2007 Issue Fighters: Tongue, Liberated! :: November 23 - December 23, 2007 :: Insa Art Space of the Arts Council Korea, 90 Wonseo-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea.

Issue Fighters is an annual project that Insa Art Space (IAS) designs as an agenda-specific program. Tongue, Liberated!, the project for the year 2007 focuses on ’speech act’ as it intends to be in tandem with “sound,” which is this year’s IAS curatorial theme. This project illuminates speech as a performance and examines the ways in which speeches are constructed and conveyed as public utterance in the interface with the public. As the contemporary art practices step beyond the realm of art to meet with the public, relationship building based on dialogue and communication is surfacing as the major process of artists’ work. Dialogue, in this sense, can be understood as speech act–sophisticated and purposeful political act carried out in a format of everyday conversation. Those who featured in this project include a wide spectrum of professionals such as artists, activists, poets, performance artists, and curators engaged in the experiment of various speech act formats including conversation, speech, lecture, public reading, recital, theatrical reading and performance.

With Joseph Beuys, Nicoline van Harskamp, Keiko Sei, Kiwan Seong, Su-hwan Choi, Bo-jun Shim & 20 Other Poets,
voiceoverhead (Achim Lengerer & Dani Gal): featuring Romuald Karmakar, Akin Fernandez, Holly Ward, C. M. von Hausswolff / Friedrich Jürgenson.

The Art of Listening :: November 5 - December 15, 2007 - IAS further expands its activities on sound, performances and text works by carrying out case studies on creative collaborations of visual art with other art genres. The workshop explores sound that is available in our everyday lives but has not been truly recognized. It induces participants to hear subtle sound that comes from human body, buildings and the earth, and suggests them to find the cultural, political and social significances of such sound.

The Art of Listening

How ’sound art’ differ from ’music’, and where is the thin borderline between them? The definition of sound art has been constantly questioned ever since sound art has entered the realm of contemporary art; but, there is no agreed definition on this matter. Actually, sound art has explored its own definition, implicitly denying classifications and is expanding its domain to the genre of contemporary art, music and literature.

Wikipedia defines Sound art as: “Sound art is a loosely associated group of art practices that concern sound and listening as their focus.” The former is a sound-making work for the purpose of playing, and the latter is a plain sound-listening. According to this definition, the sound workshop of Insa Art Space is focused to ‘listening’ as the title the art of listening implies. In other words, this workshop aims to perceive the surrounding world and communicate with it through auditory senses.

Insa Art Space will further expand its activities to sound, performances and text works by carrying out case studies on creative collaborations of visual art with other art genres. This workshop will explore current visual-oriented culture by investigating sound.

We are surrounded by all sorts of sound that constantly bursts into our auditory system. Many times a day, fruit and vegetable vendors wander around residential areas shouting their sale items. During election time, candidates’ promotion vehicles take turns with the fruit/vegetable vendors. When you want to take a nap on a lazy afternoon, the maintenance office kindly announces things of no importance. Our ears are constantly harassed by all sorts of sound as long as you live in a metropolitan city.

Actually, this sound portrays and conveys the culture and the landscape of the world that we are now living in. However, we block all these sound with electric devices such as portable MP3 players. The mobile phones and CDMA detach our auditory system from surrounding environment. The advanced technology and cutting edge communication devices accelerated development in the sound-media, but at the same time, blocked our ears from the soundscape.

In the workshop, the art of listening, we will introduce sound that is available in our everyday lives but has not been truly recognized. At the same time, we propose you hear very subtle sound that comes from your body, buildings and the earth. We want you to find the cultural, political and social significances from such sound with your keen ears.

Workshop, “A Little Bit”
Byungjun Kwon
Nov. 5 - 17, 2007
Performance : 5 PM, Nov. 17
Register.

Workshop, “Sound, Architecture, and Environment,”
Mark Bain
Nov. 12 - 17, 2007
Artist’s Talk : 4 PM, Nov.10
Register.

Workshop, “Hearing Perspective: Think with Your Ears”
O+A (Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger)
Dec.10 - 15, 2007
Artists’ Talk : 2 PM, Dec.15, 2007
Register.

“Dongducheon : A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision”
Dec. 1, 2007 - Feb. 24, 2008
Public Panel Discussion : 3 PM, Dec. 1, 2007
Register.

IAS also presents a project, “Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision” in New Museum of Contemporary Art as one of four partner institutions invited to a program, “Museum as HUB,” which is an inter-institutional collaborative project conceived by New Museum. In the inaugural two-year cycle, Hub partner organizations address the topic of “neighborhood” as it relates to specific aspects of the local region in which they are located, culminating in two presentations. IAS selects Dongducheon as a representative Korean neighborhood that implicates particular contextual memories and stories of modern and contemporary condition of Korea, as well as common concerns of some local cities in other parts of the world. New works by four artists, KOH Seung Wook, Sangdon KIM, RHO Jae Oon and siren eun young jung are introduced in the opening presentation, and further development of which will be presented in next May at the same venue.