Kimsooja in "Systems" - Season 5 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[KIMSOOJA]
In this video, I'm facing the nature,

and behind is the human
watching me.

My arm is totally outstretched
onto the nature.

My desire is abandoned,
and my will is abandoned.

With that duration of performance,

I experience
a certain transcendence

of myself,

and hopefully
audience does too.

I was, in the beginning,

thinking of doing kind of
a walking performance,

but I didn't know exactly where
and how.

So we just walked around the

city more than an hour,
just walking and walking

and walking, and then I arrived
to Shibuya area, where so many

people were passing by.
and I was totally overwhelmed

by the crowds around me,
and my body was full of energy

accumulated by this walking
and thinking of people.

So at that moment, I aware the–
the distinction between my body

and the crowd in the street,
and I had to stop there.

I just couldn't walk anymore.
I had to stop there.

My first video using my own body

as a symbolic needle was
"A Needle Woman" in Tokyo, '99.

That is like– almost like

putting, inserting, a needle
onto the earth, in a way.

And that's more about my energy
I had at the time.

My system is very much rooted to

the practice of sewing, that
uses the needle onto fabric.

I came to a conclusion that
I can be a needle woman.

[laughs]

I'm using the pedestrians
passing moment as slow motion,

as if they are weaved through
my body as a needle.

It's not about showing my identity,

so it should be from
behind, not to show my face.

The camera lens is my eyes, that

sees my back,

that sees the
other people in front of me.

So there is three different perspectives in my
Needle Woman performances.

My work, in a way, has never

been completed as a single
piece, I think.

I've thought always my work is
in transition,

always in process.
I can ever really finalize,

"This is completed,"
or, "This is finished."

Whenever I have a new question,
I would always like to continue

and see through different
perspective.

In Korea, we lived in a house
with a straw roof and very cold.

It was really, really cold.
And even though we had a stove

in the room, when I woke up in
the morning, there was frost all

over on the wall around the
room, and I'd been scratching

on top of it, making, like,
lines and drawings on it.

Maybe that's my first
drawing piece.

[chuckles]

I always discover artistic
questions and answers from our

daily life activities.

"Bottari" was one of them.

Bottari in Korean means
"Bundle."

Usually we carry it whenever we
have precious things to keep.

When I first discovered

bottari as a three-dimensional
sculpture, it was at P.S.1 Studio,

when I looked back and there was a
bottari, which

I made but didn't realize
before, because I'd been always

having these bottaris

to stack and to keep fabrics in it.
And that bottari

looked totally
different from the ones before.

When I first discover bottari in different formalistic way of
sculpture,

I started those for some time,
like a couple of years.

Then when I returned to Korea, where
the bottari is our reality,

I started seeing them
in a different way,

which is more realistic way.

A bottari that is more social-, cultural-related object rather
than formalistic sculpture.

I didn't realize until I did this
"Cities on the Move" Bottari Truck Performance,

how actually my bottaris are very much
rooted to my family history.

We were always on the road.

My father, because of the Korean
War, he had to go to military,

and then he stayed in military service.

We always had to move.

So it's part of our family

history that had a little bit
of a nomadic life.

"Laundry Woman" installation with Tibetan monk chant...

that examine the audience's body

as a needle that weaves through
the laundry field.

I use used bedcovers from newly

married couples that has all
the symbols and embroideries

of all wishes we want to carry
in our lives,

Such as long life, love, peace,
and fertility.

[faint chanted music playing]

I was invited to create

a new set-specific project
in Brussels.

As a perfect installation for
that space, I thought of

"Lotus: Zone of Zero."

The sound you hear in this piece

is a mixture of Tibetan monk
chant, Gregorian chant,

and Islamic chant.

Zone of Zero is a
central location where

the audience
perceives the three different

religious chants merged together.

[merged chanted music playing]

I used Buddhist lotus-shape
lanterns in it.

There is a train station
connected to the space,

so many people walking by,
you know, through every day,

in the morning and coming back
in the evening.

So it's like a repeated ceremony
of peace for them.

I saw the crystal palace a few
years before.

And I was really struck by the
beauty of that structure,

and I wanted to do something.
and I started thinking:

"This space should be empty,
and use it as space itself."

By not really creating something
physical inside, but putting

diffraction grating film
that defuses the light into rainbow spectrum,

and then put mirror all over the

floor that reflects the whole
structure of the Crystal Palace.

People are invited to this space
that is filled with my breathing sound in it.

Breathing in and out is another

way of weaving and
another way of sewing.

I see the crystal palace piece as a
bottari of light and sound

and reflection.

I always try to find a transcendent
moment in space within my work.

My intention is to reach to the
totality of our life and in art.

So that's always one reason
my practice is quite broad

and diverse:
to reach that complexity

and comprehensiveness.

I don't know in the end

where I could reach,
but I would like to get to

that comprehensive totality
in my work.

[the sound of one person
Inhaling and exhaling playing]

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