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<Performance Project on FOF(Failure, Old, Fall) , 2025, ongoing>
Eye, Machine, Body. (눈, 기계, 몸)
Repeatedly limping, falling, and falling figures, (반복적으로 절고, 넘어지고, 추락하는 인물과)
and beyond them, the figures of birds circling, and dark clouds(climate). (그 너머에서 빙글빙글 도는 새의 형상, 그리고 어두운 먹구름(기후).)
A figure holding a paper airplane which shows a word. (단어가 적힌 종이 비행기를 들고 있는 인물.)
A psychological image of social disaster leading to personal disaster.A story about ‘F(failure).’ (사회적 재난이 개인의 재난으로 이어지는.)
A collapsed factory complex. (심리적 형상, 실패의 이야기와 허물어진 지대.)
An old body and a floundering person. (늙은 몸-회화와 허우적 거림, 헤엄치는 몸(이동하는 몸).)
A spectator & saboteur. (구경꾼과 훼방꾼.)
-18th May, 2025,
Written by An Byoung Nam
/
↓ <Pfear Notes [Sample : ] (ongoing project)>, 2025, Sample version, single channel video
Fears form Keshav
Fears from An(me)
[Part of the script]
Aging. Not having a park where I live. Getting sick. Rotting. Eating spoiled food. Getting sick because of it. My spine curving. Not realizing it’s curving and leaving it unattended.
Losing family members. Being in a cramped space with many people. Passing by strangers. Seeing people as things to be passed by. Things that are too fast or too slow.
Fights. Arguments. Getting startled while watching a horror movie.
Anxiety. The fact that this moment might turn out to mean nothing.
Goodbyes. My pet dying.
Seeing a small animal hit by a car while walking.
The thought that it might have been because of me. Aging. The feeling that I’ll grow old having achieved nothing.
“’Poop’ towards ‘F’”
.
.
.
↓ <A Sketch or Camera Test for The Old, Patient, Baby, Knights(Based on the Pfear Notes)>, May 2025, single channel video
Keshav “I look like a dead”
Pfear Notes [Sample:] Play! (For the Old, the Sick, the Baby, and the Knight)
[Statement]
<Fear Notes> is a project starts with personal diary filled with lots of fears in daily lives. The image on top is a sample image. Basically, this video is a thearitical format. There are two reading performers in the video. They share their own fears living in the society. It includes personal traumatic memory and the worries about contemporary society like climate, politics, extra. Two different people have experienced different lives, but there are simmilarities in their voices.
As suggested by the title—which deliberately entangles the timelines of past, present, and future ("the Old" as the past, "the Sick" as the present, and "the Baby" and "the Knight" as the future)—this play is a collaboration between two individuals who share memories and traumas of the past, and fears surrounding the present and future: artificial intelligence, environmental crisis, and cultural anxiety.
The play features two dialogues between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, excerpted from Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Parts I and II):
– In Part I, Sancho tries to stop Don Quixote from attacking windmills that he mistakes for giants, monsters, or enemy armies.
– In Part II, what seems to be a demonic encounter in the forest is later revealed to be an actor playing the role of a demon, simply walking home after the performance ends.
By reenacting these moments, the artist reflects on recurring historical fears and proposes the figure of the Knight—as a witness and companion—as a vision of the future.
[Staff]
Camera: Roh Jin
Performers: Annie(Skull), Keshav(Old Knight, Don Quixote), Byoungnam An(Sancho)
Music (upcoming): Byoungnam An
Direction & Editing: Byoungnam An
[Location]
East Acton, Battersea Tropical Park
↓ < Following the Twig' Shadow>, 2025, Sample version, single channel video, 26’36”
<Statement>
At nearly 12:00am.
I found a big curved twig which is too heavy to hold by one hand.
This dark way seem dangerous to me, as a foreigner.
Curved twig can protect me and tell me the way going home.
The shadows of myself and twig seem monstrous at the same time
keeping disappear and appear repeatedly.
(Fears from fears)
보호하는 역할의 길고 무거운 나뭇가지가 나를 괴물적인 모습으로 변화시키는
(두려움-두려움 / 공포-공포).
↓ <Untitled(My Hand Was Burnt After I Touched You)>, 2025, photo archive
↓ <The Sun Erased You(ongoing)>, 2025, single channel video
1. 사라짐, 질병, 죽음의 감각이 스며든 세계 속에서 애매함 투성이의 단어인 ‘이미지’는 이것에 어떻게 힘을 더하고 있는가? 이것은 인어라는 매개적 존재를 통한 시선과 이미지, 사라짐의 불안과 두려움에 대한 에세이 필름이다.
1. In a world where the senses of disappearance, disease, and death permeate, how does the ambiguous word "image" contribute to this? This is an essay film about gaze and image.
2. 신화나 미신은 영원히 붙잡을 수 없는 타자에 대한 상상의 결과물이다. 또한 유럽의 바다는 식민지적 상상을 낳은 장소이기도 하다. 영상은 실제하는 푸티지 영상과 허구적 이야기, 그리고 아날로그적 드로잉의 스탑 모션의 결합물로 디지털 편집술, 아날로그 기법의 혼종적인 상태를 지향한다. 겹쳐지는 이미지는 이전의 이미지들을 가리고 겹쳐진다.
2.Myth and superstition are the imaginative products of an encounter with an eternal, elusive Others. Moreover, the European seas are places that gave rise to colonial fantasies. The video combines actual footage, fictional narratives, and analog stop-motion drawings, aiming for a hybrid state of digital editing techniques and analog methods. The overlapping images conceal and layer over previous ones.
3. 스크립트(Script)
- “해수면에 비친 빛때문에 물고기와 인어들을 볼 수가 없어졌어.” -
("I can't see the fish and mermaids because of the light reflected on the sea surface.")
- “왜 구글에 인어를 검색하면 다 머리가 긴 여자 형상인거야? 머리를 자르지는 않나?” -
("Why is it that when I search for mermaids on Google, they all look like women with long hair? I dislike Disney")
- “아마 머리를 자를 수 없을 정도의 어려움이 있을지도 몰라” -
("Maybe she’s dificult to cut her hair")
“이 뼈들을 봐봐.”
(”Look at these bones.”)
“먼 시간에서는 이 뼈들을 보고 괴물을 상상했어.”
("In distant times, they looked at these bones and imagined monsters.")
“이 곳에서는 저 곳의 거인을, 저 곳에서는 이 곳의 난쟁이를.”
( "From this place, they see the giant of that place, and from that place, they see the dwarf of this place.")
↓ Sketches, Objects and Archives for <Ongoing Project : I am singing wherever your fingers point>, 2025, performance, video
Conquerer’s eyes, Conquerer’s gesture, Conquerer’s mind. Belfast’s ‘Red Hand.’
<Tunnel/Hole>
2025.02.26
Written by Byoung Nam An
The language of "art," often feels fragile and delicate. It seems that the more one tries to define something, the more difficult it becomes. Since living in England, I have frequently tried to explain to people in Korea than England what is so different about the two places, and the more I try, the more my words seem to lose their way. The more I search for logic, the closer I get to contradiction. In many ways, life in a city, a product of modernization, is similar to life elsewhere, yet sometimes it feels entirely different. In the end, I may have put in a lot of effort to speak dramatically about the place I live because it is where I spend a significant amount of my life. Perhaps the difficulty in explaining these parts, which I find hard to express, can be untangled if I view it as a problem entangled in the complexities of people. Perspectives are all different, and could these different perspectives, when tangled together, form a single thread of logic or a single straight line that can be explained?
The difficulty of making art(’Misul’ which is a word used as the same meaning with fine art came from Japan to Korea among the history) seems to stem from the doubts and questions I direct toward myself. For example, having started making art at a rather late age, I somehow became capable of creating good paintings through self-learning, but I find myself never trusting or taking for granted what I create(maybe it is because of the missing part of the tradition in contemporary art field in South Korea). Instead, I continue to observe my own works as though I were observing someone else's(maybe this is the westernized view on the painting). I frequently ask myself, as though questioning another person, "How can this piece be explained or accepted by others, or even by myself?" Such difficult questions. If I had started pursuing art at a younger age, I might have shrugged off my difficulties with, "I was just born this way." Ironically, the longer I think and immerse myself in it, the deeper I fall into a labyrinth. It’s easy to say "relationships" are the most important, but the moment those words are spoken, I may be convinced, only to have that fragile belief shattered when confronted with more concrete and firm beliefs and questions.
Instead of focusing on what I dislike, I’ll first mention what I love: ambiguity, fragility, strangeness. These three qualities seem to define the space where beings of such nature can wander, and that space, I believe, is art. All those things that have been pushed out of the market, industry, or products, they drift in this space. One of my closest friends asked me in the 2020s what defines art, and I answered, "Well...," while suggesting that art((including performance or video) these days seems to be market-driven. The word ‘market’ is such a peculiar term. The moment the word ‘market-driven’ comes up, this writing begins to feel like a typical critique. Everything is interconnected, and if one form of relationship is exchange, then what is there to critique about it(market)? There are so many interpretations and layers in a single word like ‘market.’ Would it be right to blame on a farmer growing rice and say, "You’re a servant of capitalism!"? But the issue when bound by genre remains sharp: it is the isolation and suffering of the creator themselves.
How many people around me, including myself, suffer mentally while engaging with art? How can we be freed from this? Is art something inside the system or outside it? Are artists being creative in relation to this structural issue? These are my questions.
Omok, a variation of the game of Go(considered as amateurism), is simpler and doesn’t require professional expertise or training. Therefore, it allows for more personal expression. I realized as a child while playing Omok that the best strategy for attack is defense. When focusing on defense, certain structures naturally arise, and then I inevitably gain the initiative to attack the counterpart. This attitude became my life’s approach, though I can’t say which came first—this attitude or my life itself. It is a form of ‘passive aggression’. During my military service, I had anger toward the system, but that anger was not rebellion—it was perfect compliance. 'Perfection' is an eerie concept. It’s about placing humans as functional industrial machines. Until I was a sergeant, I upheld that system perfectly, wanting to become a terrifying entity within that very system. To show the most perfect appearance, excluding emotions. But these days, I recall the deceptiveness of that attitude and feel a strong desire to go in the opposite direction. Of course, things can’t simply be divided this way. Absurd words that deceive the other party, like "You only care about yourself," or "This kind of work is common. Try to make something only you can do," etc. These words are like a net, swallowing the other person. But if I reverse these words, they can also apply to the other person themselves. I distrust loud, grand words and instead listen to quiet, subtle(silent) words from microscopic realms because I’m convinced that what is visible is only a small part of the whole. In the world of art, with only four or five categories—painting, video, installation, sculpture, and performance—those who seek something new often find themselves addicted to the dopamine rush of discovering something new to them but may not be new to others. These people are fundamentally narrow-minded and always ready to mock whatever they see. Perhaps I also have this trait. That’s why I must have the willingness to accept that even things that seem identical can be seen as different. Where does difference come from? Difference already exists, but whether it is visible or not is a matter of perception, so if we fail to recognize it, it is easily dismissed. Young men in Korea, with shaved heads and wearing stuborn glasses in the military, are completely different individuals. The difference between two works of art that appear identical must be found in the individual’s history. The background, context, and history of the artist—impossible as it may be—are all part of that context. Therefore, the conclusion of this thought is not about art itself, but about what lies beyond art.
I think of myself as not a perfect Christian (what is Christianity, after all?), but I attend church every weekend and spend time in worship(church service). Christians here are not the same as those in Korea, and the more I talk to the people here, the more I realize there are different kinds of Christians even within this group. The essence of being a Christian (I tend to trust a Platonist view that facts and opinions, as argued by Badiou, are distinct) is not found within the church group, but outside it. An artwork must become a tunnel that is directed toward the outside world.
Even with this thought about the outside world, I still take up the camera while painting and drawing(I’ve often admired people who, while painting, also create sculptures or take photographs. Part of the reason is that I didn’t want to face the difficulties of painting. For instance, the history of canvas and oil painting, or the history of art in Korea, is something I can't resolve or untangle, so I believed ignoring it would make it a non-issue). But with photography or filming, if you’re not careful, it directly leads to the act of shooting someone dead with a gun. I’ve already learned this, but more and more, I am realizing that most people feel burdened by being caught in a camera frame. The photographer(videographer)'s struggle to capture something new, beautiful, or strange, while the subject doesn’t want to be captured, is a tug of war. Even if you win this game, the discomfort doesn’t disappear. People who are mentally prepared are those who at least possess knowledge and information about the industry—performers, actors, singers, artists. I believe everyone who holds a camera bears this conflict in their hearts.
So, I’m a complex person, but that complexity is not because of me alone, but because of the family history, economic and climate crisis, actions, histories and conflicts in our society, politics, and people connected, or disconnected with me and the others.
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↓ <Poem : The Obsever’s Confession, Who Stands Outside - Ethical Problem>, 2025
↓ Archives for <Three Therapies for the Traveler(Harry, the Filipino nurse as my lovely Homemate)>, 2025, single channel video
Heri : “Embrace your negativity An(What a lovely sentence!).”
↓ <Ongoing Project : Hug Your Breath(the Symtom of Non-Bizarre Delusion)>, video
S: ‘I need to think more about myself and live that way.’ It's something I know, but don't fully understand... It's something I thought about today too.
B: It could mean something like "If you take care of yourself, you'll be able to take care of others." Haha, you don't need to take everything literally. Anyway, it seems like resisting barbaric acts with barbarism only leads to disaster.
S: That's right.
B: Can weak or small voices really bring down something strong, big, and sturdy? That's a central thought in my current work...
S: Do what you need to do, I need to clean my snail(Boro)’s house. I have to do it today.
"Caring is a radical act of resistance against capitalist life."
"How can we let the silent, personal and microscopic existences create a crack in the strong, loud structural and the total voices?"
↓ <Singing Cabbage(Head)>, 2025, plaster, alginate casting of a cabbage
↓ <Archive Image for The Transform from Shingle to Mermaid> (ongoing project), 2025
‘Transformation!!!’
↓<Letters from Moon> (ongoing project), 2025
↓ <Rolling Faith Drawing Workshop>, 2025
↓ <Interdisciplinary : This might be the monstrous figure who lost their own history, faith, identity>
↓ <The Sliding Rumors>, 2025, single channel video, 12’21”
↓ <The Two Castles / Eyes>, 2025, single channel video, 11’11”
↓ <Spiral Pictures>, 2025, digital image
↓ <Research Images>
↓ <Solo Group Show : Silent Conversation>, 2025.02.05, RCA Studio Building
↑ <Group Show : Silent Conversation>, 2025.02.05, RCA Studio Building
↓ Image Archiving - <An Example of the Performative Feature in Painting History Which I Love : Piero Della Francesca>
↓ <Group Education Project / Workshop>, 2025, in Milbank Tower, London, UK
↓ <Image Archives>
↓ <Group Show : Push in the Icecream>, 2023, Eulgiro OF, Seoul, KR
↓ <The Steamer>, 2024, pen and graphite on paper, published
↑<In the Desert>, 2024, 7’56”