Inspiration & Ideation Research –
Project 2
Theme: Scaled Reality – Everything Can Be Anything
Do Ho Suh
- Floor resonates because of the desire to share spaces well, and make a community impact in my daily life that is small but sufficient enough to keep the individuals of a community running smoothly.
- What kind of gesture can we make that makes a difference in someone’s day?
- There is purpose and value in doing small favours, even if no one notices or no thanks are given at the end of the day. In my world, a favour isn’t done to receive thanks, it’s something to help another another. Personally, I am very sensitive to someone hanging it over my head something that they have done for me, as I expect and hope people will only do something for me if they want to.
This has given me a stronger belief that I should give to others without expecting anything in return, while at the same time I am a journey of shamelessly asking for what I need. Of course, it is nice to receive a basic ‘thank you,’ and I think that goes both ways. - I enjoy the anonymity described in the narrative and colour of this piece; there are differences in the individuals, but it feels as though they are acting in unison towards a common goal. I like the idea that you might not notice this installation if it were a part of a road; you would have to observe your surroundings more carefully.
- Father’s fame overshadowing, 5 horses, always traveling, trying to get away
- L.A. – noisy, can’t sleep
- Transportable fabric – carrying his home with him all the time like a snail
- a traditional Korean house that he grew up in
- actively dealing with the issues of longing instead of crying about not being able to be at home
- Korean women who taught him to sew certain traditional seams
- required to make something that would fit in a suitcase to bring with him all of the time
- the emotional experience of cutting/sewing, marks that reminded him of his childhood, “when you go through that process, it becomes a part of you.”
- art becoming a part of the architecture
- personal space (‘Floor’)
- Korea, Seoul, a crowded place, bumping into each other is part of life and normal, the changing of personal space
- Thinking about the space between people – interpersonal space
- Rethinking the notion of a monument
- Scanning faces of 60 students from his school, “in a way it’s a portrait”
- Collecting yearbooks, seeing the same faces in different yearbooks “maybe we are not that unique?”
- What do we share, or not share?
- Korea – militaristic, hierarchical, shaving your hair & getting uniform, cap eventually (a form of trauma…called by numbers instead of names)
- Nostalgia & attachment to the uniform, trying to individualize the uniform in small ways
- Designated military for Koreans
- The program was built to challenge you physically and mentally to the extreme
- Interacting with the work – walking, sounds created by walking on the artwork, walking on dogtags, names, someone’s name. Traditional garment – becomes more like a monolith / lack of identity through sameness? Yet, it’s quite visually spectacular, the polish, the shining silver, etc.
I think Do’s artwork is interesting in the sense that the words ‘uniform,’ sameness and trauma stood out to me. There is a playful universalness in his stories about students trying to differentiate their same uniforms from one another’s, while the acknowledgement that at the time people had a complex relationship to sacrificing parts of their visual expression and identity at different ages.
I think the research poses interesting questions about how our experiences make us question ourselves, as Do’s experiences seem to have led him to question how much we are really the same or not the same. How much does society ask us to be the same and what purpose does it serve to us as a society, or as individuals? Are we really ‘stronger’ or ‘better off’ without focusing on ourselves as individuals?
In places like the military, our worth becomes judged through analyzing our military-specific skills and not necessarily our personal strengths, although a team grows stronger by each individual performing their role. In some senses, this mirrors real life.
3D printing in contemporary art: Nick Ervinck
https://i.materialise.com/blog/en/3d-printing-in-contemporary-art/
“I see this new world of architecture as a precursor for what will happen in the world of art and sculpture.”
- Forms you cannot make by hand, because you “cannot reach them”
- YARONULK 2009-2010 is a model of the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Koekelberg in Brussels, more than 100 times smaller than the original
- Completed in 1 month, other materials may have taken up to 3 months
- Makes me question the idea of ‘visiting’ – can you visit somewhere without being there? In terms of place and memory, it feels almost portable like Do’s transportable house
- Where could this be placed other than in an art gallery installation? I think in terms of place, history and visiting places, a piece like this would be interesting and interactive when swapped with other monuments and important architecture from other places in the world, imported to Brussels and vice versa.
- The materials make me question what kinds of other materials can be used, what constitutes as ‘melding,’ both organically and through the construction of artwork made with metal or forged materials.
- I am thinking about religious imagery & meaning for my self-portraits currently, and working with wire to create my own crown, so I can see some potential for overlap that makes me question the religious content that I’m assuming, what kind of significance this may have had to the creator. There seems to be an attention to intent and iconography through the use of light in the installation, which leads me to consider light in photography in a religious context as well for its ‘magical’ and spiritual properties of historical storytelling in the church, and the camera as tool from which to allow light to enter or close to create imagery.