Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin from February to June 2013. With texts on individual artists and their work. Includes transcripts of artist talks held in conjunction with the exhibition and artists' biographies.

'There are some artists who pose political questions by drawing on repetitive actions in a highly charged field, but not advocating a certain political position or rallying cry. The artist gets into a community of emigrant workers, not to fight for solving a political problem right away, but to participate in their daily activities and organize a festival for them and to intervene in trivial and miscellaneous matters of their everyday life (mixrice); ordinary objects are put forth which seemingly appear mundane but turn out to be entangled in social tragedies (Sanghee Song); the artist adopts a peaceful performance carried out in ‘Green Line,’ a borderline area between Israel and Palestine (Francis Alÿs), or a non-intermittent filmic record of a labor camp in Afghanistan by a 100-meter camera track set up over the course of eleven days (Melik Ohanian); the artist’s strategies also include paying people for doing what the artist asks to do, in which native people learn Spanish, the language they do not understand, or foreign immigrants dye hair blonde, or participants incline and shore up a gallery wall (Santiago Sierra).

Dealing with political matters, other artists choose to disclose hierarchical orders without reservation or refer to notions of power metaphorically, in a situation that does not look political at all. The aforementioned artists relate to politics, while the following artists to the political. The parody of an educational television program demonstrates the artificiality of instruction and contemporary art (Beom Kim); the entrance walls collected from different exhibitions become the artist’s work itself (Soosung Lee); physical arrangements in the gallery space contribute to exposing social absurdities (Wan Lee); the video about conditions for perfect table manners, which is edited and fast-forwarded, lays bare the hyperbole of conventions (Ana Hušman); the oppressive effect of immigration interviews is acted out in the form of church mass (Nadia Kaabi-Linke). All these works are concerned with the preconceptions that are at work unconsciously in art institutions but hard to do away with, which are made to resurface, sometimes to become a travesty, in the works of these artists.

Whether it be the penetration into politics itself, or the micropolitics of making visible the invisible power, the above artists have it in common that their being political arises from the fidelity to sensory perception. It is expected that this exhibition will show how the kind of art that is not subordinate to politics could bring in a critical perspective on realities.' - from Nam June Paik Art Center's website
Access level

Onsite

Location code
EX.KOR.TIR
Language

Korean, 

English

Publication/Creation date

2013

No of pages

124

ISBN / ISSN

9788997128112

No of copies

1

Content type

catalogue

Chapter headings

Curatorial Statement

Breathless, Tireless Refrains: Beyond the dichotomy of pure art and participatory art - AHN Sohyun, 안소현

Open Talk

Artist in a World without Pity

Before the Art System

Tireless Refrain
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In Copyright

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This item is covered by one or more copyrights. It is available for research only or use within Hong Kong’s fair dealing rules. Please do not copy, re-use or reproduce this item without the permission of the copyright holder.

Tireless Refrain