Sangsangmadang Gallery

The Revolving Avant-garde

One can assume two different ways to approach philosophy and the works of an artist. One way is to look around and try to get a feel for the subject while prodding about here and there. Another is to jump headfirst into the subject, which can be discomforting and difficult and often requires strong emotional power, intentions, and aesthetic strength. Let's choose the later for the time being since we have only a limited space to discuss the subject. Fortunately, the artist has already provided a shortcut, which was a surprise when I was reminded of his adamant sense of individual character and speech. Thanks to him, we no longer need to take the long way around to approach Hong’s art and mind as an artist. Hong contributed an article called, 'Performance, The Double of Life and Theater,’ to the magazine, 'Wolganmisool.’ Using this as a method and reference to approach his art may be like a guided tour of some strange, unfamiliar place.

Hong explains that performance art cannot fall far from experimental theater and one can find a unity between the two in his work. As stated by the Futurists, a variety performance doesn’t have a narrative and is anti-theoretical, simple, and plain. This methodological plainness and unexpectedness of the unfolding narrative endow the work with a sense of the profound. The project by the Futurists has been seen as an anti-aesthetic movement toward traditional art in a conventional sense and provides the basis for the reactivity, improvisation, and simultaneity which became significant aesthetic elements found in future generations of performance art.  In this context, Hong stands unchallenged in the present art world in terms of his aesthetic attitude and continuity .

Let's look at some more aspects of Hong's work. Hong tries to deconstruct the traditional view on narrative and story structure in his own plays and this can be seen in his reference to Antonin Artaud's statement: "We must escape from the mythology of written poems and dramas." Here, one can stress on the word, 'mythology,’ which can be thought of as 'a big narrative' or 'aesthetic ideology' that currently consumes the contemporary Korean art world. Hong, after his return from America, might convey these elements in his works, viewing them as a type of mythology and convention that Korea has yet to overcome.

Artaud's 'theatrical ephemerality (一回性)‘ or 'synthetic theater' is also related to Hong's profound methodology of creation he calls, 'site-specificity.’ The idea of 'site-specificity' reveals that performance art can exist only as the play is demonstrated on a stage and a single play is differentiated every time it is performed. This is perhaps an appropriate example of a nonlinear or baroque sense of art.

Hong calls his works 'Total Theater,' which reveals his intention to combine all sorts of genres and forms and to expose them in single space and time as a type of spectacle. His purpose is originated from Artaud's spectacle of the theater of cruelty that creates dreams and magical visions.

Meanwhile, such metaphors or direct representations of death and violence, occasionally used in Hong's work, can be also connected with Artaud's project that intended to embody both cruel senses and exclude a logical language. Thus, it seems Hong is deeply affected by Artaud's aesthetic of the theater of cruelty in his ‘Total Theater.’  In this way, Artaud can be seen as Hong's mentor.

In addition to Artaud, his essay includes others he names as his aesthetic mentors or successors. The list includes John Cage and Merce Cunningham, who adopt the idea of contingency and uncertainty as a significant concept, and Fluxus artists such as Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono(小野洋子), and Joseph Beuys. The list also includes Hermann Nitsch's religious performance, 'Living Theater' of the 60s, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCartney, and Matthew Barney from the 70s, and the performances and music made by Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Laurie Anderson. In particular, Hong explains his aesthetic intentions through looking at Wilson's masterpiece, ‘Einstein on the Beach.’

“Wilson's masterpiece, ‘Einstein on the Beach,’ is well known for its extreme sense of performance and total sense of spectacle on the stage. Philip Glass, whose work is distinguished by a repetitive structure and electronic sounds that deconstructs conventional composition, turns, and conclusions, manages the musical section. Wilson presents the character, Einstein, who has no connection to the real figure, as well as such surrealistic scenes as a castle, a courtroom, and a beach that cross over on the stage in type of bizarre spectacle. A narrative structure between the scenes is not found and the speech by the occasionally appearing narrator becomes meaningless and is played as variation in rhythm and 'sound.'"

This long citation clarifies some aspects of Hong's recent works. Although his works seem very individual and unique on the surface, they actually thoroughly follow a fairly theoretical and grounded tradition of aesthetics. In other words, the tradition of Avant-garde aesthetics, which has been accumulating for over a century in Western society, is reproduced in Hong's individual events and art works. Hong's critical mind seeks a modification of the Avant-garde in a Korean style.

The embodiment of traditional concepts with a realistic sense and corporeality is derived from Hong's own creative power. The spirit of the Avante-garde, his ‘Total Theater,’ traditional concepts, and projects for open art have risen from the ashes through Hong’s work and infused life into the stagnant white cube of contemporary Korean art.

Post Avant-garde or the Phenomenology of Eating

Hong's stage, studded with madness and violence, is not only the stage for the play, but also the stage for the reality occurring offstage. In this sense, the stage can be a sort of a liberated area for resistors held hostage by this madness and violence. Thus, Hong's recent series of stage works can be seen as reflection of reality or a study on the genre system of traditional art.

There are many people who refer to Hong's work as the representative of the Avant-garde. Hong also often uses this expression when he describes his own work. However, the work cannot be Avant-garde if considered in strictly art historical terms, although it contains many aspects of the Avant-garde. The reason is because the concept, Avant-garde, involves the lasting evolution and development of modern history and its subjects. This idea seems deeply rooted in the Hegelian dialectic toward the absolute mind. Although art can be like a dictation full or errors, it may also be like anachronisms of past romanticists' projects that become useful subjects in the contemporary world.

Therefore, Hong's Avant-garde requires the formation of a new, more appropriate term and this could be called, ‘Post Avant-garde.’ Avant-garde is usually defined as something that refuses uniqueness and that is everlasting or ongoing. In an ironic sense, the Avant-garde is often required to overcome itself. It has to subjugate not only tradition and custom, but also the former Avant-garde. The reason is because it is a dialectic movement going towards permanent renewal. If it stops its movement, the foundation on which it stands disappears. The tradition of the Avant-garde never allows its stoppage or absolute completion. The subjects, which the traditional Avant-garde regarded as merely goods to consume or some type of secondary element, become fundamental in the Post-Avant garde. One of these subjects can be the act of eating which is also the main theme in Hong's current exhibition. One can find numerous examples in the recent visual age that make a distinction between eating to maintain a good and proper life and death and madness. This strange combination is found in our daily life. In a sense, the act of eating in a social setting in a certain place can be either like a beautiful banquet or sacrificial service surrounded by madness and death. The phenomena and aesthetic effects, complex senses, knowledge, and experiences, intended by Hong’s ‘Total Theater,’ clearly reflect Rasa, which is an Indian concept of traditional theater. A Rasa play develops like a sexual act or the act of eating in order to provide pleasure at any time. In this form, different elements mix together holding a fresh and strong flavor and taste in exchange with one another. Rasa is founded on a kind of a feast rather than a play. This Rasa procedure manifests the lasting inner sentiment that can be called 'complete communication.'

According to Rasa aesthetics, the eight significant sentiments of human nature involve pleasure, laugher, sadness, anger, heroic sense, fear, hatred, and surprise, and calm is added as the last. These sentiments are the material for aesthetic experiences and, altered through art, they become something pleasant, funny, sentimental, violent, heroic, dreadful, hateful, startling, and calming.

Subjects and events that encourage certain sentiments during daily life have the color of Rasa, or aesthetic satisfaction, in unique ways, although they do not correspond exactly with the emotions poetically depicted on the stage.

Rasa can be fleshed out as an aesthetic concept if one understands the term, 'artistic,' as the act of production, and the term, 'aesthetic,' as one related to knowledge and pleasant sensations. In this context, Rasa originates from human's act of eating, emphasizing the fundamental meaning of flavor and taste. Whether Hong intended or not, his work, that often involves eating or tasting food as a main theme, is reminiscent of this idea of Rasa.

According to George Bataille, one has to think about the act of eating together with death to understand an extreme concept of freedom which can enable us to reach the free world. The act of eating is related to death and death approaches us like a bombshell in our daily lives.  In Hong’s work, we can find moments when the matter of our existence comes to the surface in the depths of our consciousness through feelings of anxiety, fear, death, birth, as well as the act of eating in the context of Rasa.