“We feel like we’re suffocating”:

Experimental Artists Confront Conformity in Seoul, 1968-70

SPEAKER: Matt VanVolkenburg

DATE: Tuesday. January 16, 2024. 7:30PM (Seoul)

VENUE: Fifth floor (Conference Room) of FAST FIVE Tower (Namdaemun-ro 9-gil 24, Jung-gu, Seoul)

ADMISSION (Online & In-person): Free for Members; W10,000 for Non-members; W5,000 for Non-member students (Student ID requested)

• If you would like to attend online Zoom, RSVP by January 15 (Monday). We will email you the link on Tuesday.
• To attend in-person, RSVP is not required.

ABSTRACT:

In the late 1960s, a group of experimental artists influenced by art movements in the US and Europe began to hold ‘happenings’ in Seoul, some of which involved nudity, projection of experimental film, symbolic statements on personal freedom, and environmental art. By 1970, artists like Kim Ku-rim, whose sculptures included fabric-covered melting ice, Jeong Chan-seung, who ‘painted’ a ceiling with balloons, and Jeong Gang-ja, who was declared by the media to be “more famous for disrobing than for her art,” had joined with other artists and designers to form the 4^th Group and declare the need for ‘non-corporeal’ art.

Throughout this period the artists called for freedom from stifling conformity, including freedom for men to wear their hair long, and increasingly gained public exposure. Their unwitting co-conspirators in this were the weekly magazines competing with each other to publish the most sensational content, and the artists became increasingly adept at attracting media coverage. Magazine content involving nudity, and events taking place in the streets, such as a “funeral march for established art and culture” that took place on the 25^th anniversary of Liberation, raised the ire of authorities and brought about the first crackdown on youth culture in August 1970. Ultimately, the 4^th Group had an outsized influence on youth culture – and on the authorities’ methods of suppressing it – than its 4-month existence would suggest.

SHORT BIO:

Matt VanVolkenburg first arrived in Korea in 2001 and in 2005 began his blog, Gusts of Popular Feeling, where for 16 years he has written about modern Korean history, including film, music, urban redevelopment, and media depictions of foreigners. He contributed research to a case brought before the UN Committee on the Eradication of Racial Discrimination which ultimately ended HIV testing of foreign English teachers in Korea. He received an M.A. in Korean Studies from the University of Washington where he began researching the development and suppression of youth culture in 1970s Korea. He is the co-author, with David Dolinger, of “Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising.”

To supplement this lecture, the speaker will lead those interested through the Kim Ku-rim exhibition at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (across from Gyeongbok Palace) on Saturday, January 20, 2:00-4:00. The cost of entry is 2,000 won.

[Follow-up Event: Excursion to MMCA]

• TITLE: ‘Kim Ku-rim Exhibition’
• VISIT: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
• DATE: Saturday, January 20, 2:00-4:00
• COST: Free (*Please pay your own Exhibition Hall admission fee W2,000)

VENUE: Online Zoom & In-person