대전국제미술교류회 - Daejeon International Exhibition
Channel: 대전국제미술교류회
Date: 2021-08-28

[Final typo correction video]

A community of non-action(無爲) that shares the land of the senses

In the era of Covid19, where self-reliance is becoming a pattern of life, the 14th Daejeon International Exchange Exhibition is an unexpected event. In a world where humans have to stay away from humans, artists have sent their alter ego to a distant country, although they could not come directly. What kind of story are they trying to tell us with the works of art sent by over 160 artists from 12 countries such as China, Japan, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, India, France, Belgium, Israel, Colombia and the United States, including Korea? Why have they been waiting so long for an exhibition that can be gloomy because of the shadow of absence, like a game where only a few players attend?

There was an earnest wish for holding this exhibition. Despite the hot weather, regardless of the number of audiences, there was also a long-standing thirst that an exhibition should be held, even if the work would only take its place on behalf of the owner. In the meantime, under the pandemic, artists have retreated to their studios to escape this global plague, where they face the canvas, face themselves, and immerse themselves in their own world that will not be bound by any bridles of the world. Their canvases show nostalgia for life before Covid19, but also contain the pain and scars of the heart after Covid19. Perhaps, like their ancestors who painted on the walls of a dark cave in Altamira, they were casting silent spells on the world they faced in front of the canvas. These artists hoped that the body of the Earth, paralyzed by the virus, will be healed soon and
realized the value of ‘living in coexistence’ only through the time of loneliness they had to endure by forced ‘distancing,’ and would they thereby have waited the day they will confirm friendship and love through ‘exchange’ more and more?

Eventually, the praying came true. Participating in the Exchange Exhibition refers to a kind of community consciousness. As an act to announce their belonging to the community, participating in the exhibition is not only a conviction of friendship but love and a request for coexistence which means not to live alone in the world. This is to confirm ‘I’ through ‘we’ by not putting ‘distance between their mind.’ In other words, ‘we’ in the Exchange Exhibition is a community of artists that cross the border and also a community that shares the land of the sense of art. This community of artists has boundary but it does not draw a boundary line. No matter what political ideology, race, ethnicity, myth and narratives are, they would be respected and exchanged in this community. However, no a one-sided ideology or idea needs to be the purpose of exchange. Thus, identifying themselves as a member of community within these exchanges is similar to Jean-Luc Nancy’s emphasis on ‘community of non-action’, or ‘être-en-commun(Beingin-Common).’ In other words, the artists of the Exchange Exhibition who share the land of the artistic senses are not absent here, even though they are absent in reality. It is because they are a ‘community of non-action’ that ‘being-together’ is enough, rather than artificially having to identify ‘I’ with ‘We’ or forcibly matching the immanence of ‘I’ with ‘We.’ 

In a non-face-to-face, untact situation, their exhibition has a different meaning from before. In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, which everything is moving toward a high-efficiency society with artificial intelligence technology, the artists’ work will be seen as useless on the other side. Is their art, which contains the language of the body that awakens the senses, a mere useless luxury items? As Yuval N. Harari predicts, if we look at the future which artificial intelligence elects even politicians with more accurate calculations and statistics than the human brain, what art is in the age of AI? The language of art would be then still Spiel(amusement) or extremely useless entertainment. But isn’t that the reason why humans rethink about what humanity is and that the power of imagination to overcome the tragedy of the Covid19 situation is created in art? Coexistence, exchange, being-together, the zone of the senses, the language of the body, all of these languages imply the task created by the spirit of the times that everyone, who participates in this exhibition, will continue to engrave from now on. It is also the spirit of contemporary art that cannot be identified simply with the word ‘beauty.’

Yu HyunJu(Art Critic)

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