A camera may be best used to distort facts and hide truths. I¡¯m interested in this irony of photography. Download

 Interview: Park Soo-mee

 

Lies, a film portraying an obsessive relationship between an 18-year-old schoolgirl and a middle-aged sculptor, triggered more than just controversy. It led the film's male lead and a real-life artist to abandon his pursuits in sculpture, and turn to photography as a medium that distorts and manipulates reality.

Let's start with your documentary The Downfall of Joseon Dynasty. It seems quite a leap from your photographic works. How did it come about?

In Korea, we often resort to self-degradation when we voice social criticism in everyday conversation. We always say "Koreans are helpless" because of this and that. My documentary was an investigation into that selfless mentality.
When I was in high school, I was taught that Korea was annexed by Japan because Kojong was an incompetent king. Our history lessons taught us to blame ourselves for losing our country. I learned later that this was because our textbooks were written by professors who'd studied modern history during the colonial regime. Because it was under Japanese control during modernization, Korea never had the chance to take firm control of its history. The situation basically continued because the country regained independence in 1945 as Japan lost the war to the United States, which in turn led many Koreans to underestimate their potential, and assume a groundless admiration for the West. I think things are only made worse with the wave of globalization today. The newly elected government in Korea is pushing to authorize the use of English as
an official language. On the other hand, some of this county's royal families [who appear in the documentary] face great challenges from poverty and social disfavor.
Essentially, the film is an investigation of my life. It's a question about my identity in this day and age.

I'm curious about your depictions in the black and white series The Self Meditated Portrait of Korean Historical Epic. In one photograph, you are dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, standing rigidly against a background that carries associations with Joseon's colonial history. Your image comes across as very intrusive. Why did you include your own image in many of your works?

For this series, I scanned archival photographs of relics that had been published by the Japanese colonial government in Korea in 1912, restored them digitally and created a virtual scenario where I am traveling 100 years back into history through a time machine. I wanted myself to be seen as a witness of history. I think the way I dress and stand in the work was an immediate response to the presence of the Japanese guard in the original photograph. In other works I am less imposing, being hidden behind a tree, or you could barely see my shadow. I didn't have any political motive. I just did what my thoughts told me to do.

That's interesting you have no political motives. Yet your work is charged with historical narratives. So how do you go about working? Do you tend to work intuitively?

My use of colonial government archival photos and such images as the Japanese guards, the Korean civilians and myself in dark sunglasses might evoke a strong political resonance. But I really dislike the word "political". I think the best way to describe my works is that they question where I exist today, or where the society I belong to exists today, and relate to the history and collective memory we share. I guess you could call my works intuitive. But before that, they all have to do with my identity. In that sense, you could call them "self portraits".

Photography tells something other than truth

What interests you about photography as a medium?

Initially, I focused on sculpture, but I worked mainly with installation and performance. Then in 1998 I played a lead role in the Korean film Lies. My life changed from that point on. The galleries blacklisted me as an artist who had starred in a pornographic
film. They cancelled all my shows. And for a few years after the film was released, I couldn't produce any artwork.
People actually confused me with the movie character. It was strange to see film critics raving about my acting at the Venice Film Festival, because many people seemed to perceive the film as a documentary about me. That experience formed the basis of my photographic works. In my first series of photographs, you see me dressed as a woman, meditating. For me, this was an extreme metaphor for self-transcendence. Nobody recognized me in the photographs. The work reassured me that you cannot gather truth through a camera. People often say that a camera documents fact, but that is such a naive thought, as the truth exists beyond the visible world. Instead, a camera may be best used to distort facts and hide truths, and that's really the irony. I'm interested in this irony of photography. In a way, I am using photography as a tool to create reality that cannot be captured or seen through a camera. In a capitalist society, images are constructed to meet commercial purposes. People buy those images, and that leads to mass consumption. Images are being produced as though a factory were cranking out machines.

Let me ask you one more thing about Lies, since it served as a major transition in your career. What attracted you about the film?

I just liked the way my character lived an aimless life. His relationship with a young girl was interesting. There was something beautiful about their love story despite their age gap. Besides, I enjoyed acting. I just regret that some of the most difficult scenes from the film had to be removed, because of the rating.
At the time, I was completely immersed in the film. I didn't do anything other than shooting for about a year. I didn't meet my friends. I rented a bachelor apartment and lived alone, trying to identify with my character psychologically. My views on art changed quite a bit after the film. I realized that art was worth devoting my life to. By the time I resumed and started working again as an artist in 2004, I had erased all my dreams. Before, the scale of my projects was heroic. I drew my references from science fiction. They involved robots, extraterrestrial existences and pyramids on the desert. I wanted to become a successful artist. That was my goal at the time. Nowadays I don't have any of that. I think the true way to happiness is to abandon our dreams, like my work Nine Clouds Dream.

Dream of "abandoning dreams"

- The humor in your work sometimes comes across as a form of ridicule.

Let's say it's a satire. A work of art should function like a window or mirror of a society. Through art, people should reflect on themselves and see the world. It should make people uncomfortable by giving them a dose of reality.

What was the origin of Nine Clouds Dream?

This series of photographs reinterprets a famous 17th century novel by Kim Man-jung. The story takes place in China, because the Confucian scholars of Joseon saw China as their ideological paradise. The story is rooted in a Taoist parable in which a man lived happily with eight beautiful women but found one day discovered that it was all part of a dream. The novel is a telling encapsulation of Korea's capitalist society today. In one piece, I took images of Chinese characters from Korean video games. The setting of the work is Apgujeong-dong, a modern-day China where you see luxury department stores and a booming real-estate market. It's a modern version of Korean paradise. It's also a reconstruction of a famous Korean painting from the 18th century. The Han River flows below. Behind a pine tree, you see a foreigner riding on a cart. He's Herman Sander, a German diplomat who came to Korea to file a report about the Russo-Japanese war.
In the girl's hand is a magic ball, which shows pictures of Apgujeong. They reflect the desires of Seoul between 1906 and today.

There is obviously a strong presence of storytelling in your work. You often insert personal narratives that could easily be missed or overlooked without an artist's explanation. Has this ever become a problem for you?

In past exhibits I discovered many viewers who were amused to find me in my works. I thought this was an interesting way to draw attention. Narrative is an important aspect of my work. I often work with big themes in series, but they are often entangled with small details like a spiderweb. I create my work with the mindset of putting together a well-written script.

As an artist, what is the question you keep coming back to? And what is your answer to that question?

I ask myself whether I have really abandoned my dreams. My best answer is that I try to distinguish between dreams that I could and could not accomplish. How could you really abandon your dream? I am, after all, only human.

ART iT-Art in Japan and Asia-Pacific
Spring / Summer 2008. No.19. www.art-it.jp