted pot, which must be squeezed into the constructed spatial limitation. In and through the given spatial limitation, this plant continues its own life, finding new directions and spaces for its leaves to grow.This work explores a particular aspect of the relationship between space and power in the process of capitalist urbanization. It expands the territory of the object through experimentation with the given spatial structure and system. The tiny space created by the shelf-like structure refers to the space of the corner, the periphery and the others, which is frequently ignored and abandoned in our society.In the space of capitalism, the ‘others’or minoritieshave always been pushed to the corners; towards the outside or peripheryand away from the centres or the places where they have lived and worked for long periods. The asymmetric structure of power in a capitalist economy drives these people’s lives much harder, by unfairly taking advantage of them to make more profits. In the case of urban development in South Korea and gentrification in some developed countries, for example, construction companies, investors and even the government exploit the urban poor, taking over their places to create new districts, which are filled with luxury residential and commercial buildings for the affluent. In many cases, the urban poor havebeen displaced to look for an alternative living place.In Marx’s theory, exploitation refers to the production of surplus value. The process of exploitation is not only what defines capitalism but also the root of basic inequality in capitalist society. In the exploitive nature of capitalism, social classes createmuch more complex political relationships, rather than being reduced to a simple class struggle in terms of the dualistic relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor or between the dominated and the dominant.According to Marx, the working class - which is easily considered as the oppressed or the dominated - has the potential to become a revolutionary force, which can develop radical demands for social change. In this respect, Squeezefocuses on the politics of space, particularly concerning how things and ideas can be transformed in, react to and become resistant to different structures and relations of power; how the new can be produced in the interrelationship between different elements and powers.By further developing the uneven structure of power relations in capitalist spaces, it also looks at the exploitation of ‘green’, concerning ways in which the concept of green is transformed as a commodity in the process of capitalist urbanization, particularly in relation to the changing ideas of urban land use, the politics of greening and social and spatial production and transformation. It focuses on how the understanding of green has been transformed and commoditized in terms of the politics of space, in particular moving from green or nature as a non-realistic and ideal object - which is free from the control of a certain centralized power system - to an essential part of a capitalist urban system.A set of five greenwall pieces, Constructed Landscape (2016) is installed on two walls in the exhibition space. The pieces were made using plywood to create a densely packed space, which is filled with different sizes of mountain-like forms within the space of 100 cm × 122cm rectangular plates.These pieces are fully covered withglossy green urethane paint, which is usually used to waterproof rooftops in South Korea. This work was derived froma certain aspect of urban landscape in South Korea, particularly looking at a uniformed colour pattern of rooftops in urban architectural spaces. In the metropolitan area of Seoul, houses and other buildingshave been denselybuilt. These green rooftopsfill urban spaces and even completely cover the whole mountain.When we look at these houses and buildings from a distance, they create a new artificial landscape, transforming a mountain and cityscape into an assemblage of glossy green fragments.Constructed Landscape explores and develops the perception ofan urban landscape in South Korea.Urban development projects in South Korea have been implemented on a large scale, constructing communities or towns. It is easy to find the uniformity of newly developedareas, because in Seoul the same designs of houses and other buildings have been constructed on a massive scale in these areas.Undeveloped areas in the city are also uniformed by another architectural style, mostly filled with three or four stories of multiplex housing units, which are called villas in South Korea.However, this work does not focus merely on the outward appearance of the urban landscape, but investigates the contradictory relationship between uniformity and fragmentation in the production of urban space. In Lefebvre’s Notes on the New Town, published in 1995, the urban is seen as a “mediator between nature and human beings, both as individuals and as groups.” As opposed to the rural - which acts as an unmediator in society and nature - the urban produces an abstract space, which has a tendency towards the totalization of space, erasing all differences. By contrast, Lefebvre sees the rural as an organic entity, which spontaneously forms itself within its own territory. Lefebvre pays attention to the ways in which a space is created and expands its territory through the invasion and appropriation of one space by another, such as the rural by the urban, rather than separating them. Space is not a solidified entity, but it is always in the process of formation, absorbing, transforming and expanding differences and contradictions. In relation to Lefebvre’s idea of the relationship between the urban and the rural, mass production and consumption of high-rise residential buildings in the metropolitan area of Seoul can be seen not only as a marked feature, but also as an industrialized method of spatial organization and systemization of planned urbanism that unifies space in a certain pattern in terms of repetition and uniformity.This massive (re)production of spaces certainly affects the significant socialrestructuring in the process of forced displacement and relocation. The gaps between housing prices accelerate spatial fragmentationbased on economic, educational, cultural or occupational differences. The terrain of the urban can be conceived as the centralization of space, which necessarily penetrates the process of the decentralization of space, dissociating and dislocating its own conditions, when encountering a certain limit of growth and permanent competition between rival producers, including the innovation of new technologies. The conflictual movements of urban force, therefore, coexist and participate in the formation of a certain spatial pattern or an abstract space, because space is considered relationally and relatively, rather than as an absolute framework for social action and events.

Constructed Landscape - 홍유영

• 2016Euyoung HongFrom 16 to 20 March, 2016, new sculpture and installation works are presented in the Young Korean Artists (YKA) exhibition at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA) Museum in Korea. The exhibition, entitled Constructed Landscape, is composed of six sculpture and installation practices in Gallery 2 and a site-specific installation work in an open space between the museum buildings. These new works explore the relationship between the logic of capital and the structure of urban space, concerning ways in which things and ideas are transformed in the process of capitalist urbanization, particularly in relation to the changing ideas of urban land use, the politics of space and social and spatial production and transformation. By expanding the notion of displacement, artificiality, unbalance and inequality, the exhibition focuses on how our understanding of everyday objects and ideas has been changed in terms of the politics of space, especially their transformation as an essential means of participating, forming and constructing the capitalist urban system.Settling into the Space of Vulnerability "Taking possession of space is the first gesture of living things, of men and animals, of plants and clouds, a fundamental manifestation of equilibrium and duration. The occupation of space is the first proof of existence [...] Architecture, sculpture and painting are specifically dependent on space, bound to the necessity of controlling space, each by its own appropriate means." Space has always been a matter of importance in my works. My current art practice and research have developed to expand the notion of space in and through its complex relationship with objects, power, politics, society, urbanism and capitalism. In the recent solo exhibition at the CICA Museum, Korea, an installation work, entitled A Study of the Space of Han Pyeong (2016), is presented. This work explores the concept of space from a new perspective, particularly looking at the complex relationship between dwelling and space in rapidly changing conditions of urban space in Seoul. The installation is constructed from everyday objects, including construction materials, various forms of container, a ventilation fan, a work light, rulers, a chair, a plastic bookshelf and a ladder. The objects in the work are mostly made of aluminium, glass, styrofoam and plastic, which are very light and fragile substances and are usually used for the purpose of the construction of a house or for domestic use. Most of the objects, for example, the containers, are of little value, as they are used temporarily for the protection of other things, rather than by themselves. Plastic bottles and containers are easily discarded once their contents are consumed. They can be recycled; however, in South Korea, the economic value of recyclable materials and things has declined dramatically. For example, the price of styrofoam per kilogram dropped almost in half from 806 won to 476 won in 2016. Some recycling collection companies no longer collect plastic sheet, styrofoam or polyurethane because of their low value and even require increasing recycling collection cost. In the installation work, these light, fragile and cheap objects support and connect to other neighbouring objects, by being stacked one on top of another or by bridging different objects. The objects construct a vertically extended form up to the ceiling of the exhibition space. They sustain the whole structure of the work, keeping precarious balance. A Study of the Space of Han Pyeong (2016) provides a fragile and insecure construction of space, which is completely controlled by a particular spatial order, movement and relationship between the objects. This construction is sustained by a tension between heterogeneous elements and objects. The space can easily be destroyed by fine exterior influences, such as light wind, shock or movement. This work not only explores certain aspects of space, which we currently live in and produce, but also provides a contradictory relationship between space and people in the system of capitalism. Having a space is frequently considered a natural right for a human being. However, in the changing contemporary living conditions in urban space, dwelling and the possession of space cannot be understood synonymously. People necessarily live in a space, but it is a transit space, rather than a permanent space for residence. This is like a person who lives in a foreign country or transits spaces like an airport, a bus stop, a train station, a coffee shop or a hotel. People can temporarily live in or use a space, but find it difficult to have the practicality of possessing their own spaces. When we say that there is a low possibility of realization, particularly in having one’s own house, it means that things exist in one’s dream, which is at a certain distance from our actual reality. It can be related to a certain aspect of the system of capitalist competition. In South Korea, space has always been an issue. This includes not only territorial problems in South Korea, as the country still remains one of the divided nations in the world, but also certain issues, raised from social and economic problems of housing and dwelling in the rapid changes of urban space. Urbanization has become a global phenomenon during the past four decades. Compared with some developed countries, South Korea, especially the metropolitan area of Seoul, has experienced rapid urbanization since the 1960s. In the process of urban development in South Korea, conflicts between a developer, such as a large construction company, and the dwellers of a site cannot be avoided; this has always been accompanied with forced eviction and the problems of the evicted, which have been a serious social and political issue for society. However, the current tendency of redevelopment in Seoul has changed. In the system of capitalist competition, the value of space should be increased for its survival. Spatial value has increased differently, based on land use, such as residential or commercial. In the development of residential areas, property owners, who are relatively affluent, voluntarily organize housing redevelopment and maintenance associations and actively lead redevelopment projects. These housing associations have a right to select construction and removal companies and work with the local authority. These groups of property owners pay a share of the expenses for the construction of new housing, in order to improve the quality and value of real estate and make more profit as a means of investment. In this case, poor owners in the associations cannot afford to pay the high cost of share expenses, so that they mostly oppose the redevelopment projects and come into conflict with rich owners. Consequently, once a redevelopment project has successfully been put in place, these poor owners have to sell their properties and leave their houses. This is a displacement made by internal forces, rather than external forces. South Korean urbanization can be characterized as a profit-driven urban renewal project, which takes place on a massive scale and is led by affluent housing owners, the government and large construction companies and private investors. The development process is violent, aggressive and unequal. Once degenerate areas have been redeveloped, housing and rent prices soar to unaffordable levels. Mostly, low-income families are peripheralized and displaced to low-priced spaces in the outskirts of Seoul’s metropolitan area to look for an alternative place for living. This process of uneven development brings about not only the rapid increase of homeless people in the city, but also increases in rent and estate value. Another recognized tendency of urban development in South Korea is the increase of spatial value through the commercialization of urban space. Over the past few decades, residential areas of Seoul have rapidly been transformed into commercial spaces, replacing dwellings with trendy restaurants, cafes and luxury boutiques. This particular tendency of the transformation of land use is certainly different from large-scale planned urban redevelopment, which is mostly led by the government or large developers and construction companies, in order to provide a large number of housing units. This commercialization of space is, in most cases, led by affluent landlords or private investors, in order to earn more profit from the increased value of the property. These redeveloped areas attract more capital and investors and accordingly rent and real estate prices in the areas increase dramatically. One reason why a residential space is attractive to capital and investors is that it is less expensive than that of a commercial space. Therefore, when this residential space is transformed into a commercial space, surplus value can be maximized through the large difference between investment expenses and increasing rent price and property value. Consider these particular urban conditions in South Korea. A Study of the Space of Han Pyeong (2016) focuses on a contradictory idea in the changing meaning and function of dwelling and space. The pyeong is a unit of area measurement used in Korea. Here, han pyeong (1 pyeong) is equivalent to the area of 3.3 m2. A space of han pyeong includes the complex spatiality in our society. It can be considered not only as the minimum size of dwelling spaces for single poor people, such as goshiwon and jjockbang. But also this space contains a desire for the possession and occupation of space. As there is no neutral space, space cannot be simplified as an empty container, which people and things can enter and occupy freely. Space is certainly related to the matter of existence, which includes the formation and transformation of conceptual and material reality. Han pyeong can be a minimum space that people desperately want to obtain for their lives. At the same time, it is the space of desire that is almost difficult to possess. In South Korea, especially in the area of Gangnam, the price per 3.3 m2 has increased dramatically, which is currently over 40,000,000 Korean won (35,000 US dollars) for domestic housing and over 100,000,000 Korean won (86,000 US dollars) for commercial space or an office building. In the metropolitan area of Seoul, people who earn an average income would have to save their whole year’s income for more than 10 years to purchase housing in Seoul. The majority of people tend to spend a large percentage of their income on repaying the housing loan. Up to now, unemployment and economic polarization have been key factors in making urban housing environment more unaffordable, unequal and unstable. A Study of the Space of Han Pyeong (2016) looks at a particular aspect of dwelling space in South Korea through a three-dimensional work of art. The fragile structure of space is managed by a completely controlled spatial system through the balance and tension of different objects. The interior structure of the work is highlighted by a work light, which is attached to a frame low down in the construction. This light not only produces a contrast between the construction and its surrounding space, but also emphasizes the transparency and lightness of the plastic materials used in the work. Through a particular spatial relationship between different objects, this work develops a certain aspect of the space of vulnerability in the shifting idea of dwelling, particularly its position in the space between expansionary construction and fragility, between settlement and displacement and between reality and desire. The quality of life for people with average and lower income levels and the rate of the construction of new luxury high-rise residential buildings at the centre of the city are in inverse proportion to each other. In the case of South Korea, urbanization has undergone rapid growth and change after the Korean War, ending in 1953, thoroughly led by the government from its housing plan to its supply and price control since the 1970s, and has proceeded in an extreme process of constructing and destroying dwelling space. In the process of urbanization since the 1970s in South Korea, people from all over Korea, more than 90% of the total Korean population, have converged in the centre of Seoul. Accordingly, this not only caused the concentration of capital investment in limited areas of Seoul, but also makes the city contested. Seoul has developed rapidly, creating a landscape full of high-rise residential and business buildings. In the competitive construction of new luxury residential buildings, housing prices in Seoul have soared dramatically, certainly influencing the lives of low- and middle-income families. Despite the large supply of new housing, the metropolitan area of Seoul has always been short of affordable houses. In other words, people who cannot afford the increasing rents have been peripherized outside Seoul to find an alternative place to live. People who remain in Seoul have to cope with high rents or monthly repayments of housing loans. These people only just manage to scrape a living by economizing on living expenses. Although they make every effort to maintain their lives, their living site is always vulnerable, being influenced, invaded and destroyed easily by external forces and changes.Displacement or DisappearanceIn stiff capitalist competition, achieved values and technologies tend to be easily devalued and degenerated, owing to the continuous emergence of new relations, methodologies and ideas. If existing systems and relations of production are expected to be ineffective for the future expansion and movement of capital and the production of surplus value, they cannot avoid their replacements or crises, because the geographical boundary of the space itself cannot be changed or replaced with another. The transience of urban space, specifically, the repetitive process of generation and degeneration of the built environment, relates to David Harvey’s account of “creative destruction”, in which he emphasizes “the significance of crises as moments of urban restructuring.” By expanding on this particular aspect of capitalist urbanism, the exhibition presents a new installation work, entitled Constructed Landscape (2016). This work is constructed using various types of green glass bottle, to create a mountain-like form on the table. These bottles were collected from different places in Seoul over a long period. Collected objects or products; all of them green; occupy and are arranged on the table, transforming it into a densely packed space. The objects, like glass bottles and outdated wooden tables, are considered low-value things, not only because they are mass-produced from cheap materials, but also because they are easily discarded or collected for recycling or reusing.Constructed Landscape (2016) explores the shifting changes of urban landscape in the process of urban redevelopment in South Korea. In the system of capitalism, mass production has been an important mode of production. Especially in the Fordism of the early 1900s, it has been characterized as the reduction of unproductivity, the removal of individuality and the verticalization of power structure. Mass production developed a new manufacturing technology, which is dominated by economic efficiency and high-speed operation in a unitary and standardized production system. Instead of making small quantities of different products, mass production maximizes productivity by producing a huge quantity of the same product in a short time for supply to larger sections of the population. In the process, the value and price of a product are reduced. This machinery production process is operated in the verticalized power structure, in which a production line; in which a product is assembled and sequenced in a number of highly divided sub-production lines; is constructed and controlled by a single logic of a dominant group of decision-makers or producers. Mostly, this production line is temporary, because once a product becomes devalorized and degenerated in the process of market competition, an old production line has to be destroyed and replaced with a new production line to produce a new product. However, in the case of mass production, this change of production line or system has not been easy, owing to the system’s structural inflexibility.In South Korea, urban redevelopment projects have mostly been on a large scale, constructing communities or towns. The same designs of high-rise residential buildings are mass-produced. These houses are constructed according to the logic of economic efficiency; which can also be related to the idea of Fordism in the mid-twentieth century; in which housing is mass-produced and is organized for the multiplicity of people or the community. Mass production and consumption of housing are seen as not only a marked feature, but also an industrialized method of spatial organization and systemization of planned urbanism that unifies space in a certain pattern in terms of repetition and uniformity. In relation to the mass production and consumption of housing in South Korea, this installation work looks at the changing meaning and value of space in the system of capitalist urbanism. Old towns and degenerate areas are constantly disappearing in the process of urban development. The reconstruction market works on a cycle of 30 years in Korea. This means that once residential buildings are aged over 30 years, the buildings are under consideration for redevelopment. This relatively fast cycle of housing redevelopment in South Korea is not simply because aged housing is at risk of collapse or life-threatening conditions, but because housing owners spontaneously pre-empt redevelopment projects by establishing housing reconstruction maintenance business associations in order to invest their money to increase the economic value of their housing. Under this shifting condition of urban development, the urban landscape has been changed constantly and rapidly. Like the recycling of discarded glass bottles, dwellings, urban green spaces and city landscapes do not last long in the system of capitalism. Because of globalized market competition and demand, they are pushed into the process of transformation in the contradictory relationship between settlement and displacement, between development and degeneration and between permanence and temporality. Another work with the same title, Constructed Landscape (2016), is a wall piece. This work is composed of two pieces of construction site wall, each of which is cut to 122 cm x 100 cm. The pieces are covered with construction fence wraps, printed with photographs of forest. The work presents two different images of architectural landscape, focusing on contrived combinations of forests and buildings in urban areas. These images are completely covered with a growing medium, such as grasses, plants and trees. At a glance, the entire images can be viewed simply as a forest or a jungle, filled with trees and plants, but when viewers take a close look, they can recognize buildings behind the green. The buildings are recognizable through the lines created by the disconnection of forest images. These architectural images are reproduced from photos of actual abandoned factories in Pyeongnae-dong, Namyang-ju in South Korea. This work focuses on the shifting conditions of the economic environment in South Korea in the post-industrial era, such as changes of industrial structure from industrial technology to information technology, which become a fundamental factor that affects the tendency of de-industrialization at the centre of the city. Industrial structure is dependent on changes of market, technology and social environment. Once a new product is circulated in the market, demand for the old products declines. An example is the disappearance of the Sony Walkman cassette player and CD player in the market. In the case of South Korea, the baby goods industry has reduced dramatically because of the changes of social structure, caused by the large decrease in employment, marriage and birth rates. In addition, the rapid increase of land and rent price in the process of urban development certainly affects the displacement of factories and companies outside the centre of Seoul. In the case of Pyeongnae-dong, dyeing processing factories have formed and established the Hyeopdong industrial complex. Recently, large-scale urban redevelopment projects were set-up in the area, replacing old housing with new high-rise residential buildings. These projects also spread to the neighbouring industrial area, owing to the slumization of the area and the problems of industrial pollution. These abandoned factories are currently under consideration of redevelopment, for transformation into new residential, commercial districts with green spaces. Constructed Landscape (2016) also deals with the changing meaning and function of green in the system of capitalist urbanization. The construction site walls, which are completely covered by photographs of forest, can frequently be found in Seoul, as many places are in the process of (re)development or under consideration for development. This wall embeds particular characteristics of South Korean urban redevelopment, which include large-scale redevelopment through the complete deconstruction of degenerate spaces, forced removal and relocation, and social zoning, caused by changes of land use and housing prices. Recently, the aesthetic value of these construction site walls has been re-examined, to improve the image and value of urban (re)development. Despite the socio-political and environmental problems caused in the process of urban (re)development, ironically, construction site walls have been filled with images that directly refer to green, such as forests, trees and flowers. The term “green” tends to be used widely and even excessively to achieve certain economic, social and political purposes or benefits, which are not associated with or work for nature or the environment. As Neil Smith argues, “Material nature is produced as a unity in the labor process, which is in turn guided by the needs, the logic, the quirks of the second nature. No part of the earth’s surface, the atmosphere, the oceans, the geological substratum, or the biological superstratum are immune from transformation by capital.” Green, or nature, is exploited, privatized, abstracted and idealized to enhance its use value as a key commodity in the system of capitalism. The definition of green has broadly changed to include various concepts, such as nature, environment, renewable, clean, recycle, responsible and sustainable. Most of these have a tendency to project a positive idea of green, which resists or even contrasts against the capitalist monopolization of urban space, particularly its aggressive and violent process of industrialization and commercialization. In this respect, this work recognizes the changing idea of green, which produces and distributes idealized views of things and ideas, anaesthetizing people’s consciousness or awareness in order to think in positive ways, thinking of something restful, peaceful, recreational, liveable, organic, healthy, promoting well-being, clean or pure, rather than in realistic or negative ways. Green images of the construction site walls produce green commodities of urban spaces. The construction fence wraps, which contain photographs of trees and forests, are frequently used to cover construction sites. A view of green is mass-produced, distributed and perceived in the regime of urban. In South Korea, new designs of construction fence wrap have been mass-produced and commonly applied to sections of walls for construction sites. Rather than painted walls, the construction site wall covered with photographs has become one of the most popular and essential materials for decorating the exterior of the construction site in South Korea. Recently, new designs of fence wraps have been developed and introduced, such as photographs of flower, birds, plants, trees and animals. These have been widely used to decorate the interiors or exteriors of commercial spaces and schools, such as cafes, shopping malls, hotels, airports, hospitals, and many different types of space in South Korea, to create nature-friendly images of space. The role of these fence wraps is no longer limited to the production of background, filled with a symmetrical repetition of copies of motifs or patterns or a simple construction information on the wall; rather, it is considered an easy and economic spatial method to (re)produce or even transform a given space into another, passing through the real, yet illusionistic space of photographs. Green images, which are provided through the construction fence wrap produce and distribute a shared view of green in the logic of mass production. The space; produced by the construction site wall; is exchanged into an intentionally figured product for the capitalist production system and for the visual and image-saturated culture, which establishes a mass utopian dream in capitalist society, distributing the same sense of collective satisfaction and perception from the product. By developing further this particular aspect of the commercialization of green in its use in the process of the development of urban space, Constructed Landscape (2016), looks at the contradictory relationship between development and idealization in the production of urban space. Cities have expanded spatially in terms of their economic, social, ecological and political change and demands. In the process of capitalist urbanization, the concept of green is no longer confined to masses of trees in a natural area, untouched by human hand, nor is it simply a greening of urban areas; rather, it has functioned in a certain way in the system of capitalism as a part of the socio-political and economic organizational structures or urban infrastructure, which makes a city function. The term green has become widespread. Its definition has also changed broadly, to include various concepts, such as nature, environment, renewable, clean, recycle, responsible and sustainable. Most of these have a tendency to project a positive idea of green, which resists or even contrasts with the capitalist monopolization of urban space, particularly its aggressive and violent process of industrialization and commercialization. In this respect, the combination of urban with green produces a completely new idea and thing. As we can easily find, by considering the variety of green images, for example, on the construction site walls, in the regime of urban, green is often commoditized and regulated or, in other words, planned, produced, changed, by acting as a strategic tool to make a better and idealized image for gaining more profits. This idealized image produces an illusion, which is detached from existing functions and relationships in reality, for example, the quality of life and the relationship of the idea of green with environment, naturality and sustainability. New social and political systems, relations and orders can be generated through this externality of illusion, by transforming an existing idea and function of green into a new urban hybrid. Removal (2016) is an installation work, composed of an aluminium structure, which has 5 cm long and 0.8 cm diameter aluminium rods protruding from the rear of the structure, and spaced at 30 cm intervals. The idea of this aluminium frame was originally derived from a part of the load space of a 1,000 kg light truck, which is frequently used for delivery and house removal. Green mesh tarp, which is used to cover the load space of a truck, is hung on the aluminium rods. On the ground, a bundle of a pillow and a brick is covered by a clear plastic sheet and tied up with a black rubber band. This bundle pulls the mesh tarp from the ground, creating a certain tension in the work. This work explores the relationship between dwelling and space in the process of urban development, particularly concerning an increasing tendency of urban displacement in the private sectors. In the urbanization of Seoul since the 1970s, the development of urban space has emerged on a large scale, necessarily accompanying different socio-political powers, which often aim to achieve their own interests through development projects. Many problems have occurred in the process of such development. An example is the Yongsan international business district development project. In this radical circumstance of development, the definition of dwelling space is changed to indicate a kind of speculative item, or an investment for making more profits in a relatively short period of time, instead of a space for protection, peace and permanent residence. In this process, conflicts between a developer, such as the state or a large construction company, and local people cannot be avoided. The development procedure is extremely violent, aggressive and exclusive. In many cases, people have to leave their homes, whether or not they can afford to buy or rent new dwelling spaces. Once old houses in slum areas have been replaced to create a new district, housing prices soar to unaffordable levels. This newly transformed dwelling space, therefore, is planned and produced not for the urban poor, because those people certainly cannot afford to buy the new houses.In addition to these large-scale redevelopment projects, the idea of dwelling and space has been changed in a particular tendency of nomadic life in contemporary society in South Korea. The concept of dwelling has been transformed from a permanent place for shelter, rest and protection to a transit place, such as an airport, bus stop, shopping mall, where people cannot have the right to occupy or reside in the place. High housing prices turn people’s hopes of having their own houses into idealized dreams, which can hardly happen in real life. Rising rents push people out of their long-time residential places, in search of cheaper alternatives. In South Korea, houses are mostly commercialized as products, which are used as means of investment to earn more economic profits. In the metropolitan area of Seoul, the majority of people live in high-rise residential buildings and apartments. Depending on brand-name and location, housing prices vary dramatically. In the shifting conditions of urban environment and housing and rent markets, nomadic life has become a common scene, particularly for the urban poor. Mostly, low-income families are peripheralized and displaced to low-priced areas in the outskirts of Seoul’s metropolitan area. They are constantly disappearing from the centre of the city, becoming invisible.Space and Power: (Un)balancing the SocialAs Henri Lefebvre argues, “There is a politics of space, because space is political.” Space and power are inseparable. Also, they are essential elements for building, changing and making a society function in a certain way. My artistic and research interest focuses on ways in which space and power interact with each other and produce a system of space, which hierarchizes and transforms things and ideas in a new relationship and order. In the exhibition, Squeeze (2016) explores a particular aspect of the relationship between space and power in the process of capitalist urbanization. This work is an installation work, which is constructed from a planted pot and a shelf-like structure. It expands the territory of the object through experimentation with the given spatial structure and system of the exhibition space. A white shelf-like structure is placed at the upper corner of the exhibition space, where the ceiling and two walls meet, creating a small room, which is only just large enough for a planted pot, so that it can be squeezed into the constructed spatial limitation. In and through the given spatial limitation, this plant continues its own life, finding new directions and spaces for its leaves to grow. In the case of South Korean urban redevelopment, redevelopment has been mostly on a large scale, building a town or, in an extreme case, a city. These are planned and constructed spaces, which are fundamentally different from spontaneously formed spaces, such as small and old villages or towns in European countries. As large-scale redevelopment projects do not rebuild single small houses, but reconstruct whole towns, in some cases, the topography of the redevelopment area changes; a mountain is destroyed, giving way to new high-rise residential buildings. Redevelopment sites are separated from neighbouring spaces by construction site walls, which strictly restrict entrance to the sites. In many cases, the redevelopment process has always generated administrative and legal conflicts with neighbouring communities. These people ask for financial compensation for the constant annoyance of construction noise, dust, smells, pollution and disruption. Through the complete destruction of degenerate spaces, forced removal and relocation, as well as social rezoning, are inevitable, certainly affecting changes of land use and housing prices. When degenerate areas are planned and redeveloped, forming new residential and commercial districts, most housing and rent prices soar to unaffordable levels. In many cases, people, who cannot afford to buy or rent the new houses, have to find an alternative place for living outside the centre of Seoul. From a political context, the use of a natural material, that is, a plant in this work can be viewed from two different perspectives. First, it focuses on the political relationship between the majority and minority in the system of capitalist urbanization. In Deleuze and Guattari’s theory, the current status of capitalism has been investigated through the concept of the minor or becoming-minor, particularly in the regime of sign and language. In A Thousand Plateaus, a majority is defined as a dominant system of power, which homogenizes, centralizes and standardize things and ideas. Deleuze and Guattari argue, “Majority implies a constant, of expression or content, serving as a standard measure by which to evaluate it. [...] Majority assumes a state of power and domination, not the other way around.” A minority is considered a complex concept, which does not exist in itself, but exists only in relation to a majority. Minority is a "potential, creative and created, becoming." Deleuze and Guattari distinguish the concept of majority from that of minority in terms of the dialectical relationship between the power of constant (pouvoir) and the power of variation (puissance). In the regime of capitalism, urban space becomes a point of rupture, whereby different forces and powers meet and are translated into a certain form, interacting with conflictual movements between the vulnerable side of the minority, which allows the invasion and crossing of different forces, and the military side of the majority, which has a tendency to control and protect the territory. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of majority and minority, Squeeze (2016) focuses on two different, yet interrelated, functions or operations of power in the spatial system of capitalism. The dominant power operates to restrict the formation and movement of hierarchical assemblages; it tends to obstruct the emergence of singularity by creating a striated space of unproductivity. In particular, it produces a space of homogeneous concentration, in and through which a central power exercises a dominant and active force, which holds and controls transit spaces, such as roads and bridges. The dominated power is, by contrast, considered a form of assemblage or the politics of the outside, which has a tendency to act against the formation and operation of the dominant power. It exercises a transformative force to weaken the concentrated power of sovereignty of the dominant, by penetrating the striated space of verticality through the dynamics of the smooth space of horizontality. The dominated power constantly moves towards the “deterritorialization” of the hierarchy of the dominant, creating a new space of difference. This contradictory, yet interactive relationship between the dominant power and the dominated power is necessary to generate a creative movement. This creative movement can be achieved only through going beyond the rigidly fixed and anti-productive space of the dominant. In this respect, the political relationship between majority and minority are crucial in its production of nomad vectors and the actualization of transformative potentiality through an established space. Second, in this work, the concept of green is differentiated from the traditional idea of green, for example, that of modernist realist landscapes, in that green (or natural landscape) in realist paintings mostly depicts the rural, which is considered the “anti-urban”. Realists understand green as an important means of escaping or becoming free from a certain dominant power system of reality and as a place of protection, safety, peacefulness, equality and freedom. However, in the contemporary condition of capitalist urbanism, green is no longer considered a minor power or a refuge in external reality. In addition, greening urban spaces does not mean the construction of an ecological utopian space, making a certain balanced relationship between human beings and nature. In this respect, this work focuses on the spatial and political system and relation, which are produced in the logic of capital. Green acts as a constituent element of capitalism, which systemizes a space in a certain way. It is also a dynamic part of the land market, which is produced, divided and regulated by urban planning. Green as a commodity produces and is produced by the system of contradiction in social reality. Society produces, utilizes and distributes the illusion of green, by materializing a virtual space of protection, clean, safety, equality and freedom. Through the illusion of green, the urban space becomes more unequal, hierarchized, fragmented and conflictual in the process of uneven development, accelerating uneven accumulation and distribution of capital, rather than balancing the social. By expanding these two different ideas, Squeeze (2016) explores the politics of space, concerning how things and ideas can be transformed in different structures of power; how the new can be produced in the interrelationship between different elements and powers. This work also provides a new understanding of how human beings perceive, behave from a new perspective and relate to specific conditions in everyday life, particularly in relation to the politics of space in the system of capitalism. By further developing the political relationship between the urban and the green, it concerns ways in which the concept of green is transformed in the process of capitalist urbanization, particularly in relation to the changing ideas of urban land use, the politics of greening and social and spatial production and transformation. It focuses on how the understanding of green has been transformed and commoditized in terms of the politics of space, especially moving from green or nature as a non-realistic and ideal object; which is free from the control of a certain centralized power system; to an essential part of capitalist urban system. In the exterior of the museum, a site-specific installation, entitled A Space Made by Thirty Water Containers (2016) is presented. This project makes a space by using thirty 20 litre plastic water containers. The water containers are placed in the middle of the space between two museum buildings, which is used as a passageway and rest area in the back and as a parking space in the front. The line of the water containers creates a geometric line of space. In the metropolitan area of Seoul, these large water containers can frequently be found in spaces, such as empty parking spaces or roads in front of shops, restaurants and houses. They function as a barrier or a barricade to stop someone getting in or using the space. This installation work focuses on contested spatiality, which expands the social use of everyday objects and its relation to the production of space and spatial system in the urban context. The installation of large water containers in the streets and roads creates a contested zone, in which a continuous attempt to enter the zone from the outside cannot be avoided. In many cases, it brings about conflicts with the people who want to control the space by constructing the barrier of water containers. In the city, space is hierarchized based on many factors, such as community, culture, education, wealth and social function and position. This means that space becomes an arena not only for determining collective identity, but also for generating inter-communal disputation, which makes a city contested. Moreover, the space of cities is contested in terms of the fact that they certainly have a limited spatial, geographical and topological scope for development; conflicts are, therefore, immanent in such a spatial limitation or containment, particularly concerning how to use, develop and distribute limited land resources. In this respect, the installation focuses on the transformation of water containers into a political agency, whose role is to occupy, control, organize and systemize a space in a certain order. This work illuminates the complex spatial and political potentiality of the object, which provides a critical perspective on understanding urban space. The installation of water containers is not limited to a physical dimension of a city; rather, it allows us to expand a social phenomenon and the reproduction of social space in the conflictual relationship between shared space and contested space, between occupation and displacement and between actuality and potentiality. A space is not only produced, reproduced and transformed in relation to people’s action and reaction, but also (re)shapes human spatiality. (Un)balancing (2016) explores the relationship between space and power in the process of capitalist urbanization. This work is constructed by vertically stacking large street flower pots on two separate slanted platforms. The stacks of flower pots lean against each other to create a balance and the stacks do not collapse. This work explores the territory of an object, which is not identical with the space that is physically occupied by an object. Rather, it includes the socio-political action of the object, which affects its relations with its surroundings. Large street flower pots are currently utilized as a means of street displacement in the metropolitan area of Seoul, South Korea. Public spaces, such as the space of street, have been used actively in South Korea for various social, political and economic purposes, rather than simply as a passageway from one place to the other place. Especially in the process of urbanization, space has not functioned as a static urban setting for social practices; rather, it acts as a complex kind of zone, in and through which different forces and relations can encounter and come into conflict with each other. Consider public spaces, particularly streets between buildings, houses and roads. This space cannot be simplified as a neutral space, which does not belong to a particular person, but is shared with the anonymity of the urban population. From a historical perspective, the space of the street played an important role not only as a commercial place, for example as the setting for a traditional market, but also, in a larger sense, as a centre of a city’s economy, politics and culture. In the Joseon dynasty in Korea, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most authorized shops were located in the capital city, Hanyang, whereas in rural areas there were only temporary markets that were held on particular days of the week. Government-licensed city shops, called Shijeon, had been located in the main streets in the capital city since the early fifteenth century. A Shijeon was a centre of commerce, which had exclusive right to sell various items throughout the country, such as special items for sale to the palace, luxury goods for the upper classes, and various household items for the lower classes. In the Joseon period, it was, therefore, legitimate that Shijeon had the monopoly and was allowed to prohibit an unauthorized shop, called a Nanjeon, from selling monopolized items. In the seventeenth century, however, the number of Nanjeon increased enormously throughout the capital city, not only because of the increase in production, which caused changes in the commerce system; centralized in Shijeon; but also because of the enactment of new commercial laws, which significantly weakened the prohibition on Nanjeon. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in South Korea, a contemporary version of Nanjeon has continued, under the name Nojeom (street shop). These illegal street shops are mostly located on major street corners in Seoul, where people gather easily. The majority of traders in Nojeom cannot afford to rent space. These people tend to occupy space illegally, by setting up temporary stalls in the street. In the process of the transition from an agricultural economic system to an industrialized one in South Korea, particularly in the postwar period of the 1970s and the 1980s, people from all over Korea converged in the centre of Seoul to find better jobs and earn more money. In this period, the number of Nojeom increased dramatically. Until now, the Korean government has strictly prohibited these illegal street shops, owing to the obstruction of traffic, the lack of safety for pedestrians and ruining of the urban aesthetic. In this respect, it is clear that the street environment functions as a critical element of the formation of the city, which is related not only to how people pass along roads in urban settings, but also to how a space can be used and produced. (Un)balancing (2016) concerns questions of the meaning and function of everyday objects, which can be a means of producing and transforming a space, particularly in the process of urbanization. The territory of an object cannot, therefore, be reduced simply to the space that is physically occupied by an object; rather, it includes the socio-political action of the object, which affects its relations with its surroundings. Large street flower pots; called Doro Whabun; are frequently used for various purposes in public spaces in the process of environmental development. A recent example is the installation of large flower pots on the streets in Seocho-gu, Seoul in 2012 as a part of the local authority’s environmental renewal project. The aims of this flower-pot project are to crack down on illegal street stalls, by filling an empty space to prevent the erection of stalls in the street and at the same time to improve the aesthetic of the public space by, as it were, “greening” the city. These flower pots are usually placed outside shops and residential buildings in two or three rows along the street, forming a new pattern of movement. The installation of flower pots serves as an essential mechanism for the formation of social interaction, because, on the one hand, it creates a particular pattern of flow and relations of people as they walk along the street and, on the other hand, the power of the local authority conflicts with different forces, which occupy and pass through the space. The spatial arrangement of flower pots can be understood as an upright architectural structure, which not only demarcates and protects a particular area of land, but also produces boundaries for the territories it occupies. At the same time, it separates one place from the other and is shared with neighbouring properties. Compared with architecture, the installation of flower pots creates a temporary space, which can be changed or removed easily, depending on the condition of plants and the use of the space. In the streets, the flower pots; which are not merely lifeless things; are denigrated as hideous objects of the streets, not only because the local authority overlooked the necessity for continuous maintenance; for example, watering and planting; and fail to budget for this maintenance, but also because these flower pots were originally aimed to be utilized for different social purposes. The spaces, produced by flower pots, present a particular aspect of urbanism in South Korea, including changing ideas of the urban aesthetic, the principle of the use of public space and the political dynamism of the production of space. In the urban environment, flower pots not only divide a space both socially and spatially, but also produce a conflictual power relation between governance and trespassing, between minority and majority and between occupation and displacement. The function of flower pots in urban space has been transformed into a political agency, which participates in the production of space, that is, controlling spaces by exercising power through a particular spatial system constructed by flower pots. Flower pots are the property of a local authority. This dominant power of flower pots is authorized to control an area of space. Therefore, if someone moves or removes these flower pots without permission, the person will be legally punished. Large flower pots are utilized to prevent illegal use and occupation of public space, such as illegal street shops and illegal parking. A balance of power in public space is fundamental to the preservation of democracy, as public spaces should be shared and cannot be considered as private territory that is possessed and controlled by a single person. However, displaced people mostly cannot afford to rent or buy a shop in the city centre, so they have to find an alternative space or job for managing their lives. Balancing cannot be separated from unbalancing. The balance of power unbalances the social; and unbalance arouses the power of balance.

Throwing - 홍유영

• The Manual: Parts and LabourCo-curated by John Chilver and Brighid Lowe14 November - 14 December 2014Osan Museum of Art, OsanThrowingEuyoung HongIn the exhibition, Parts and Labour, co-curated by John Chilver and Brighid Lowe, a particular condition of art-making is given to artists. The condition includes written instructions for the production of a work of art which are to be followed by using only the materials listed in the instructions, which are provided by the curators of the exhibition. A work of art should be made by the conceptual labour of the artist and the physical labour of others who participate in making art. The instruction of the artist is acted on and completed by the others. In the process, the artist plays a role as legislator. Specifically, in minimalist and conceptualist works; for example, Michael Asher’s Sculpture Project (1977, 1987 and 1997) and Michael Craig-Martin’s An Oak Tree (1973); this legislative role of the artist has been significantly considered, expanding the meaning of conceptual participation in the art-making process and finding a new material possibility of the idea behind the work. In these particular given conditions of art production, I intend to present a new installation work, titled Throwing for the exhibition. For the construction of the work, a set of instruction is proposed:1. All materials on the list are used except for a bottle of red wine, a round mirror and balls. Use only one item if there are more than one of the same item.2. Prepare a measuring tape, masking tape and a protractor in addition to the given materials.3. Choose a place within the exhibition space and mark the place with a piece of masking tape.4. Select an item from the list randomly.5. Stand on the marked place with an object and throw it.6. Measure the distance between the starting point and the place where the object has fallen.7. Calculate the distance divided by 10.8. Measure the new distance from the starting point and then move the point by turning through an angle of 30 degrees clockwise from the first flowing direction and mark this with a piece of masking tape. 9. Once you have placed the object on the marked place, remove the masking tape. The object becomes a new starting point for completing the next action on the next object.10. Continue to apply the rule to each randomly selected object.Mostly, an artist has a conceptual and material plan before he or she begins to work and thinks about how his or her idea and work turns out at the end in relation to the given space. For example, for Richard Serra, to build a model is an important part of constructing his large-scale sculptural installation. However, in this exhibition, it is not easy to have an image of a completed piece beforehand. An artist makes an instruction on the basis of a list of materials without the material experience of the actual objects. This indicates that the artist is required to actualize his or her imagination about the given materials, such as their sizes, colours or weights in a certain way. In addition, the artist has is restricted by the extent to which he or she is physically participating in the process of the production of art. There is also a time limit to the construction of a work of art. Every work of art is allowed to be constructed only within a total of two person-labour-hours, no matter whether the work is complete or not. This time limit can definitely be related to a certain aspect of performance. These shared restrictions may help viewers to easily discover different conceptual and material reactions between 20 participating artists through their outcomes. In the exhibition, an instruction acts as an essential factor that maximizes the visualization and materialization of differences. In the particular condition of the exhibition, a performative installation work, Throwing explores the construction and distribution of principle through the material and immaterial relationship in the process and result of art production. It focuses on the idea of the verb, specifically, the act of throwing. In the project, objects cannot be identified simply as residues of a particular activity, as throwing does not result in a significant physical transformation of the given objects. Rather, the act of throwing rearranges established spatial relations, functions and meanings of the objects. It changes not only our traditional understanding of objects as nouns; which are considered as having strong solidity, immobility, physicality, isolation and objectivity; but also objects’ social roles and relations. From a socio-political perspective, the movement, relationship and transformation of objects are affected and even controlled by the capitalist mode of production. In the realm of capitalism, the mode of production is considered an important factor, which changes and determines not only productive forces, but also the relations of production that make production function and cause the plan to be systemized in a certain way. This mode of production cannot be reduced to material production; rather, it is a broader concept, which includes the concept of reproduction, consisting of the act of circulation, distribution and consumption. In the contemporary condition of globalization, specifically in the course of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, the mode of production has been changed, in particular from the state mode of production to the flexible mode of production. [1] Stuart Elden sees the state mode of production, as focusing on three important elements, initially described by Lefebvre: (1) managerial and administrative, (2) the power of protection and (3) the power of killing. [2] The state mode of production is based on the logic of monopoly, in which the state as a political unit intervenes in the economy to protect large-scale monopolistic planning from that of private agents, by fixing a legal framework within which large developers can have a priority, to operate effectively. It is centred particularly on manufacturing. By contrast, in the disposition of globalization, the globalized system of production is not always matched by a globalized consumption pattern. This is because different income levels and types of consumption are constantly fragmentized and polarized into a particular condition of production. Therefore, rather than a monolithic production system, led by the limited dominant, the new mode of production tends to be flexible and globalized in many sectors by making products cheaper and circulating them more easily and efficiently for consumers all over the world. Whereas the state mode of production has a tendency towards the production side of the operation, which is led by the limited dominant groups of people in society and aims at redistribution, based on the system of social classes, the flexible mode of production focuses on the diversity of consumers, who vary depending on their income levels and the sites that they relate to. On the basis of different consumption patterns throughout the world, the production process and its method are strictly subordinate to the social, cultural, economic and geographical conditions of the site. In this interpretation, the contemporary system of space, therefore, operates in the logic of flexibility, which seeks to reconfigure existing labour relations and production systems in relation to different social, economic and geographical contexts. The fragmented condition of consumer markets and the expansionary nature of capital flow are considered to be two key factors in the shift of the mode of production. The force of flexibility stimulates the decentralization and differentiation of production systems, as capital constantly seeks to enhance its value and profitability by externalizing and distributing itself through specified production lines. A new form of space can constantly emerge, resulting from the expansionary nature of flexible production systems and the fragmentation of consumption. In the process, public and private sectors work in partnership, as the flexible system of production enhances the interdependence of different forces, relations and sites. In this changing condition of capitalist production, objects are produced, changed and move according to the logic of capital. Objects are essential for the accumulation of capital, because they become a basis for not only the circulation of capital, but also the process of production and distribution during a given period of time. The production and arrangement of objects is, therefore, subordinated to the flow of capital, which constantly seeks a profitable condition of spaces in order to absorb surplus capital. In other words, if an existing value and system of an object fails to absorb surplus capital, this means that the object is degenerated in the market, for example, the products of Nokia and Motorola and many others. In this account, the system of objects in the space of capitalism has been formed and transformed in an uneven pattern of geographic development, whereby the ephemerality of objects becomes an essential condition for the construction and expansion of a profitable space in terms of the logic of capital, rather than part of an equal development of all the spaces. Degenerate objects and the spatial relation and system of the objects usually have a long period of time to increase in value and catch up with their rival producers by restructuring their production systems and relations. The increase of the value of an object can be proved only through its survival in the space of market. In relation to objects in the system of capitalist production, Throwing constructs a new spatial system of objects, which is resistant to capitalist orders, and which includes the system of gallery or museum and art collection. Through the action of throwing, the spatial arrangement of objects produces a certain form of movement and relationship in the space. In particular, the weight of objects and the strength of human physical force – which have been relatively ignored in the capitalist value system – are essential factors in determining the distance and direction of the movement of the objects. These factors of movement act as two contradictory forces: the one that is for gravity and the other that is against gravity. In this complex relationship between different forces, throwing does not simply free the object to go wherever it may, but creates a particular pattern and trajectory of movement and relation. The action becomes the art. Rather than functioning as the resultant objects, the objects form, change and reorganize the given space in and through a new spatial principle. The activity of throwing may invade spaces of other artworks in the exhibition space. Throwing as an expansionary yet violent force produces a new continuity between disconnected and fragmented elements by forging a new relationship between a new force and a different existing spatial system. The relationship between an artist’s legislative role and an object’s spatial function can be seen as a main engine of systemizing a new space, which makes a critical reaction to the monopolization and hierarchization of objects and spaces in the logic of capital. In the process, an existing space can be transformed into a new one at a given point in time, not simply because the objects relate to different material and immaterial forces, but also because the value and system of the objects are affected by the change in the logic of space, that is, throwing. Through this process, a new space can emerge. [1] David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origin of Cultural Change (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1990) 141-172.[2] Stuart Elden, Understanding of Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible (London, Continuum, 2004) 224.

Layering Spaces - 홍유영

• PenumbraBermondsey Project Space46 Willow WalkLondon SE1 5SF18 - 27 October 2012Layering spacesby Euyoung Hong In the exhibition Penumbra, the exhibition space is allocated to each of eight artists to work their projects for one day each. Rather than gathering eight different complete works into one exhibition space by dividing that space into eight fragmented spaces, over the course of the eight days, each artist enters the space that is occupied by another work, produced in the previous day. The principle of the exhibition is to allow the works of art to intrude upon each other conceptually and physically. This intervention of work occurs sequentially. Accordingly, the exhibition works gradually accumulate in the same place until the end of the project. The method of collaboration with artists in this exhibition is, therefore, different from usual. For example, in other exhibitions, there is often a preliminary process of negotiation that necessarily condenses different ideas and elements into a certain single form of consent before the event. Apart from the agreement of each artwork interfering with, and being interfered by, the other seven, there are no detailed plans for the exhibition. This implies that the artists themselves will, of course, find it difficult to know what would happen on their own project day; and it is impossible to have a complete idea or plan before the show. The exhibition, therefore, is composed of the processes of creating works of art, rather than complete pieces of work. This blurs the boundary between the artist’s exhibition space and artist’s production space. The last day of the project is open publicly. Viewers will, at first, encounter the final layer of space that is completed by eight artists. At this level, it will be difficult for viewers to distinguish an artist’s work from another, as they are completely intermingled. Merging an exhibition space with an artist’s studio need not to be total chaos; rather it can be a means of visualizing a work of art, particularly one that experiments with and materializes the possibility of contingency. The practice of art acts as a new connection between objects, people and ideas and can transfer everyday space or objects into an aesthetic relationality. This final layer of space cannot be identified merely as a pictorial image; rather, different elements constantly interact with each other in and through the gap between different layers of time, ideas and relations.The exhibition space is a complex kind of space, and intermingles the various functions of space, not only for exhibiting a work of art, but also for other purposes such as holding a workshop or seminar. Because of this multi-functional aspect of the space, an artist can find unexpected objects in the space already; such items as a ladder, office chairs, or tables, which cannot easily be found in other exhibition spaces. For the first of the eight artists participating in the exhibition, the unoccupied exhibition space itself becomes a given condition for creating a work of art. Considering the particular condition of the space, I decided to present a temporary foldable space - called Waiting Room (2012) - which is composed of two sets of foldable steel frames and vinyl sidewalls and ceilings. This temporary spatial construction is frequently used in South Korea for various purposes, such as street shops, temporary outdoor offices and waiting rooms outside restaurants. Such foldable spaces are much more economical than constructing actual buildings. The foldable space can also be easily moved and removed. In the project, I use this temporary spatial construction as a waiting room, in which different chairs are placed, facing each other along opposite walls. Some of the chairs are collected from the exhibition space. The others come from different places outside. In real life, when we enter a waiting room, one can see people who are waiting for the event that they expect to occur. The space is often divided by people, because people tend to make a group or groups for chatting or simply waiting together in the space. This spatial division, formed by people, definitely relates to the arrangement of objects, such as chairs, tables and partitions. A particular spatial arrangement generates a new rule, whereby people occupy the space in a certain pattern and behaviour. This temporary space territorializes itself through its complex spatial operations. On the one hand, it operates as a generative site that not only encounters different things and ideas, but also allows a new event to occur. On the other hand, it becomes a space that suspends people’s further actions. In my work, space is crucial, not because a work of art necessarily occupies a particular place, but because a work of art is produced in an interrelationship with the space. Space becomes a fundamental factor that determines the territory of a work of art. From a spatial perspective, Waiting Room is political, because it presents a ‘suspended space’ that allows flows of people in the space and at the same time experiences a delay of an event or decision that the people expect to occur. Layering as a constant process of de-territorialization can be an essential method for activating this suspended space, in the sense that it does not accumulate different spaces and elements in a historical order, but is an act of blurring existing boundaries and borders, through which different forces and powers can encounter and produce something new. It deals with a place of complexity, which is in constant movement from one form to another, rather than the idealist account of a permanent settlement or protection. This construction occupies a position that layers differences, such as a presentness with a delayed future, the private with the public and the valid with the invalid. This is a shared yet closed space.

Furniture Music - Eva Diaz Professor Pratt Institute

• by Eva Diaz (Assistant Professor, History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute)2007Picture the interior of a corporate office, say IBM in its heyday in the 1950s or 1960s. As an extreme example of bureaucracized space, you probably can visualize it even if you haven’t actually seen it. Picture a vast area populated by endless rows of uniform desks, a seemingly limitless expanse made brightly sterile by fluorescent fixtures ensconced in the depressingly regular grid of a drop ceiling. Next, envision a domestic interior, a living room for example, primed for a Met Home spread, every object tidy, ordered, pleasantly asymmetric, every chair standing to attention, each vase, lamp, and tchotchke intentionally placed with a compulsive eye for display. These are environments in which presentation has calcified into predictable pattern. With these sites in mind, imagine them detonated, unearthing a new order in disturbance?picture fragments of chairs held magically aloft, pieces of desks and armoires clinging to walls, phones forcefully jammed inside drawers, dangling their tangled cords like so much unkempt hair. Picture the corporate-designed and the interior decorated intermingled and exploded, caught hovering in mid-blast with a stroboscopic camera, frozen in the midst of catastrophe. This fragmented place could be as Alice found it in her fall down the rabbit hole, with cupboards and bookshelves mischievously adhered to walls in an awry parallax of the world as previously experienced. Such a rearrangement possesses the menace of other, recent and cruel alterations of space, however?the attacks upon the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001 come to mind. As embodiments of corporate office culture and capitalist efficiency, their violently destroyed interiors (though shielded by the hulking modernist towers) perhaps experienced a comparable instant of dislodgment before pulverization. Or, this new off-kilter space may bring to mind the aftermath of Katrina, in which the domestic was ferociously reordered and inverted, whole homes floating off their foundations as their bobbing contents drifted away into limelight of publicity.In Euyoung Hong’s recent sculptures a similarly aggressive rethinking of objects and interior space occurs. Hong scatters and suspends precisely sliced wedges of furniture throughout the gallery space, creating moments of unexpected repetition, say, when corners of a desk have gathered together in an improbable wall-bound sequence of jutting triangular promontories, or when an end table is sutured to another and suspended mid-room in an odd upended hybrid. Chairs, like hyper-magnetized objects having finally surrendered their independent resolve, are ripped asunder and charge toward a single point in a jumbled cluster of legs protruding chaotically from the wall. Eerily, each object is blanched to match the stark walls, as if coated in the dust cloud of a massive explosion or exposed in the ionic flare of a white hot nuclear blast. * * *In the early part of the 20th century, composer Eric Satie called for new musical forms “which will be part,” according to his great advocate John Cage, “of the noises of the environment.” Given the length of some Satie’s pieces, such as the more than 24-hour composition Vexations, his music was intended as background for other events; Satie’s plan was to create “furniture music… designed to satisfy ‘utility’ requirements.” If it was barely recognizable as music, if it blended in with the innocuous furniture, only then would his compositions possess the “power to irritate” and to “despise art.” Reflecting upon the career of filmmaker Luis Bunuel, literary theorist Michael Wood noted that attempts by avant-gardists to conceive of a rigid order, of straight-laced furniture as a foil for a revolution in music, in fact serve to set firm points of opposition and fixed codes to transgress. In this manner, transgression misrecognizes the intractable problem of the symbolic order: that it’s always changing, and sometimes with a perverted rationality. The tendency to dissolve the category of art into functionality, “life” defined by its utility, in turn creates a life gone sterile with its reduction to pure use value. To Satie the furniture is a constant, a backdrop to mimic in its overlooked ubiquity. But what if the furniture rears up and wants to transgress too, if it tires of playing the straw man of conformity to the rebellion of actions around it? What if objects and background aren’t fixed tableaus upon which to act out change, what if they are recognized as part of a process of revolutionizing outmoded forms, and indeed bring attention to the ubiquity of form in our surroundings, bringing “background” to prominence in a move that was the promise and technique of modernist design? Hong’s disorienting spaces may at first appear as imagined, as a visual enactment of the condensed and displaced logic of dreams. Yet in the detritus thrown up by Hong’s catastrophes a demand for redress is made by the recently outmoded objects that are the kibble of landfills. The quaint and obsolete cord-bound phones now supplanted by wireless networks, the mock Chippendale clawed chairs or pseudo Federal-style bedside tables that are the fixtures of thrift stores and cheap motels, the “functional” desk whose emulation of modernist design stopped at the point of uninspired austerity; this junk has been given the dignity of weirdness, has been chopped and rearranged so that its uselessness and ugly bad design acts like a beacon, a warning from the virtually disposable objects of our culture that they are still replete meaning and strangeness. This stuff, the normally unattended to backdrop, insists on being seen as charged with intention, as created and ordered with certain interests and certain quick profits in mind. The way we create objects and organize spaces is a corollary to the way we arrange our society?never neutral, always constructed. For Hong slicing open these disregarded objects unlocks insights into the way our habitual use of space can be estranged toward a close attention to the appearance and organization of form, so that new forms can be created that represent our ever-changing symbolic order. Here the music doesn’t become like the furniture so much as the furniture creates a punk cacophony of its own.*Eva Diaz is an art historian and writer. Her Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton University, titled “Chance and Design: Experimentation at Black Mountain College,” was advised by Hal Foster. Diaz was on the faculty of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program from 1999-2008, and she was recently the curator at Art in General, a non-profit contemporary arts space in New York. She has taught art history at Sarah Lawrence College and Parsons The New School of Design. In fall 2009 she joins the faculty of Pratt Institute in New York as an assistant professor of contemporary art.