Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, which it started reading on the recommendation of a tutor in a one to one tutorial, On the first page of the book, it mentions the image of a pig balloon on top of a Battersea Power Station, the cover of the Pink Floyd’s Animal’s album. I saw the building several times because it was under construction near the college, but I didn’t know it was so famous that it was used as an album cover for a famous band. Anyway, the album cover was inspired by George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm” and It was a moment that reminded me of the animal farm that I read as a child. Animals that have gained freedom from humans but are victimized and exploited by pigs of high knowledge, pigs walking on two feet as if they were humans after all. This novel was published in 1945, and it allegorically expresses the times of that time. However, even after 75 years, human society has not changed much.
The development of information communication technology has brought us the opportunity to receive an enormous amount of information, and through simple portal site search, we can easily get the information we want. This situation can deliver more professional and accurate information to humans like double-edged swords, but on the contrary, it can be easily exposed to fake information. Not long ago, there was an incident in which the president of a country almost caused a lot of casualties by delivering false information to people during a public speech.
In 2020, when the
world suffers from Pandemics, the Black Live Matter movement took place around
the world again in memory of George Floyd, who was victimized by excessive police suppression. Human beings are
composed of various races, including white and black Asians, but there are many
discrimination and conflict within them. One of the biggest reasons for this
discrimination is that mankind is still a white-centered society. Everyone
knows that many European countries in the past have built colonies in many
parts of the world and thus accumulated huge wealth. Was it possible because
they were superior to other races? Perhaps most people know the answer. In Jared
Diamond’s book ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’, he talks about the
benefits of form on the continent as the first reason that European countries
have been able to stay ahead of other countries. The form of agriculture is
more affected by latitude than longitude, with Eurasia being the longest
continent on the side. In other words, it means a
large area with the same latitude. This has brought the spread and development
of agriculture to Europe, and the development of agriculture has led to
population growth. The increase in population also created an empire, in which
letters were born. The birth of letters caused the development of technology,
or military power, through the database of records. Secondly, many mammals such
as cattle horses and pigs that can be domesticated live in the Eurasian
continent. This livestock has had a great impact on agriculture and
technological development and have also given Europeans antibodies to the germs
held by various animals. When Europeans arrived in the Americas in the past,
the natives, who had only antibodies to one type of germ, were exterminated. As
you can see in his book, the reason why European countries representing white
people were so powerful is because of environmental factors, not race. These
days, articles about Asian abhorrence are frequently published because of the
coronavirus. Although it is true that the virus spread first in Asian
countries, it is only for a number of environmental reasons and should not act
disparaging Asians. In a time when many people are struggling and exhausted by
the coronavirus, we should cooperate with each other to cope wisely with the
post-corona era, rather than confront each other between races.
When we watch block-buster films that are attracting attention around the world, we can easily see a certain country – America or Americans – fighting for humanity and saving the planet. In fact, they interfere and influence conflicts in many countries around the world. However, the worldwide spread of the coronavirus from a few months ago has degenerated the United States to the world’s largest numbers of virus infections and deaths. They shouted that the United States was the best in the world, but they were knelt down by the invisible virus. Nevertheless, as in the film, the heroes who appeared when the crisis approached humanity were never seen.
Just a hundred years ago, or a few ten years ago, many
countries carried out public executions of criminals, and it is still happening
in some countries. In the past, those in power tried to maintain their power by
using the fear of the people as physical punishment, but the occurrence of
prisons and prison sentences has changed from a fear politics involving
violence to a system of monitoring the people through invisible surveillance.
Many scholars now refer to human society as a
panopticon- society. We are being recorded unknowingly by store security
cameras, car dash cams, and street cameras. In addition, the use of credit
cards stores personal records of where and how much we spent, and the government
uses these records to levy taxes. Michelle Foucault feared that the database,
where all the data on a person’s private life is stored, might be misused as a
tool of power to control and manage the public from birth to death, just as
Panopticon monitors prisoners. Most people have an antipathy to this
surveillance and are afraid just by the thought that they are being watched by
invisible power. Also, several artists have produced works of art and films
related to this monitoring and control, and these works of art are usually
focused on the negative.
The coronavirus has brought many changes to
human life. Many liberal countries have created laws to keep people at home for
weeks in the name of preventing the spread of infection and punish them if they
violate them. Currently, the U.S. and European countries have
restricted access to markets and public transportation without masks. In Western cultures, where
people don’t usually wear masks, viruses have changed their way of life. In the journal “the world after
Coronavirus,” Yuval Noah Harari argues that many countries will establish
a system to legally monitor the people. The government requires surveillance
programs to install smartphone apps for public safety reasons, but no one knows
if they will be used for public health. The fear of viral proliferation is also
changing people’s perception of surveillance. In South Korea, for example, one
of the recent visitors to a club in Seoul was infected with the coronavirus,
and the virus spread nationwide through those who contacted him. Although the
number of confirmed cases is not increasing as the government is coping better
than in the early days of the virus, many people are starting to hate those who
enjoy the entertainment in clubs. In addition, the government requires people
there to be tested for viruses through broadcasting and public text message and
is trying to figure out the contacts of those who were there that day through
telecom companies. If it had been in the past, this government intervention would
be considered an invasion of personal privacy, but now many Koreans hope that
those who went there will be inspected quickly and want the government to
respond more strongly.
As such, the coronavirus creates numerous dilemmas between public safety and individual freedom. Just as no one knows what life will be waiting for us after Corona, I wonder how art should adapt to people’s changed perceptions.
My work basically focuses on satirizing the ironic
situation in which the imperialist countries of the past still want to control
the whole human race. this work is ongoing, and I am producing inspired
by the incident in which the United States killed an Iranian military commander
using an unmanned drone. The United States, with its strong economic and
military power, flaunts its power to the world under the pretext of protecting
its own people and maintaining world peace for its own interests.
With advances in technology, human life has changed in many ways from the past, but the laws of the jungle still exist regardless of the passage of time. The person wearing a pig mask represents a giant power that is unsatisfied, and as if the U.S. were using unmanned drones to kill its enemies, I think, at any time, they control the world as if they were playing a game
The Brave New World series
begins with a curiosity about what era humanity will face in the future. The
development of science and technology has given mankind a more convenient and
affluent life than in the past, but there are also many side effects.
Like genres such as cyber
funk and bio funk, many films and novels tend to look at our near future from a
dystopian perspective. In the past, mankind believed that technology would
bring us utopia, but in view of the present perspective of some degree of
scientific achievement, our future is not bright.
In my childhood, I was a leader among friends for having a bigger body than children my age, and I could have greater power in the community of school than anyone else. However, my central role faced many changes as I grow up. This is because the quality of life has improved as the small country is Korea has risen to a certain level of economic position in the international world and has changed from an era when people were worried about eating to an era where they are concerned about the health and want a high standard of quality of life. In regard to this, the government and all media use various information to present social models and demand many codes of conduct under the pretext of happiness. As a result, having a body bigger and more obese than others, I slowly became a social misfit by economic logic, contrary to my intentions.
In Alders Huxley’s book, ‘the brave new world’ (1932), Just as in society where the basic human rights of misfortune and dissatisfaction have been lost, addicted to the happiness presented and brought about by the development of science and technology and capitalism, I cannot erase the idea that the human society we are living in is slowly changing. As a result, humans are living in an era controlled by fictional materials such as money, economic power.
In the book, ‘Sapiens‘ which is by Yuval Harari (2015), one of the reasons why a species of humans, called Sapiens, was able to exist at the top of the earth, is because of their belief in the money, which was created by trade. The economic logic of money with such a strong power has caused many inequalities, and these inequalities exist not only among individuals but also among nations. After Wilson’s Declaration of National Self-determination, many new countries arose, and countries that had been colonized in the past became independent from imperialist countries.(‘Self-determination’,2010) However, the former imperialist countries, which amassed a lot of wealth through the labour and resources they exploited from the colonies, still control the world in culture and politics and boast powerful powers. According to the post-colonial theorists say that countries in the Third World are still culturally and mentally colonized. (Gandhi, 1998.p.4) Countries with past colonial experience, including developing countries, consume goods from U.S. mega-companies such as Apple, McDonald’s and Nike, while many countries in Southeast Asia provide cheap labour for the production of these goods. In Lee Wan’s work ‘Made in’ series (fig1), He went to countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia to directly grow and produce rice and sugar cane, documenting how these agricultural products are exported by global companies, the working environment of workers and informing the audience about their environment.
Figure 1, Lee Wan, Made in, single video 2014
Through these processes, I presented a question about the pains of banana-producing countries in South America and Southeast Asia through the work ‘Eat Bananas’(fig2) and ‘Trace'(fig3) expressed the feelings I felt as I looked at the British imperial monuments through the footprints of students from various countries.
Figure 2, Sunyoul Kim, Eat bananas,mixed media, 30 x 45 x142 cm 2019
Figure 3, Sunyoul Kim, Trace,mixed media, 60x 180 cm 2019
As mentioned before, the interference of the great powers by economic logic can be easily seen through a lot of news and media. South Korea is a leading pro-U.S. country, and we received a lot of aid from the U.S. through the Korean War and was able to achieve the current rapid economic growth through much support after the war. However, conflicts between the generation who experienced the war and the generation that did not experience it played a major role in polarizing the perception of the United States. Moreover, many artists express this social phenomenon in their work. In particular, Korean photographer Noh Suntag approaches Korean society’s problems as universal human issues rather than merely solving them with ideological confrontations in the Red House III series.(fig4) His photos also show different perspectives of generations and perceptions of the United States.
Figure 4, Noh Suntag, Red HouseIII, black-and-white photograph, 2005
As a generation that has never experienced war, my perception of America is negative. One of the reasons is that the U.S. has made trade sanctions against several countries for its own profit and warns its allies not to trade with them. For example, in Iran, the United States is imposing economic sanctions on Iran for its support of terrorist groups. (Dehghan and Blond, 2018) However, people know that the U.S. is pressing them to gain an upper hand over Iran regarding its oil exports.(Wintour, 2019) Another reason is that in inter-Korean relations, South Koreans can be guaranteed safety by the U.S. decision. South Korea has a high level of economic strength and defense capability, but the U.S. military is still stationed in the country, and the U.S. requires South Korea to pay a huge annual increase in defense costs.(Jeon, 2019) In addition, the America is at the center of negotiations between the North and South Koreas.(Mccurry, 2019)
These actions of the United States give a negative perception to the younger generation of Korea, and I satirized them throughout my work called American Dream(fig5) and Negotiation.(fig6)
Figure 5, Sunyoul Kim, American dream, flag and fan manufactured in china, installation 2019Figure 6, Sunyoul Kim, Negotiation, mixed media, installation, 2019
Finally, looking at the human society controlled by these great powers, I have become curious about the future of humanity. In the past, many Asian countries have lost their own cultural identity and created new hybrid cultures, while embracing Western cultures.
The term ‘cultural imperialism’ captures the idea that political and economic power is being used to ‘exalt and spread the values of a foreign culture at the expense of the native culture’
(Tomlinson 1991, p. 3).
Indeed, no one can tell whether a new human race will emerge or be wiped out by war in the future. However, it is anyone’s guess that by economic logic, human society will become more and more uniform. This idea led to curiosity about how the closed country of North Korea would open its market through negotiations with the U.S. to maintain its regime, and then change. Based on this idea, I made a work called the brave New World.(fig7) I wonder what kind of new world humanity will face in the future.
Figure 7, Sunyoul Kim, Brave new world, mixed media, 10x 5 x 25 cm, 2019
Reference List
Huxley, A. (1932) Brave new world. London: Vintage classics
Harari. Y. (2015) Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. London: Vintage. pp. 173-186
Gandhi, L. (1998) Postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh university press, pp.1-21
My previous work has been expressed in various ways by economic power, that the countries of colonial experience are still in a culturally and politically colonial state.
In the latest work, it is a solemn Propaganda sculpture in front, but behind it has created an ironic sculpture holding a Mickey Mouse glove and a headband that symbolizes capitalism. When I think earlier about why imperial countries in the past still have power, the common thing is that they have considerable economic power.
Also, mega companies with considerable economic power in them are looking for new developing countries in looking for cheap labor and resources for their advantage.
Currently, many companies in the U.S. want to enter North Korea to import cheap natural resources. I wondered, when sudden external technology met, would they have a brave new world?
Even now, North Korea is trying to negotiate with the U.S. through many military actions. It is an unexpected move for North Korea, which has long been isolated from the outside world amid U.S. economic sanctions. So what are they trying to do through the market opening?
In other communist countries such as China and Vietnam, rapid economic development has been achieved through the market opening and continues to grow. Does North Korea do this for its economic growth? What do they really want?
