IN THE SEOUL POLYPHONY
comments collected by Philippe Franck
TURBULENCES VIDEO / DIGITAL & HYBRID ARTS #124
CONVERSATION WITH RAFAEL
Rafael, an artist of Spanish origin working between Belgium and Korea, develops a personal videographic and multimedia work which gives an important place to sound dynamics but also to the imaginary participation of the viewer.
At the same time, he is at the origin of several events dedicated to experimental arts.
In addition to the ALEA and DENOIZE festivals, he collaborate with some friends and launched the Unit Academia series in the dynamic and welcoming East Atelier Gallery in Seoul, which revives the salon spirit of the 1920s. These pioneering events constitute real visibility and meeting platforms for the Korean alternative art scene which is also opening up internationally (France, Belgium, Japan…).
This is a reasoned transcription of a conversation started in a 16th century convent in Saint-Ghislain at Transcultures in Belgium and ended in the hyperconnectivity of Seoul.
Philippe Franck: With the complicity of some Korean “artivist” friends, you launched the ALEA and DE-NOIZE festivals (dedicated to experimental music) in Seoul last year. What motivated this new initiative that is Unit Academia?
Rafael: I always liked the idea of “Salon”. I think of Gertrude Stein’s time in Paris in the Roaring Twenties which welcomed her friend Picasso, Hemingway and the young artists of this glorious era. Discussion meetings between different actors in the artistic field were then organized in an apartment (often on Sundays).
A meeting where we could also acquire new knowledge and see works barely created, long before they were public. A hundred years later, we have sometimes forgotten to what extent these Salons shaped the history of art, firstly by provoking encounters.
On my humble scale, I have always dreamed of reactivating this emulation. The ALEA event (dedicated to hybrid arts in great aesthetic and experimental freedom) which I initiated in 2023, and co-organized with the help of 2 other persons, in Seoul, is part of this project.
From then on, with my friend Karl Yoon, who is a young promoter of concerts and musical events, we joined forces to modestly recreate this idea of Salon.
I am therefore the co-founder of Unit Academia with Karl who produces this event through his company Zero Division, of which I am the artistic director.
Strengthened in this desire also by the fact that we collaborate with a gallery particularly open to talented and very dynamic emerging artists – The East Atelier Gallery – in the very center of Seoul, at our disposal, we said to ourselves that this was the moment and the ideal place to launch this initiative on a monthly basis.
Unit Academia is therefore a project bringing together artists, researchers, curators and thinkers. Its aim is to be a place for meetings and exchanges between dynamic players in the Korean and international artistic scene. Two editions have taken place since and another is planned for the beginning of September and is composed of talks, performances, screenings, concerts, installations and other contemporary forms. Its regularity also seems to me to be an important enough element for it to be likely to bring together a wide diversity of protagonists and participants.
PF: What are the goals of the Unit Academia series?
Rafael: There are multiple objectives. Firstly, it is about reflecting the dynamism of the artistic scene in Korea, and the interest that Korean art arouses abroad, Seoul being today the artistic hub of Asia, and my point of view, of the world. There is also prospecting and therefore discoveries. Unit Academia is a place where you can see and discuss new trends, and also discover new artists, Unit Academia being an event very open to new talents, in all genres and media, for a very diverse and curious.
Not long ago, I help organized the DENOIZE festival (which is a visibility platform for young experimentalists) directed Ginger Pop, Zeed & Karl Yoon and this experience made us discover lots of new talents, no less than 38 participants responded to the call. We intend to move in this pioneering direction with Unit Academia, but with a broader spectrum, the idea being primarily to create chance encounters, fruitful emulsions.
In a way, it is a more social initiative which will work to provide the opportunity to see and hear creations which are very often inaccessible to non-academics, or remain confined in a form of elitism which often intimidates the majority of the public. Unit Academia wants to be truly open to all, without bling bling or snobbery.
Unit Academia is the satellite – also with its autonomy – of PLANNED ACCIDENTS, a monthly talent scout which will complement the festival annual event that is PLANNED ACCIDENTS, of which (in addition to Korean and international artists, we will also find projects supported by Transcultures and the Pépinére Européenne de Création, will take place at the end of August 2024 at the Thila, a new cultural space, and will subtitle Planned Accidents.
The idea of chaos which had already inspired us last year, seems particularly promising to me today but we can also see it as an invitation to artists (around twenty for short interventions – ranging from granular synthesis to use from artificial intelligence to groovy electro and acoustic vibrations – in one long day) so that they present to the public a creation different from what would be expected or already too well-established.
For example, Simon Morley, a renowned British painter and writer, will present his very first video installation for which he composed the music himself.
PF: How would you describe the experimental scene (sonore, visual, inter or multi-media) in Seoul and more broadly in South Korea today? What are the places that support it and give it a certain visibility today?
Rafael: I have been very interested in the Korean experimental scene since 2002. I even organized an event at Recyclart (Brussels) around 2003 or 2004 with lots of Korean artists. Apparently, I was the first in Europe to introduce the artists of Ballon and Needle, the first Korean experimental music label. The music scene was once repressed and even banned with the wars and the Japanese occupation (between 1910 and 1945), just like the economy, which made a big boom suddenly, the invasion of K-Pop ( the first generation of which dates from the early 90s) is a powerful instrument.
South Korea is the size of Switzerland, with a population almost 3 times smaller than Japan, 30 times smaller than that of China… And yet, it is incredibly strong and dynamic, like its people . Korea is the most mountainous country in the world. 70% of its territory is made up of mountains which cross the country in two large chains.
And often, I tell myself that the temperament of the inhabitants and the history of this fascinating country are like this: either high or low, but never flat. Koreans are hungry for art and experimentation, and that’s great to see, especially as a creator and organizer. The public is there.
I was struck by the reflection of a curator and agent of contemporary, non-musical artists, who did not know this musical scene, and who asked me: ‘but why did all these people, so numerous and young, have looking so fascinated by his weird music.” Something is happening here, perhaps like what we experienced before in Belgium or in Western Europe in the early 1980s.
Of course, there are very local specificities but, originally, the codes come from here in the West, and also from Japan.
We had the Noise à la Merzbow, etc. or more European stylistic research.
Now they have extricated themselves from that, or rather they have used it as a springboard for further exploration elsewhere.
Today, a multitude of young artists use sound art like a paintbrush, to paint very personal portraits. There is also sometimes here a form of irony, a controlled shift, which I rarely find elsewhere (except among Belgians, precisely), and which makes the works and performances even stronger and, I would say, “intelligent* .
What I particularly like is this subtle sophistication which distinguishes the Koreans and which I no longer find elsewhere… everything becomes so conventional…
This appetite for mystery and research is starting to make itself known elsewhere but in my opinion, not yet enough. In terms of cultural place, I think of this legendary place, very small, very * Salon › by the way, Dotolim which was the very first place where we could come and see artists like Otomo Yoshi-hide or other important sound experimenters, and this since the beginning of the 2000s. Next to Dotolim, in the trendy and picturesque district of Sangsu-dong to the east of this large metropolis of 22 million inhabitants, is Thila, a new cultural space for ambitious sound and digital arts which will without becoming very important.
so much. The musician Gazaebal and his manager, Nine, are at the origin of this project which will host, in Thila, the next edition of the ALEA festival. They are also organizing, at the beginning of 2024, the WeSA festival dedicated to sound arts (its motto is “sound is the new music”) and multimedia, whose artistic curator for the next edition in January 2025 will be Gabriel Soucheyre, director of the festival. hybrid arts VIDEOFORMES in Clermont-Ferrand with whom I have also been collaborating for several years.
It should be noted that contemporary art museums in South Korea are very open to experimental music; this scene is also very much alive there; maybe the imprint of the father of video art Nam June Paik is there for something… Also, crossovers between visual and audio and pure physical performance are more and more frequent. I am very close to creators like the sound artists Joyul defended by Helicopter Records (label run by Park Daham, an experimental musician with whom I already shared the bill at the Platform L Museum), and Heejin Jang, who released Me and the Glassbiras considered one of the best experimental albums of 2023, internationally. I discovered these two remarkable sound creators while organizing, with my friends, the DENOIZE festival.
It should also be remembered that there was an interesting psychedelic scene, from the end of the 60s. I was very surprised by the richness of this forgotten scene, and recently rediscovered, precisely by the new Korean generations.
The Republic of Korea is recent (1948) but it is also a very old culture. The experimental scene here reflects this dual and cyclical side well. I like attending local shamanic ceremonies (a powerful experience), and I have the impression of being immersed in the origins of humanity but also in the future. I sometimes feel this ceremonial side also in certain particularly intense experimental concerts. Buddhist thought takes on its full meaning here: nothing is old, therefore nothing is new.
PF: How has this Korean cultural ferment influenced your own artistic journey?
A: I always thought it was very therapeutic for an artist to step out of their comfort zone, and be somewhere they’re not supposed to be. For me, it was in Seoul in 2005. Where the rhythm of life is the opposite of what a European artist is looking for in general.
I remember, for example, that my artist friends in Europe often called me a “workaholic” while in Korea, they would say that I am more “lazy”. Culture shock therapy!
PF: How would you analyze the evolution of your visual and multimedia work from your beginnings in 2002 to your latest creations?
A: My approach remains constant in its diversity, in the sense that I try to do different things each time. I have always tried not to have a style, which could possibly be considered a style in itself. The cyclical side of timelessness has always fascinated me: “nothing is new and nothing is old”. I have always looked for musicality in random sounds, and movement in the still image. I always like the idea of manipulating sounds and images live, always with this bit of jealousy towards the musician, who has this direct relationship with his own creation in front of an audience. I also make quite a few films, and video installations with equipment that I also use live, and vice versa. My latest project, Counterpoint, further explores the visual resonance that sound has within me. I was particularly interested in systems of polyphony, in the religious musical art of the Renaissance (in Saint-Ghislain, in residence at Trans-cultures, you introduced me to the masterful work of Johannes Ockeghem who was born there and who composed the first polyphonic Requiem at the end of the 15th century), all his voices which mingle and intermingle… I wanted to confront this science, such a subtle mathematical celtic with our brutal and random contemporaneity.
Counterpoint is a sound work composed of images. It is available in “live-cinema” performances, films and “video” installations. Counterpoint is a project started in Korea, in residencies organized by WeSA in Seoul, then in Belgium by Transcultures where I was able to soak up the atmosphere of a convent of Franciscan sisters from the 16th century where this center (which welcomed me at my debut in the Biennial of Transnumeric Digital Cultures and Emergences in Mons), is now installed. This dual geographic and cultural anchoring is important.
PF: More generally, which artists have particularly marked you and how?
A: To tell the truth, I often have a feeling of dissatisfaction with my fellow artists, even going to “I might have done that better”, even if, in reality, that would never have been the case. On the contemporary Korean side, I have a lot of respect for the original work of choreographer and performer Geumhyung Jeong who uses DIY objects and questions our bodily relationship to technology. I also really like K-Pop, even if those around me like it less. I love colors and energy which undoubtedly influence me in one way or another. When I was young, it was the jingles from pop shows. Maybe there is a connection…
In Korea, there is of course the pioneer of video art Nam June Paik but also Kim Ki-young who directed, in 1960, The Handmaiden, which some film buffs call the “Citizen Kane of Korean cinema”. In Europe and more generally in the West, it is rather, in addition to the cinema of Buñuel or Tati, the painting and music that left their mark on me. New wave at the beginning of the 80s both for the sonic inventiveness and for the visual aesthetics. It, in passing, allowed me to discover the Bauhaus of the 1930s through the eponymous group who capsized us, in the cellars, with their Bela Lugosi’s dead. I have always liked the idea that a Picasso, in his brilliant diversity, could exist for painting or Miles Davis for music. Today, Picasso is classicism, and people are also rediscovering so-called “classic” paintings.
The same goes for music, where Bach becomes “new” again for the younger generations, etc… once again, we find this cyclical aspect.
PF: How would you situate your work (the particularity of your approach compared to other artists and “trends”) with regard to both the Asian and European contemporary scenes?
A: In a certain way, I would like to be associated with a “style” or a “trend”. Sometimes this loneliness weighs on me but it has been a long time since I resigned myself to crossing the walls. There are video arts, audio arts, and even audiovisual arts, but it all often ends in a stereotypical way and that never really satisfies me. This ‘solo position’ is not easy because when you are more part of a movement, you can benefit from an industry that can support you and other opportunities may be broader. I am scheduled in museums, cinemas or musical events… de facto, almost everywhere and nowhere. My work is too narrative for video art, too video art for cinema, too visual for sound art…
I am completely self-taught and totally “original” (which, for me, is not necessarily a compliment) but I also appreciate, unlike certain contemporary “arty” circles, the rigor that can be found in a form of academicism. Even today, I do not fit into categories but I will continue to move forward as freely, seriously and sincerely as possible.
PF: It seems to me that your relationship with sound has been, from your beginnings with it until your new project Contrepoint which includes a polyphonic aspect, an inspiration for you but also a direction that also produces images…
A: My first video work Morning Storm was already an analysis of the link between image and sound. In fact, it was silent, and the editing very rhythmic to inspire a musicality. You spoke to me about the notion of “retinal music” in the visual works without sound, by the Belgian audio and multimedia artist Alain Wergifosse, but which we can imagine through the processing of the image. I also think that images, through their rhythm, produce mental music.
I come from photography where we always say that the still image must ‘suggest movement’. When I started getting into video, I already had the ‘movement’, so what else could I suggest but sound. There are of course always underlying themes in my work. The last About Marie G – video commission from Transcultures during my residency – was inspired by Sister Marie-Guylaine, the last Franciscan to have lived and animated the convent of Hautrage but instead of showing her » or to “explain” it, I preferred to “suggest” it through the “commentary” of other mirror-characters living in Asia, as opposed to his native land of Belgium, to whom I have some spoken but who have not met her. I thus wish to leave an important imaginary space for the public so that they can make their own “film”, by suggesting a thematic thread. To do this, I use a series of tools that I also have fun perverting, a photo-cinema aesthetic that I master, because the “cinema” aesthetic directly suggests a “narration”. So like in a film, we expect a story. I play on the different levels of understanding and perception, a bit like in the brilliant Don Quixote by Cervantés. You can read it as a child (I read it to my son in Spain) and undoubtedly savor it differently as an adult. I like this idea that this tragicomic character is in fact an old fool who falls in love with a prostitute whom he sees as an ofincesse; I find myself in this mixture of utopia and dystopia which dates back 500 years but remains very contemporary.
© Comments collected by Philippe Franck
– Video Turbulences #124