• One of the best-known works by the Korean artist, Kimsooja (b. Taegu, 1957, lives and works in New York, Seoul and Paris) is the video and performance Cities on the Move: 2727 kilometres Bottari Truck (1997), created for the much-discussed exhibition, Cities on the Move. [1] It is a quiet version of a road movie. We see a blue truck, loaded with colourful bundles of textiles, called bottari in Korean, piled up on one another like a mountain. Kimsooja is sitting at the top of the pile and makes the journey together with the truck, 2727 kilometres along all the places she had lived as a child. The frame of the image is fixed: from the back, we see Kimsooja as an anonymous female figure in the lotus position, while cities and Korean mountain landscapes move past. For Cities on the Move (1997), curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru, artists, architects and designers investigated or reflected on urban transformations in Asia as a result of globalization and modernization. Because of the associations that the work evokes with the concepts of migration and nomadic lifestyles, Kimsooja's 2727 kilometres Bottari Truck became the ultimate metaphor for this theme. Her participation in the exhibition marked her definitive breakthrough into the international exhibition circuit. [2] Commenting on the great interest being shown in her work, she has said, 'Today, it seems that we are witnessing a "cultural war" with many issues arising in a global context, bringing together different races and beliefs, with an increasing discrepancy between rich and poor, economically powerful and less powerful countries. (…) The issues that that I address in Bottari Truck and A Needle Woman are very much related to current topics, such as migration, refugees, war, cultural conflict and different identities. I think people are interested in considering these topics through the reality of the works. This may be one reason for their success.' [3]

• In this context, Kimsooja also expressed her criticism of the international biennial circuit, which she finds 'more and more focused on the power structure within the art world'. [4] Although Kimsooja's work, as she herself indicates, indisputably concerns the field of tension between the rise of a global culture and regional values and such themes as migration and cultural conflict, at the same time, it goes much further. Equally fascinating in her work is her utterly personal approach to performance and the representation of nature, both of which are strongly influenced by an Eastern way of looking at things.

• A Needle Woman (1999-2001) is a multichannel video installation in which Kimsooja forms the unmoving, meditative central point. Her face turned away from the viewer, she stands in the middle of the masses of people in different urban metropolises: Tokyo, Shanghai, Mexico City, London, Delhi, New York, Cairo and Lagos. The title, A Needle Woman, describes how Kimsooja sees herself: as a needle that 'pricks through' the social, societal context of the different geographic locations. It is a handsome example of the way in which her work embraces a marriage between the characteristically Western model of participation in relational aesthetics and Eastern, meditative techniques. [5] While her work shares roots with the relational aesthetics of such artists as Maurizio Cattelan, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe and Rirkrit Tiravanija, it begins with a concept of space and time that contradicts that approach. Where, in the work of an artist such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, the encounter with the public is the central focus, as a temporary social activity, Kimsooja's performances separate themselves from this temporary character and have the objective of creating a moment of concentration and focus that is binding, revealing and in essence holistic. 'I am interested in approaching the reality that embraces everything, because it is the only way to get to the point without manipulation.' [6]

• In the Korean art scene in which Kimsooja first defined her position as an artist in the early 1980s, there was an ongoing debate about cultural identity, a critical review of formalism and the meaning of social engagement, similar to that of the art world in the West. The need to mix art with life went hand-in-hand with attention to local, cultural traditions and the reflection on the history of one's home country. Kimsooja belongs to a new generation of artists who are interested in the body, memory, intimacy, the everyday and the marginal. She found her identity as an artist at the point when she decided to abandon paints and canvas, the media canonized by the history of Western art that she had mastered as a student at the Hong-Ik University in Seoul. Like Tiravanija, Kimsooja chose to use everyday materials and activities as her starting point. The ybulbo, a traditional piece of cloth in cotton or silk, printed with colourful motifs and which has since time immemorial had a range of everyday functions in Korea - people sleep and children are born on them and they serve to wrap up items for safekeeping or for travel - became her new 'canvas', needle and thread her 'brushes'.

• In the 1980s, Kimsooja stitched these traditional cloths together into covers and objects, bundled them into bottari and used them in countless installations and performances. From here, she gradually developed a working method in which she saw her own body as the needle or thread and the world as 'the canvas'. Her performances were recorded with video cameras as a condensed moment of energy and interaction with the world, whereby the screen functions as a metaphor of the screen that exists between Kimsooja and the rest of the world.

• Kimsooja came from a Catholic family, but daily life in Korea is also permeated with both Confucianism and a mix of Buddhism and shamanism. After Buddhism, Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, is the primary religion in South Korea. Korean religion is complex and eclectic in nature: it is founded in old Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist traditions but it also embraces many Christian elements. The fact that her work reveals so much in common with the principles of Zen Buddhism was something she only realized rather late in her career. Still, she does not want to refer to her work as either Eastern or Western. It is a way of thinking that confuses Western art critics. In an interview, Nicolas Bourriaud asked her, 'Do you think that oriental thought has a real impact on the contemporary art world, or is it only a postmodern kind of exoticism, a decor for western aesthetic investigations?' Kimsooja's reply was that the Eastern way of thinking inhabits every context of contemporary art history, not just as theory, but as an attitude melded into one's personality and existence, and is inseparable from Western thinking. [7]

• Kimsooja's interventions in public space are not about an open, noncommittal social relationship. Her meditative 'disappearances' clearly make a moral appeal to the public. For her performances, A Homeless Woman - Delhi (2000) and A Homeless Woman - Cairo (2001), she set herself down on the ground in the middle of the busy, urban public spaces of Delhi and Cairo, respectively. For a new edition of the video installation of A Needle Woman (2005), she visited six cities in precarious political and social circumstances: Patan (Nepal), Jerusalem (Israel), Sana'a (Yemen), Havana (Cuba), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and N'Djamena (Chad). Her unmoving, meditative stillness creates an emptiness and a focus of concentration that makes everything happening around her in all these different metropolises all the more visible. 'I have an ambition as an artist: it is to consume myself to the limit where I will be extinguished. From that moment, I won't need to be an artist anymore, but just a self-sufficient being, or a nothingness that is free from desire.' [8] Kimsooja feels that the highest ideal that can be achieved by an artist is to be as minimal, as unprepossessing a presence as possible.

• In her recent multichannel video installation, A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon (2008), included in the Windflower exhibition, this principle reaches an apex. In this work, the images for which were taken along the beach in Goa, India, we see an exceptional eclipse in which the sun and the moon melt together. To the left and right of this are two additional video screens showing the waves washing up on the beach and the rhythm of the tides. Kimsooja herself is no longer in the image. We can only perceive her indirectly as the person who observes the natural phenomena from behind the camera, and who by way of a technical procedure, records the sun rise and set over the moon. When I asked her if she felt that she had taken an important step towards completely disappearing out of her own work, she replied, 'I personified the mirror symbolically as my body, as an inserted action/performance in between the sun and the moon, so that my presence becomes invisible, and my body/life vanishes while it transforms as a metaphor of an object. (…) When I disappear, I represent the act of nature more closely. Thus only my gaze becomes active.' [9]

• Late last year, and from a comparable perspective, Kimsooja created the large-scale video installation, Earth-Water-Fire-Air (2009-2010), a temporary project on location on the grounds of one of the largest nuclear reactors in the province of Yonggwang, South Korea. This scale and setting of this version of the video installation was the result of a collaboration between the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea, the korean Ministry of Culture and the company Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, including Hanijin Shipping. [10] Kimsooja placed a video installation, comprised of eight large screens, each about 150 metres away from the others, on a 1200-metre long pier in the sea. Video recordings that she had taken on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and of volcanoes in Guatemala formed the cornerstone for an abstract, visual interpretation of nirvana, in which the four elements – earth, water, fire and air – flow into one another. The fact that the character of each element is inseparably bound to the other elements is also expressed in the titles of the six videos: Fire of Earth, Water of Earth, Earth of Water, Air of Fire, Air of Earth, Air of Water, Fire of Water, Water of Fire. For a period of two weeks, the video works could be seen after sunset, in the evenings and at night, with visitors having to submit to the strict security regulations of the industrial power complex. With this work, Kimsooja wanted to draw attention to the issue of nuclear energy as a form of energy that, like the concepts of Yin and Yang [two opposite and complementary values in Chinese philosophy-Taoism with which the universe presents itself –ed.], produces positive as well as destructive energy. The work is intended as a contemplation on the use of natural sources of energy and the relationship between mankind, his origins and the earth. In light of the recent catastrophic events at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami, this work has unexpectedly become all the more poignant and topical.

• In an earlier work, the performance and video, A Needle Woman - Kitakyushu (1999), Kimsooja lies on a rock formation in the Japanese city of Kitakyushu. It is an extremely minimalist image: heaven and earth and a woman lying on top of a rock formation, forming the line that divides the two. Kitakyushu is an industrial city in western Japan, with a million inhabitants. In the 1960s, the city had a bad reputation because of air pollution, but today, the recycling and water purification techniques that are employed there are now being adopted as a model for other major Japanese cities. It is a strange anachronism that in the video, Kitakyushu is only represented in an image of the nature present in the tattered margins of the city. The earth and the air, however, appear as universal eminences, as Yin and Yang, the dynamic powers from the natural world, as we know them from classic Chinese science and philosophy. As Kimsooja explains, 'When I was invited to make a new commissioned work at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Kitakyushu, Japan, I thought I would do a performance piece – one in the city of Tokyo, and the other one in nature. Then I would juxtapose them together. This was to examine how my body reacts and defines, in relationship to the given environmental conditions that are the human being and nature. As a result, one was standing still in the middle of a crowd, while the other was lying down on a rock, facing nature. Verticality and horizontality were a metaphor for a dynamic balance between urban and natural forces.' [11]

• In the West, people are sometimes inclined to identify Yin and Yang in terms of opposite ideas of good and bad, but the essence of Taoist philosophy is not to think in terms of the opposites of moral judgments, but from the idea of a balance. It is primarily this spiritual principle that is deeply anchored in Kimsooja's work and is a determining factor for her perspective of nature and landscape – being present, being absent, as actively as possible, so that a black hole is created that attracts all meaning towards itself. As an artist, one becomes a mirror of the complexity of the universe, facing the viewer. In this, Kimsooja is a master.

• ART iT: We were just discussing your understanding of the dynamic between globalism and locality, particularly with regard to your performance videos for A Needle Woman (1999-2001/2005). Your work is often discussed in terms of displacement. Is there any place to which your works return or come home?

• Kimsooja: I tend to work on the move, mostly while I'm traveling. For the works themselves there is no sense of "home." The context changes each time they travel. When the same performance piece is shown in India it is different from when it is shown in Peru or Kenya. It elicits different connotations from the viewers, and in response to each specific time and geography.

• I don't intend to make displacement a theme in my work but the constant nature of moving from one place to another in my life automatically creates that phenomenon. Also, the notion of displacement is already there in bottari making. As a physical container of bodies, memory, history and society, the bottari holds together many different notions of time, space, culture, society and gender, but at the same time it is also made with a single piece of square-shaped fabric, so formalistically it's a transformed painting that becomes a three-dimensional sculpture the moment you tie it up with a knot.

• It was from this formalistic aspect that I first began working with bottari, and then in 1993 when I returned to Korea from my residency at PS 1 in New York, my interest evolved towards more personal, social and cultural significances. I was able to see my own culture and society differently after my stay in New York, and this created a different reality that could offset the formalistic aspect of the work. The notion of displacement in the bottari also relates to time. The bottari is a container of different tenses - the past, present and future - which are collapsed together all at once the moment I wrap it up.

• In a way, the presence represented by the bottari can also be represented by the artist's body, which is similarly a container of all those problems. Maybe I'm unfolding them through my relationship to the nature and humanity of each city. For example, in the first version of A Needle Woman (1999-2001), I visited all the major world metropolises, but in the second version (2005) I went mainly to cities in war zones or to those that were sites of political and religious conflict. I visited Havana and Rio de Janeiro in order to witness issues of post-colonialism, exploitation and violence. I went to Patan, in the Kathmandu Valley, while a civil war was taking place, and it was a very dangerous moment. I wanted also to go to Afghanistan and Iraq, although ultimately it was too risky and I didn't want to gamble my life to that extent. But these were some of the symbolic locations that drew my attention at that time.

• ART iT: Regarding the similarities between the bottari and the body, one thing that interests me about your works is posture. It's incredibly difficult to stand or sit still for any amount of time. To do so, your body has to assume almost architectural qualities. Is posture something that you've thought about over the years - not just the body itself, but also the shape of the body and the mechanics of how you hold it up or lay it down?

• Kimsooja: In fact, even to stand still can be a production. When I did the first A Needle Woman performance in Shibuya I had to learn right at that moment how to stand still and how to breathe and be grounded. I had never practiced any meditation or yoga, but because of this urge that drove me to do the performance, I was able to start learning meditation practice on my own. In order not to move my shoulder, I had to learn how to breathe from my stomach, as I could only move horizontally. In order to be grounded, I had to stand solidly and rigidly, but also had to find a way to relax in order to maintain my circulation over the course of the performance. The only thing I could do was to order myself to relax my head, relax my left shoulder, relax my feet, relax my neck - and it worked. I learned to circulate my own body by practicing this performance. Looking at it, I see the body, as you say, as an architectural element. I see it very objectively rather than identifying with it.
  The idea of a standing performance also developed from my awareness of and reaction against the aggressive and violent exposure of the self that often happens in performance practices in history. I was very aware of that, and I wanted to create a performance that is nonviolent that could show more by doing "nothing."

• ART iT: In Chinese philosophy there is the concept of "wu wei" - acting without acting, a kind of non-expression or non-action. I think this concept is fascinating to explore further in an art context.

• Kimsooja: In my performances, non-expression often creates a measure or barometer for understanding the other, similarity and difference. In A Needle Woman, viewers see the same performance of non-action taking place in all these different cities, and then become aware of the clear distinctions between the behavior of the people in the different cities and the different landscapes. After a certain point the viewers tend to forget my image and begin to see what I am seeing. My body begins to function as a void that is replaced by the bodies of the viewers, allowing them to experience each performance in each location. I think it would be very different if I excluded myself and showed only the cityscapes with people. There would be no entry point for viewers.

• ART iT: You're both the needle and the fabric?

• Kimsooja: I am both the needle and the bottari. There are all these folding and unfolding processes going on in my art and mind and body, but also through my gaze and the relationship between my body and the people and the world, there is this other dimension of a needle that is weaving together different societies, geographies and cultures. I feel that my body becomes an axis of time and space. However, the first version of A Needle Woman was filmed in real time, and shows more of the axis of space than of time. The second version was filmed in slow motion, so it emphasizes the comparison in time. The people moving in slow motion appear to engage more sensitively and personally with my body, but at the same time my body, as a zero point of time, becomes an extended zero. What is that time? That is my question.

• ART iT: It's like you are constructing a series of mirrors.

• Kimsooja: I have worked with mirrors on several projects since 1999, but it was while I was preparing my solo show in 2008 at Shiseido Gallery in Tokyo, "A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon," that I realized the mirror is also an unfolded needle. My work dealing with nature unfolds as an extended fabric, while the needle is an extended tool of the human body that signifies the nature of humanity. Everything to do with the relationship between the needle/body, fabric/mirror evolves from my earlier pieces. In fact, the motivation behind my earlier work with sewing came from an awareness of the mirrorical aspect in painting. As a painter, I had always questioned problems regarding the surface of the canvas. I think the painter's life is all about wandering onto the canvas searching for different methodologies of producing one's own mirror. The notion of the mirror and one's identity has always been there, transformed through different media and methodologies.

• ART iT: One of the major issues that we will continue to face in the future, and which we've already been dealing with for past centuries, is how to deal with the other. Maybe your way of dealing with this issue is to put yourself in the place of the other, rather than that of the self?

• Kimsooja: That's very true. It's an interesting perception. The artist's main subject somehow is based on the self and the other. The confrontation with the canvas is always about how to deal with the other and how to project oneself. But I want to expand that issue to communication with the other, and embracing the other, and, finally, reaching a ground of oneness. This is an issue that ultimately everyone has to face.

• ART iT: Now you are working on a new project called Thread Routes (2010- ). In conclusion, can you explain about how this project relates to your earlier work?

• Kimsooja: Compared to A Needle Woman, the Thread Routes project is all about searching for the questions and roots of threads in an anthropological approach. It focuses on weaving, lace making, knitting and spinning - all actions with threads - in relation to the geographical, agricultural and architectural structures in various regions around the world. One inspiration for this project came from a visit to Bruges, where I saw a lace-making woman in the street, and immediately connected the structural and performative element of this action with local architectural practices. I began filming in Peru as the first chapter to this project. There, I juxtaposed different weaving communities' performances with the local landscapes, as well as architecture and archaeological structures. It was my first time shooting with 16mm film and I discovered a more special relationship with the camera than when I use digital film.

• "Thread Routes" is a retrospective project in that I am looking back at my earlier sewing practices up till now, searching for the structural, cultural and psychological roots of my own interest. I will continue to film in Bruges, Burano, Croatia, Prague and Alhambra. I also can't help thinking of countries in the Middle East that have strong decorative architectural elements. Other locations include Mali and Rajasthan in India, where there are clay houses decorated with circular mirrors, which also recalls the Indian tradition of fabrics decorated with mirrors. I also plan to film the weaving culture of the Miao people in Sichuan, who have a unique garment tradition of pleated skirts that to me seems to be strongly related to their agricultural cultivation using mountainside terraces and the layers of traditional architecture that are built along the local landscape. Then there are also traditional Japanese stone gardens - the structure of which I can easily relate to weaving. Native American archeological sites are another planned location.

• I'm also working on a site-specific commission by GSA that will take place right on the US-Mexico border in Arizona. I am making a video piece using a LED screen right on top of the first gate for entering the US, addressing the political problems and violence that occur with immigration and drug trafficking issues in the Mariposa Land Port of Entry. Again, this is a very delicate and vulnerable location with which to deal.

• In 1999, in Tokyo's bustling Shibuya neighborhood, Kimsooja produced the first in a series of performance videos collectively titled A Needle Woman (1999-2001). Standing still in the middle of the oncoming crowds, the artist achieved a minimal but not insignificant intervention into the rhythm of local daily life. Simultaneously confrontational and vulnerable, her action opened a window onto the collective humanity of the passersby - viewed from the advantage of hindsight, it is perhaps they who were the vulnerable ones that day. The first version of A Needle Woman eventually led Kimsooja to make similar performances in seven other international metropolises, while in 2005 she revisited the piece by traveling to an additional six zones of conflict and social tension, among them Jerusalem, N'Djamena and Patan.

• A Needle Woman is part of a larger body of work investigating themes ranging from memory and form to nature and consciousness. Often invoking images related to fabric - namely, the Korean bottari cloth bundle, but also threads and needles - such works ask viewers to reconsider their bodily relations to social structures, and reflect about what it means to be both an individual and a member of a community. Realized and exhibited in cities across the world, they offer a universal perspective, but also reflect the unique conditions of specific times and places.

• ART iT met with Kimsooja in Tokyo to discuss her practice to date and how she relates to issues of globalism, locality and site-specificity.

• ART iT: You've done projects in cities around the world, ranging from Lagos and Delhi to New York, Paris and Tokyo. Given that experience, what does locality mean to you, and has its significance for you changed over time?

• Kimsooja: First of all, I must say that I was never interested in globalism and that was not my starting point for traveling around the world doing site-specific performances and video pieces. I was mostly interested in locality. In the mid-1990s my Cities on the Move-2727km Bottari Truck (1997) performance video piece coincided with the emergence of global issues in the international art scene, and my work received exposure in the context of globalism from curators who were trying to understand the phenomenon as it relates to contemporary art. However, as an artist, I was only focused on each city and its own locality. I valued the beauty of the pure authenticity and reality of each city.
  I have witnessed the development and transformation of many metropolises over the years. When I visited Lagos in 2000, the city had very tough living conditions, yet maintained authentic cultural realities. Now I hear the rough areas have been smoothed out and completely developed. For example, there was the Oshodi open-air marketplace that had been established along active railway tracks, which stretched for miles almost to the horizon. When a train arrived, people selling goods on the railway tracks would immediately clear out and then return once the train had passed. The marketplace was constantly moving and taking on different forms and dynamics. If it rained, the sellers would still stand there with their goods, even when the water reached their knees. It was the most amazing marketplace I had ever seen, and I’ve always wanted to return there to work again, but I hear now the market no longer exists as before. I understand that for the local economy it might be more productive to be modernized, but in terms of the authenticity of the local way of living and culture, I think it's a shame. With globalization, everything has become so standardized.

• ART iT: What was the impetus for you wanting to make the video pieces in different cities?

• Kimsooja: The motivation began with the A Needle Woman performance I did in Tokyo in 1999 for a commission by CCA Kitakyushu. I was thinking of doing a walking performance piece, but didn't have a definite idea, so I walked around the city waiting to find the right moment and energy in the right place. After walking for several hours I arrived at Shibuya. When I saw the hundreds and thousands of people coming and going, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't walk any further and had to stop there immediately, hearing my own silent inner scream right at that moment. Once I stopped, I also realized the meaning of walking.
  I asked the videographer to film me from behind. At the beginning of the performance it was very difficult to stand in the middle of a crowded street with all the people's energy coming toward me. I was determined to stand still; at the same time, I was in a vulnerable situation. I was totally exposed, but as time passed, I found my own center. I became very focused and entered a meditative state. As I stood there, I felt myself begin to mentally embrace and wrap the people who were passing me. I entered a state of mind of total concentration and peace, which allowed me to experience a certain kind of enlightenment. When I looked at the horizon of the waves of oncoming people, I could see a bright light coming from beyond them, and I found myself looking at the entire humanity of the world.
  From this special experience, I determined to continue making A Needle Woman performances around the world in order to meet, possibly, every single person in the world. That was the starting point. For the first version of A Needle Woman (1999-2001), I was interested in major metropolises where I could meet many people on the street. In addition to Tokyo, I made performances in Shanghai, New Delhi, Mexico City, Lagos, Cairo, London and New York.

• ART iT: You've spoken about the needle as a hermaphroditic tool that is both aggressive and passive. To stand in the middle of the crowd is both a vulnerable and a confrontational action, all the more so in a city where you're not a local. Is the confrontation an important part of the work?

• Kimsooja: Every performance is a confrontation, both with one's self and the other. In this performance, the confrontation moved from the people on the street to myself and then slowly extended to the whole world, until ultimately I achieved a level of compassion whereby self and other became one. During the performances, these transformations were happening in my mind rather than in my body.
  Of course, there were many different physical reactions from the different cities. Tokyo was the most critical experience I had - people in Tokyo were aware of others next to them, but they pretended not to see them. When you see the video from Tokyo, my body is there, but it seems as if I myself am not there. I am totally ignored or isolated from the crowd, as they don't pay attention to me or acknowledge my presence. I'm an invisible person, yet this is one of the most crowded streets in the world. The time-based video makes apparent this phenomenon. It's as if I am a ghost, or my body becomes increasingly transparent. It's also interesting how my state of mind changed during the course of the performance, because the more I embraced the people into my mind, the more I was also liberated from them, and could empty myself. The visual and physical processed and the psychological, spiritual process were moving in opposite directions.
  Your comment on confrontation interests me not only in regard to my performance pieces but also in regard to earlier sewing pieces and installations. These were also very much related to a confrontation with "the other," through the medium of the canvas.

• ART iT: How did the experience change from city to city? Did you see different things about yourself in different cities?

• Kimsooja: Yes. It depended on the location and the energy of the place. In New Delhi, people found an Asian woman standing in the middle of the street to be very odd and mysterious, perhaps because of their associations with religious imagery in Indian culture. They would stop and look at me for a few minutes, trying to find out who I was and what I was doing. Some people would ask the camera crew whether I was a Buddha or a sculpture.
  During the performances, I never engaged anybody in a direct gaze. I would focus on a single, vanishing point. This helped to keep myself stable, although I knew what was happening and how people looked at me. In New Delhi, the inner gazes shared between my mind and their minds were very intense. In Shanghai, people were only half-interested and would quickly return to their own business after glancing at me. In Cairo, people were playful and curious. Some people would stand in front of me, mirroring my position for a few minutes. There was also a man who brought a bottle of cologne and sprayed it in front of me to get my attention, and a woman who grabbed my ponytail and move it around my body. The reactions tended to be direct and very provocative.
  In New York, people were always interested in looking all around, searching for new information on the street, so their heads were constantly moving - eating, walking, talking, laughing, sometimes mimicking me. In London, where there is a similar multinational population, they were more turned in on themselves, and their gazes tended to be directed downwards at a 45-degree angle, rather than looking up. So these performances gave me insight into the mentality of the people in each city and different cultures in various geographies.

• ART iT: Have you ever done A Needle Woman or a similar kind of performance in Korea?

• Kimsooja: No. I didn't want to position myself in the same place where I’ve lived for over 40 years. I wanted to have a degree of separation from and objectivity to the cities where I performed. Had I done it in Korea, everything would have been too familiar, with less tension. It would have been difficult to create a distinction between my body and the others - even if there were a visible distinction - because mentally and historically we share so much together. This was a piece that had to be examined outside of my own context.

• ART iT: But you have done other projects and of course exhibitions in Korea, such as the Earth - Water - Fire - Air (2010) installation of videos along the breakwater of the Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant. What is your relationship - through your creative process - with Korea?

• Kimsooja: Passions and troubles can feed creativity. All my problems are good resources. My private life, my family, my friends, my country - cultural, political and social relationships can all be material for me to work with. The more I know my own culture, the more I actually feel estranged from it because I know where it comes from and yet I know that I'm not fully part of it. It was interesting for me to have grown up in a society that was undergoing economic and political turbulence. But then I thought that living in the same homeland for about 40 years is more than enough to learn what you can from one place. I thought that if I continued to live there I would just repeat myself, and I needed another vital ground. Another factor in leaving Korea was that even until the late 1990s it was difficult for female artists to receive recognition or support in the male-dominated social hierarchy.

• ART iT: Did this idea that you were moving away from your homeland at all affect the dynamic of doing projects in other cities and countries? For example, what keeps your practice from acting out a kind of artistic globalization?

• Kimsooja: I think of globalization as being related to things like the profusion of a few brands across the world, or a process in which everything becomes standardized and preexisting cultures or ways of thinking and living are slowly eradicated. My intention with A Needle Woman was more about inner experience rather than expressing myself or showing off. For me, the performance inevitably became a kind of ontological question about living in the world, and the world in which I am living became my canvas - a backdrop, rather than a market. I’ve always been interested in experiencing the wakefulness of being in the world, rather than necessarily transforming my experience for the audience. Simply, the latter came naturally as a result of my being an artist.
  If there is a certain global aspect in my work, it's perhaps more in that I present the performances together in multi-channel video installations so that viewers can simultaneously see the different momentums of each city around the world. But I don't know if I recreate the standardized format of globalization. I am the same person and I am doing the same performance, but my inner transformation has always been there. Is it possible for me to become a global item? I don't know. It could be interesting if that were so. Obviously, in the current era artists can take on brand-name value. I never thought of that in my own practice because for me it's not about the product or a work of art but the artist as a being. Art is a methodology of living for me.

• ART iT: Maybe it's no coincidence, though, that in the age of globalization we have seen a rise in site-specific commissions asking artists to fly some place, do research and produce a project in that context. Sometimes this approach can produce powerful works, but it can also become an empty gesture towards an idealized notion of locality.

• Kimsooja: Yes, it is true, and depending on the practices such commissions can take shape in different ways. Performance can be very different from installation, sculpture or even painting, which normally has less site-specificity in terms of interaction and can travel anywhere. A space-oriented site-specificity will be different from a time-oriented specificity, and a politically-oriented specificity will also be different from the other two. It varies so much with each project that it's very difficult to generalize.

수평과 수직, 구조, 상징

• 수평선과 수직선이 서로 만나면 십자형이 된다. 이 두 선들은 종횡으로 엇갈려 십자형을 구성함으로서 서로에게 없어서 안 되는 상호 보족의 관계를 이루고 균형을 잡는다. 설혹 수평선과 수직선이 떨어져 있더라도, 우리는 이 둘을 잇는 십자형을 쉽게 머리에 떠올리게 된다. 일찍이 원시문화나 고대문화에서도 수평선과 수직선을 반복하거나 위치를 조정함으로서 셈을 세는 기호 혹은 메시지를 전하는 상징기호 나아가 문자로 사용했다. 특히 이 두 선들이 중앙에서 직각으로 마주친 십자형은 동일한 길이의 두 수평선과 두 수직선이 네 개의 직각을 이룬 정사각형보다 중앙집중의 힘이 강하다 하여 한층 더 완벽한 기호로 여겼다고 한다. 심지어 ┼형 구조가 기울어져 ╳형 구조로 되어도 균형과 완성을 상징하는 완벽한 기호로 본다. 그래서 고대 라틴인은 마지막 숫자 아홉 다음에 완성을 뜻하는 숫자로 ╳형을, 고대 중국인도 열 십자를 ┼형으로 그렸다. 또한 세상의 척도로서 인체도 십자형이다. 인체는 사지와 장기가 중심을 향하는 형태로 구성되어, 양 팔을 펴고 두 발을 모으고 있는 사람의 형태는 ┼형이며, AD1세기의 비트루비우스가 그렸고 후에 레오나르도 다빈치가 모사한 인체도는 사지를 벌려 ╳형을 이룬다.

• 뿐만 아니라 십자형은 신들의 세계인 하늘과 땅을 연결한다는 상징적 의미도 있다. 수평과 수직의 만남을 초월적 세계와 세속적 세계의 연결로 간주해 '세계의 축'이라 부르기도 한다. 기독교의 십자가와 불교의 만(卍)자 기호를 보자. 전자는 지상의 수난과 천상의 영광을, 후자는 천지 연결을 뜻하는 우주적 상징으로, 둘 다 심리적 치유와 종교적 구원을 암시한다. 그래서 서양에서는 신의 거처인 성당을 건축할 때 십자형 도면과 십자형 교차궁륭이 기본이고, 힌두교, 불교의 만다라에서는 수평과 수직이 교차하는 십자형을 기본골격으로 삼되 이를 하늘과 땅을 가리키는 우주질서의 상징으로 보는 것이다. 상반구와 하반구, 그리고 좌반구와 우반구, 네 개의 영역을 나누는 십자형 구조를 토대로 사고와 감각, 직관과 감정으로 구분해서 인간의 격을 상징하기도 한다. 유교 주역과 불교에서는 수평-수직의 네 방위를 물, 흙, 불, 바람의 네 가지 원소로 상징하여 우주적 질서를 나타낸 것을 볼 수 있다. 잘 알고 있듯이 한글 모음도 수평선, 수직선을 이용하여 땅은 ᅳ로, 하늘은 ㅣ로 그리고 인간은 가운데 점으로 상징해서 구성된 체계이다.

• 미술에서도 수평과 수직의 형태는 자주 등장한다. 원시미술에서부터 현대미술에 이르기까지, 장식미술에서든 순수미술에서든, 수평선과 수직선은 보편적으로 우주와 인간을 상징하는 기호로 나타난다. 고대미술과 원시공예품을 살펴보면, 수평-수직선, 십자형, 격자무늬가 벽화, 도자기화, 섬유직조, 바구니엮기 등에서 빈번하게 발견이 된다. 이는 예술심리학에서 설명하듯이 인간이 광대하고 예측불가능한 세계 내지는 자연에의 불안을 통제하고 그것에 질서를 부여하려는 의도에서 파생된 결과라고 할 수 있다. 현대에 이르러 W. 보링거의 '추상과 감정이입'에 관한 이론도 무질서한 자연에 대립한 질서로서 수평, 수직의 구조를 밝힌 바 있다. 일반적으로 추상미술과 관련한 해설들은 세잔이 자연을 견고한 기하학적 질서로 재조직한 태도를 언급하며, 나아가 칸딘스키와 몬드리안의 수직, 수평 시스템의 기하추상 그리고 클레의 기호회화를 해명하면서 수평-수직 체계의 맥락을 추상화가들의 세계관 표현이라고 설명하곤 한다. 구조주의적 인식방법을 취한 이 같은 논의는 한마디로 인간과 우주의 상징으로 인식된 수직, 수평의 구조가 원시시대부터 현대-이를테면 미니멀 회화의 격자구조나 십자형 셰이프트캔버스에 이르기까지, 미술가들 사이에 보편적으로 유전되어 왔음을 주장하게 한다. 수평선과 수직선이 교차한 십자형은 고도로 축약된 기호이며, 두 선들이 가리키는 방향에 따라 인간의 오감과 내면 심리, 정신적 내용까지 함축하므로, 미술가의 추상재능도 더불어 작동된다는 사실을 인정할 수밖에 없다. 예술에도 관심이 많았던 인류학자 레비-스트로스도 "친족관계의 기본단위"에서, 소쉬르의 공시축-통시축 즉 수평-수직의 교차하는 두 축을 토대로, 내적으로 의존관계를 맺는 이원대립의 기본구조 dichotomie가 여러 문화, 예술영역에서도 공통으로 유효한 작동인임을 가리킨 적이 있다.

• 이 글에서 조명하려는 김수자는 화가이면서도 캔버스 화면 위에 그림을 그리지 않는다. 대신 인간을 비롯한 세계를 수평-수직 구조란 보편적 질서로 상정하고 이를 형이상학적 사유와 연동시켜 표현하는 작가이다. 그런 점에서 김수자의 작품은 세계에 대한 흥미로운 은유이고, 연작들은 수평-수직 구조에 대한 환유의 연속이라고 볼 수 있을 것이다. 실제로 수평, 수직의 기본구조에 대한 사유는 그의 천을 꿰매는 바느질 작업-"꿰매기 연작"-에서부터 출발하여 이후 "연역적 오브제" 연작을 거쳐 "바늘여인" 연작 그리고 최근의 "지수화풍 地水火風" 연작에 이르기까지, 일관된 작업논리 내지는 제작원형으로 작용하는 것이다. 이와 관련하여 작가는 수차례 인터뷰에서 특히 자신의 석사논문(<조형기호의 보편성과 유전성에 관한 고찰, 십자형 기호를 중심으로> 1984)에서 수평, 수직의 이원적 구조가 동양의 음양론과 마찬가지로 세계를 포괄하고 구성하는 근본체계임을 암시하거나 설명했음을 상기할 필요가 있다. 이 글에서는 작가의 사유가 어떻게 캔버스 화면에서 천 작업으로 이동하는지 그리고 수평선과 수직선 그리고 두 선의 연결인 십자형이 작가의 작품에서 어떻게 구체화되어 나타나는지를 간략하게나마 살펴보고자 한다.

사유의 이동 I : 캔버스에서 천으로

• 김수자에게 있어 표현의 도구는 더 이상 캔버스와 물감 그리고 붓이 아니다. 그에게 있어 캔버스의 평평한 면과 사각 틀은 구상, 추상을 불문한 재현의 도구일 뿐이고 너무 딱딱한 장치여서, 자유로운 사유의 흐름을 대신하기에는 전혀 적합하지가 않다. 그래서 작가는 캔버스의 구성요소들 중 하나인 유연한 소재, 천을 선택했다. 최초의 천작업인 "꿰매기" 연작(1983-1988)은 각양각색의 천 조각들을 바느질로 연결하여 부정형의 외현을 갖는 작품들을 등장시켰다. 이들을 굳이 회화라고 부른다면, 색면추상이라고 할까? 하지만 1970년대 미국의 하드에지나 컬러필드 회화와는 정반대로, 여기서는 균질의 평평한 색면이나 자른 듯 선명한 윤곽은 찾아볼 수가 없다. 오히려 드로잉 흔적으로 얼룩진 크고 작은 헝겊조각들이 다소 울퉁불퉁한 표면을 보이며 연결되어 있고, 테두리는 불규칙하며 너덜대는 실밥들이 정돈되지 않은 채 붙어있다. 완성을 향한 작가의 의지보다는 재료인 천의 고유한 물질성이 전면으로 부각되어 있다. 그렇다고 해서 이를 다다이스트 같은 반미학적 오브제 선택이라든가 혹은 포괄적인 개념미술의 성향이라고 분류하지는 않겠다. 그가 고른 천과 바느질은 세계의 근본적 구조를 관조하고 그 안에서 살아가는 자기 자신처럼 얽히고 설킨 인간 세계를 표현하기 위해 선별된 소재들이다. 사각형으로 자른 천들을 수평과 수직 방향으로 잇대어 놓고 바느질로 연결하여 서로를 기대고 부축하게 하고 있다. 그래서 주목되는 것은 캔버스의 딱딱한 나무틀이 사라졌음에도 불구하고 ‘꿰매어진’ 천들은 밑으로 늘어지지 않고 수평-수직 구조를 유지한다는 사실이다. 천을 잡아당기는 팽팽한 긴장감의 근원은 나무틀을 대신한 관계의 장치 즉 '바느질의 무수한 땀들'이다. 이들이 조각천과 중력 사이의 균형을 이루게 하는 근거이다.

• 여기서 필자는 작품의 질서를 형성하는 원천인 긴장된 바느질과 유연한 천의 이원적 구조에 대해 언급하고자 한다. 바느질한 천 작업의 발생은 우연히 이루어진 것으로 설명된다. 작가가 여러 차례 말했듯이, 1983년 어느 날 어머니와 함께 이불보를 시침하면서, 불현듯 깨닫게 된 작업방식이다. 이 일화는 그 동안 여러 글들을 통해 잘 알려진 내용이긴 하지만, 작가의 고유한 작품세계의 출발을 알리는 단초가 되므로 다시 인용한다 : “어머니와 함께 이불을 꿰매는 일상적인 행위 속에서 나의 사고와 감수성과 행위가 모두 일치하는 은밀하고도 놀라운 일체감을 체험했으며, 묻어두었던 그 숱한 기억들과 아픔, 삶의 애정까지도 그 안에 내포할 수 있는 가능성을 발견하게 되었다. 천이 갖는 기본구조로서의 날실과 씨실, 우리 천의 원초적인 색감, 평면을 넘나들며 꿰매는 행위의 천과의 자기동일성, 그리고 그것이 불러일으키는 묘한 향수... 이 모든 것들에 나 자신은 완전 매료되었다” (<작가노트>, 현대화랑, 1988). 훗날 작가는 이 경험을 다시 회상하며, 천에 뾰족한 바늘을 꽂는 순간 갑자기 온 몸을 관통하는 우주의 에너지를 느꼈다고 말한다. 이 우연한 경험의 놀라운 일화는 이후 그가 인터뷰할 때마다 반복되는 내용으로서, 그의 작업의 원형이 무엇인지 새삼 환기시켜주는 단서가 된다.

• 작가가 방바닥에 펼쳐진 이불보 천위에 '뾰족한 바늘을 꽂는 순간'을 필자는 수 백 년 동안 지속된 회화의 평면 스크린을 꿰뚫는 획기적인 순간이라고 바꾸어 해석하고 싶다. 일찍이 단색만 칠한 캔버스를 예리한 칼로 찢고 구멍을 내었던 공간주의 화가 루치오 폰타나처럼, 그도 이불보 표면을 바늘로 넘나들어 구멍을 내면서, 회화를 더 이상 일루전의 스크린이 아닌 입체 구조물의 존재로 깨닫게 된 것이다. 특히 여기서 주목할 점은 수직의 바늘이 수평으로 펼쳐진 이불보의 천을 관통해 나가는 장면이다. 이 3차원의 수평과 수직의 관계는 평면 일루전에만 익숙했던 작가에게 회화의 실체 즉 은폐됐던 캔버스의 구조를 확인시키는 결정적 계기였다고 생각된다. 그 동안 회화는 불투명한 스크린 위에 그려진 물감의 막, 그 환영들의 관념적인 재현 내용으로 정의되곤 했었다. 하지만 환영 아래에 감춰져 있던 회화의 기표들 즉 색물감, 캔버스의 천, 그리고 나무틀 같이 화면을 지지하던 구조요소들이 곧 회화의 의미를 결정한다는 사고 전환을 이룬다면, '회화 = 사각형의 평평한 화면'이란 모더니스트 공식은 무의미해질 수밖에 없다. 또한 캔버스나 이불보를 확대해보면, 틈새가 있는 날실과 씨실로 직조된 구조물임이 드러나서, 이들도 실상 상호 교차하는 두 실들로 이뤄진 수평-수직 체계의 결과물임을 알 수 있다. 후일 그가 이불보들을 전시장 공간에 매달아 천의 앞면과 뒷면을 동시에 볼 수 있도록 한 설치법 역시 천의 입체적 구조와 공간적 위상을 증명한 이벤트였다고 생각된다.

사유의 이동 II : 바느질에서 연역적 오브제로 그리고 보따리로

• 바느질로 완성되는 "꿰매기" 연작 작품들은 어느 경우이든 바느질로 연결된 수평-수직의 이음새들을 볼 수 있다. <하늘과 땅>(1984)이 대표적 예로, 상이한 크기의 사각형 헝겊들이 바느질에 의해 수평-수직 구조로 연결되어 있으며, 외형의 윤곽마저도 수평선과 수직선이 만나는 십자형을 이루고 있다. 인류문화사에서 보편적으로 마주칠 수 있는 수평-수직의 체계가 여기서도 우주구성의 기호로서 그리고 제작의 원형으로서 등장하고 있는 것이다. 그 외의 작품들, <대지>>, <너의 초상>, <벽>에서도 변형된 십자형 기호를 거듭 마주칠 수 있으며, 음양을 상징한 수평-수직의 이원구성임을 발견하게 된다. 1989년 즈음하여 "연역적 오브제"가 등장한다. 이 두 번째 연작은 평면 작업에서 입체 작업으로 옮아갔다는 점에서 의의를 찾을 수 있다. 오래된 골동 집기나 일상 물품을 천으로 감싸거나 덮는 이 작업은 딱딱한 골격의 오브제에 부드럽고 유연한 천이 덧붙여진 상황이다. 앞서 천에 긴장된 힘을 주던 바느질 작업이 차츰 형태를 완성해내는 귀납법식 제작이었다면, 이번에는 그 반대의 상황이 벌어진다. 처음부터 수평-수직 형태의 골격을 이룬 오브제가 주어지고 그 위에 천을 감싸서 본래 주어진 모양을 드러내는 연역법의 제작인 것이다. 제작 동기는 작가의 인터뷰를 통해 알려졌듯이, 오랜 기억을 되살리는 기물들인 지게, 창호지문틀, 얼레와 북, 빨래걸이, 사다리 등에 내재된 단순명료한 구조미에 매혹되었기 때문이다. 이 일상적 사물들은 아닌게 아니라 가만히 들여다보면, 뜻 밖에도 수평-수직의 구조를 이루고 있다. 땅바닥에 드러누운 지게의 연역적 오브제나 사각형 문틀 그리고 위로 갈수록 폭이 좁아지는 이등변 사각형의 사다리 등 그 단순한 기하학적 구조미는 '바느질' 연작에서 볼 수 있던 수평-수직의 모자이크식 구조미와 크게 다를 바 없다. 평면구조에서 입체구조로 바뀌고 재료가 달라서 이질적이랄 수 있겠지만, 구조의 체제는 등가여서, 마치 xy축의 평면기하학에서 공간의 깊이를 더한 xyz축의 입체기하학으로 사유의 이동을 했다고 말할 수 있다. 체조선수들이 사용하는 커다란 원형 강철 테에 천을 입힌 작품(<무제> 1991)은 수평-수직 구조가 아닌 것 같이 보인다. 하지만 공간을 가로질러 굴러갈 수 있는 이 둥근 입체 오브제를 풀어 평면으로 되돌린다고 상상할 경우, 좁고 긴 사다리 모양의 수평-수직 구조가 금방 눈앞에 나타나게 된다.

• 딱딱한 오브제가 캔버스의 나무틀-support 역할을 하며, 팽팽하게 둘러싼 천이 화면의 천-surface이라고 상정해본다면, 이 역시도 캔버스의 구조적 해체에 대한 또 다른 번안이란 추론이 가능하다. 너무 멀리 가기 전에 이 같은 작업을 1970년을 전후하여 프랑스에서 전개된 분석적 실험회화운동인 쉬포르/쉬르파스 Supports/Surfaces와 비교해야 할 필요가 있다. 회화에 대한 자기비판으로 출발한 쉬포르/쉬르파스 작가들은 구조주의 인식론을 토대로 회화의 우월했던 관념과 단절하기 위해 캔버스 구조 자체를 드러내고, 각자 천/나무를 의미를 만드는 기표로 간주하여 다양한 이원대립쌍의 오브제들을 만들어내곤 했다. 이들의 의미심장한 작업을 작가가 알거나 참조했는지 지금 확인할 수 없으나, 객관적으로 상호 관련성을 밝혀내는 비평적 논의는 앞으로 또 다른 기회에 시도해 볼 의의가 있다고 생각한다.

• 여하튼 입체 구조물로 이룩된 "연역적 오브제" 연작의 또 다른 특징은 작품이 특정 장소에 놓여짐으로서 비로소 자신의 의미를 획득하는 장소특수성을 지닌다는 점에 있다. 가령 전시장 벽면이나 바닥에 설치된 헝겊들의 축적은 바로 해당 전시장 공간의 그 특정 장소를 덮음으로서 작품의 의미를 완성시킬 수 있는 것이다. 딱딱한 벽면과 바닥이 여기서도 부드러운 천과 이원적 대응 구조를 이루며 수평-수직의 제작 원형을 따른다는 사실은 두말 할 나위도 없다. 이후 경주 옥산서원 계곡에서 이루어진 <자연에 눕다>는 자연의 바위들과 색동 천들이, 비엔날레의 카페테리아나 식당에서 테이블보로 사용된 "연역적 오브제"는 식탁과 이불보가, 각각 전시장을 떠나 자연과 도시의 특정 장소에서 주어진 골격 위에 천을 덮는 수평-수직의 체제를 실현한 경우가 된다. 필자가 보기에 가장 흥미로운 "연역적 오브제"의 예는 <만남, 바느질하여 바라보기>(1998-2002)이다. 여기서 수직으로 직립한 작가 자신의 몸은 뾰족한 바늘에 다름 아니고 그 머리 위에 겹겹이 덮인 색동 천들은 바늘이 이제 막 만나자 마자 뚫고 지나갈 바로 그 이불천들이다. 색동천들을 두른 새색시의 아름다우면서도 처연한 모습을 관찰하며 보편적인 페미니즘 관점에서 한국 여인의 정체성을 논의하는 일은 다른 지면에서 시도될 문제이다. 여기서는 페미니즘을 비켜서 보다 근본적인 수직과 수평의 구조적 제작원형을 추론하는 일이 앞선 해석의 과제라 여겨진다.

• 뉴욕 PS1 창작스튜디오의 작업실에서 태동된 "보따리" 연작은 "연역적 오브제"에 이어 작가의 사유가 평면에서 입체, 입체에서 장소 그리고 다시 다른 공간으로 이동되는 사례라고 판단된다. 보자기와 내용물로 구성된 보따리는 지난 세대의 평범한 일상사물로, 그에 얽힌 한민족의 유랑기원과 서민들의 이삿짐 풍습 그리고 작가개인의 어린 시절 유랑기억이 기술될 수 있다. 하지만 이 글에서는 작가가 매번 보따리를 싸면서 고려했을 입체적 구조에 대해 생각해보도록 하자. 우선 사각형 보자기의 모퉁이를 손으로 거두어 잡아 싸는 행위 즉 매는 행위로부터 상기해보자. 평면의 보자기는 4개 모서리 끝의 천을 잡아 올려 중앙에 놓인 짐 위로 잔뜩 잡아당긴 다음 그 짐의 정중앙 위에서 서로 엇갈려 맬 때, 비로소 입체의 보따리로 탄생한다. 여기서 매듭은 네 손잡이 천들이 정확히 직교해야만 균형을 이루며, 보따리도 제대로 된 모습을 갖게 된다. 그렇지 않으면 보따리는 매듭의 균형을 잃고 일그러져 속에 든 내용물을 마치 내장을 드러내 듯 흉한 모양이 되어버리는 것이다. 역시 보자기가 보따리로 변신할 때, 가장 중요한 순간은 그 네 모서리 천이 한 쌍식 수직과 수평의 십자형 교차를 이룰 때이다. 이 순간이 얼마나 중요한가는 보자기를 매어본 사람이면 누구라도 이해할 것이다. 그래서 쌌다가도 풀러 다시 매기를 여러 번 하면서 수평-수직의 매듭구조가 균형을 잘 잡았는지 그래서 보따리가 팽팽한 긴장감을 가지고 지면에서 평형을 이루며 앉았는지 눈으로 거듭 확인해보게 된다. 그래야 비로소 우리는 그 보따리를 단숨에 들어 올리고 걸음을 내딛으며 이동할 수 있는 것이다.

• 사실 "보따리" 연작에서부터 김수자의 국제작가로서의 명성이 확립됐다고 볼 수 있는 만큼, 이 연작이 갖는 의미는 크다. 캔버스의 사각형 평면구조가 가변성 있는 형태의 입체구조로 되었고, 이미지가 고정적으로 현시되던 화면 상태에서 보자기의 풀기/매기에 따라 현시/은폐, 열림/닫힘을 반복할 수 있을 뿐 아니라, 보따리 틈새로 보이는 천들에 의해 현시/은폐가 공존하기도 하는 그런 임의성을 지닌 구조물로 전환되어 있다. 다른 한편, 늘어진 천들을 팽팽히 싸매어 긴장시키는 보자기의 힘은 역시 화포를 잡아당기던 나무틀이나 이불보에 장력을 주던 바느질, 각양각색 천들에 형태를 부여하던 오브제의 또 다른 대응물에 다름 아니다. 매번 달라진 장소에 놓이는 보따리는 수평의 지평을 따라 이동하는 수직의 구조물이자, 해당 장소에서 그 화려한 동양적 색감과 독특한 민속적 존재감으로 감상자들과 적극적으로 소통의 관계맺기를 하는 오브제이기도 하다.

수평과 수직의 시공간 흐르는 삼라만상과 마음이 머무는 자리

• 김수자는 1997년의 작품 <떠도는 도시들-보따리트럭 2727km> 이후 "바늘여인" 연작과 "빨래하는 여인" 연작을 연달아 발표한다. 이는 보따리트럭 위의 자신이 국도나 산간도로를 타고 이동하며 상이한 지역을 엮어낸 것처럼, 이번에는 자신이 바늘(수직축)이 되어 세계의 도시와 인파의 층(수평축)을 거듭 관통하며 시공간을 넘어 기억과 체험을 하나로 연결한 작업이다. 작가는 항상 긴 머리를 질끈 동여맨 뒷모습으로 등장하며, 정지해 서있는 그의 주변을 다양한 골격과 피부색의 인파가 물결처럼 스쳐 지나가는 장면을 보인다. 그런데 막상 작품 비디오나 사진을 보면, 작가가 세계 곳곳의 도시인들 사이를 뚫고 지나가는지 혹은 사람들이 그를 스치고 지나가는지 확실히 분별되지 않는다. 흐르는 물길을 가만히 바라보노라면, 물이 흐르는지 내가 흐르는지 혼돈되는 것과도 같다. 이런 의식의 헷갈림은 주체인 내가 움직이든 타자가 움직이든 궁극으로는 흐르는 이치는 동일하다는 사실을 불현듯 깨닫게 한다. 인간 지각의 불확실함 너머로 불교에서 설명하는 것처럼 만물은 흐르고 변화할 뿐 고정불변의 실체는 없음과 화엄경의 유심설(唯心說)에서 말하는 흐르는 외부세계의 주체는 바로 나의 마음자리란 사실을 떠오르게 한다. 바늘여인은 그렇게 가만히 서서 사람들의 물결 혹은 화장한 시신의 부유물이 흐르는 강물을 바라보며, 생멸변화하는 우주와 찰나로 바뀌는 마음자리를 표상하는 기호 역할을 하는 듯하다. 또한 하늘과 땅이 맞닿아 만들어낸 지평(바위산 혹은 도로면)에 몸을 모로 누이고 팔과 다리를 수평으로 길게 뻗고 있는 작가의 모습도 있다. 이 경우 바늘여인은 평평한 바닥에 누워있는 모습이지만 주변의 치솟은 산과 나무나 건물들 혹은 서서 움직이는 사람들에 대해서는 상대적으로 직교하는 자세라고 볼 수 있다. 어느 쪽이 수평으로 누어있고 수직으로 서있는지는 상대적인 문제가 될 수밖에 없다. 거꾸로 매달려 세상을 바라보면, 그 세상이 도리어 뒤집힌 모습으로 지각되지 않던가. 가장 최근 작품인 <지수화풍> 연작은 전시 장소에 따라 설치된 7개~8개의 대형 프로젝터를 통해 자연의 변화무쌍한 풍경들을 펼쳐 보인다. 작가가 스페인의 란자로테산과 콰테말라의 파카야화산에서 촬영한 용암 분출과 응고, 바다의 출렁이는 파도와 물안개, 하늘의 구름과 바람, 대지의 움직임과 모래 그리고 그린랜드에서 촬영한 빙하의 동영상들은 감상자를 원시적 자연의 엄청난 힘과 맞닥뜨리게 한다. 물론 작가는 어디에도 비추어지지 않지만, 대자연의 파노라마를 담은 작가의 시야가 곧 스크린에 투영되어 있으므로, 존재와 부재의 경계를 넘어서 있다고 할 수 있다. 사방 벽에 비추어진 동영상에는 수지화풍의 장면들이 흘러가며 전시장 가운데 서있는 감상자는 마치 자신이 세상의 수직축이고 사방으로 자연의 삼라만상이 연이어 흘러간다고 여겨질 것이다.

• 불교에서 인간존재를 가리킬 때 5온(蘊)이란 말을 하는데, 이는 물질적 요소인 색(色)과 정신적 요소인 수(受).상(想).행(行).식(識)의 5 요소로 이루어져 있다는 뜻이다. 이 작품에서 작가는 비가시적인 정신적 요소들로 축약되어 부재한다고 이해할 수도 있지만, 실상 육체(색)의 물질적인 4가지 기본 요소들이 지수화풍이므로 자연의 지수화풍 풍경들을 통해 작가를 비롯한 인간 존재가 은유되어 있다고 생각할 수도 있다. 어차피 인간 육신은 고대 그리스 유물론자 헤라클레이토스의 말대로 흙, 물, 불, 공기의 4원소로 구성된 채 탄생했다가 다시 그들 4원소로 분해되어 자연으로 되돌아가는 것이 아니겠는가? 그렇다면 이 <지수화풍>의 자연의 모습들은 곧 인간으로 생성되기 전의 본래 모습이며 또 장차 소멸의 순환고리에 따라 돌아갈 모습이기도 하다. 따라서 <지수화풍> 연작은 작가의 2010년 2월 인터뷰에서 한 언급처럼 "자연과 인간은 하나라는 일체성을 근간으로 한 질문들을 담고" 있는 명상적 작품이다. 그리고 흙이 물이 되고 물이 불이 되며 불이 공기가 되는 이 수평으로 돌고 도는 지수화풍, 4 원소의 순환고리에 생명의 역동성을 부여하는 우연의 스파크는 바로 수직의 마음(정신 혹은 영)이 바늘처럼 꽂혀 교차하는 순간에 발생하는 것이리라.

Time and space of the horizontal and the vertical

• When the vertical and the horizontal meet, they form a cross. As they come together as a cross, harmony comes forth in a relation of interdependence. Even when seeing the horizontal line and the vertical line separately, we easily conjure up their intersection. From the early ages of primitive culture or ancient culture, the repetition or rearrangements of the horizontal and vertical lines were used as signs for arithmetic, or further as symbolic signs for communication and letters. The cross being formed as a result of the perpendicular intersection was considered a sign of perfection, more so than the square composed of two sets of equally measured horizontal lines and vertical lines, particularly because of the conception that its centripetal force was greater. The ┼ even when turned over to an ╳ was regarded as a sign of perfection that displayed harmony and completion. This is why the ancient Latins devised to write ╳ after the number nine, and the ancient Chinese also used ┼ as their sign for ten. The human body as a measure of the world is also in the form of a cross. The human limbs and organs are structured centripetally: the body with arms spread and legs together form ┼, and the copy of the human body drawn by Vitruvius in AD 1st century and later again by Leonardo da Vinci forms an ╳ with all the limbs spread apart. Furthermore, the cross symbolically signified the connection between the heavens - the world of the gods - and earth. Considered as a connection between the transcendental world and the secular world, the intersection of the horizontal line and the vertical line is also called the 'world's axis.' Let us look at the cross in Christianity and the swastika(卍) in Buddhism. The former signifies the tribulations on earth and glory in heaven and the latter refers to the cosmic symbol of the connection of heaven and earth; both imply psychological healing as well as religious salvation. Thus in Western culture, the cathedral - the dwelling place of God - had as its basis the floor plan of a cross as well as the cruciform vault, and the mandala in Hinduism and Buddhism had as its basic structure the cross intersection of the horizontal and the vertical, symbolizing the order of the cosmos that pointed towards the heavens and the earth. The cross structure, divided into four areas of the upper-lower hemispheres and the left-right hemispheres, also symbolized the different aspects of a human being: the cognitive and sensory, the intuitive and affective. One can find both in the Confucianist Book of Changes and in Buddhism that the four directions in the horizontal-vertical intersection symbolize the cosmic order formed by water, earth, fire and wind. As is well known, the Korean vowels also make use of the horizontal and vertical lines: ㅡ as earth, ㅣas the sky, and the middle dot as the human.

• The horizontal-vertical form frequently appears in art as well. From the primitive arts to contemporary, from decorative art to fine art, the horizontal-vertical lines generally appears as signs that signify the universe and man. When looking at ancient art and primitive artifacts, one frequently finds horizontal-vertical intersections, cross structures, and grids on murals, ceramics, textile and basket weaving, etc. As explicated in art psychology, this phenomenon may be derived from the human effort to control and impute order upon a world, or nature, that is otherwise too vast and unpredictable. Wilhelm Worringer, too, explains the horizontal-vertical structure in his 'Abstraction and Empathy' as an order standing in contrast to the disorder of nature. Commentaries on abstract art generally mention Cezanne's attitude that reorganized nature into a sturdy order of geometry as well as the geometric abstraction of Kandinsky and Mondrian's horizontal-vertical system and Klee's hieroglyph-like symbol paintings as a way to elucidate that the context of the horizontal-vertical system is the expression of the abstract painters' worldview. This form of argument, taking the form of structuralist epistemology, argues that the horizontal-vertical structure perceived as a symbol of man and the universe has been generally inherited in artists from the primitive ages to contemporary times (i.e., ranging from the grid work in minimalist paintings to cross-like shaped-canvas). The cross as an intersection of the horizontal and vertical lines is an extremely condensed sign, implying with the lines' directions all five senses of humans, inner psychology and even spiritual content, thus rendering inevitable to admit that the artist's faculty for abstraction operates in tandem. The anthropologist Levi-Strauss, having been much interested in art, explains in his "Elementary Structures of Kinship" that the basic structure of dichotomy that formed an internal relation of interdependence is effectively at work in various cultures and arts, an argument aided by the Saussurean intersection of the diachronic and synchronic (horizontal and vertical, respectively) axes.

• Kimsooja, the subject of this article, is surely a painter, though she does not paint on the canvas. Instead, she is an artist who takes as her premise the horizontal-vertical structure as a general order for the world and mankind, further expressing this premise by coupling it with metaphysical thought. In this respect, the works of Kim is an interesting metaphor on the world, her series a continuous metonymy on the horizontal-vertical structure. The meditation on the basic structure of the horizontal and the vertical is consistently in effect as the logic and archetype of her production, manifested from the fabric-weaving series, "Sewing," through "Deductive Objet" all the way to the "Needle Woman" series and "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" series. In this respect, it is important to remember that the artist herself has repeatedly mentioned in interviews – and especially in her master's thesis, "A Study on the Universality and Hereditariness of the Plastic Sign: A Focus on the Cruciform Sign (1984)" –that, like the Eastern yin and yang, the binary structure of the horizontal and vertical is the fundamental system which encompasses and composes the world. This article intends to examine, albeit briefly, the transition of Kim's thought from canvas to fabric as well as how the horizontal and vertical lines and their cruciform intersection are actualized in her work.

The Transition of Thought I: From Canvas to Fabric

• For Kim, the tools for expression are no longer limited to the canvas, paint and brush. The flat surface and rectangular stretcher of the canvas is but a tool for representation, whether concrete or abstract, a rigid device that in inapt to take the place of the free flow of thought. Thus the artist selects from fabric, a flexible material among the components of the canvas. The "Sewing" series (1983-1988), the first work with fabric, brought forth works of indeterminate forms, sewing together various scraps of fabric. If one would insist on calling these pictorial art, would it be considered a kind of Color Field abstractionism? But in contrast to the hard-edge or Color Field paintings of 70s America, one does not find the homogeneity of the color surface or a precisely cut contour. Rather, the different scraps of fabric, varying in size and stained with traces of drawing, are connected without being tidied up – their surfaces rugged, edges irregular and seams tattered. In place of an artist's will for perfection, the materiality proper to fabric is wholly accentuated. Even still, this should not be categorized under a kind of Dadaist act of choosing anti-aesthetic objets or a tendency for conceptual art. Fabric and sewing is Kim's subject matter by which she expresses the world of humans like herself–entangled, knotted, and contemplating the fundamental structures of the world. Pieces of fabric are linked both horizontally and vertically, sewn in a manner that is interdependent and mutually supportive. As a result, the fact that the 'woven' scraps sustain a horizontal-vertical structure without sagging down despite the disappearance of the stretcher is called to our attention. Replacing the wooden stretcher, the source of the tautness that pulls the fabric is the relational device, that is, the 'countless stitches of sewing.' Thus is the support that holds the balance between gravity and the pieces of fabric.

• Here, I would like to mention the source by which the work's order is formed: the binary structure between the tension of the needlework and the flexibility of the fabric. It is often regarded as merely coincidental this appearance of the working with sewn fabric pieces. As the artist repeatedly mentioned, this method suddenly crossed her mind in 1983 as she was tacking up the duvet cover with her mother. This anecdote is well known through various writings, but I reference it once more, for it offers a clue to the embarking of the artist's distinct art world: "In the quotidian act of tacking up bed sheets with my mother, I experienced an intimate yet wonderful sense of unity of my thoughts, sensibilities and actions. I found the possibility to contain such abundance of memory and pain, even the affection for life in that unity. The weaving of the weft and warp as a basic structure of the fabric, our primordial sense of color in our fabrics, the self-identification with fabric in the act of weaving through flat surface, and the strange nostalgia evoked in it… all of this was entirely mesmerizing." (The Artist's Notes, 1988 Gallery Hyundai) Later the artist reminisces this experience, remarking that the moment she tacks the pointy needle into the fabric, she feels the energy of the universe penetrating her entire body. This astounding anecdote on a rather serendipitous experience would be repeated in every of her interviews, becoming a clue that renews our awareness to what the archetype of her work is.

• I would like to interpret the 'moment she tacks the point needle' into the duvet cover spread across the floor as a ground breaking moment of penetrating the surface screen of pictorial art that persisted for several hundred years. Like the Spatialist painter Lucio Fontana who pierced the uni-colored canvas with a sharped-edged dagger, Kim also realized pictorial art that was no longer a screen of illusion but a three-dimensional structure as she weaved through the surface of the duvet cover, piercing holes into it. What is of particular importance here is the perpendicular penetration of the needle into the sheets horizontally spread on the floor. This three-dimensional relation between horizontality and verticality is thought to be a decisive opportunity for Kim - only familiar with the illusion of the surface - to identify the reality of painting, or the hidden structure of the canvas. For some time, pictorial art has been identified as a conceptual representation of the illusion created by the screen of paint covering the canvas surface. But once the shift in thought takes place where the signifiers, or the structural elements – the materiality of color, the fabric of the canvas, the wooden stretcher that supports the screen – is thought to define the meaning of painting, the modernist equation of 'painting = flat, rectangular screen' is also rendered null. Further more, when one stretches the canvas or the bed sheets, it sees that they are also products of the horizontal-vertical system where threads are intersecting. When Kim decided to suspend the bed sheets in the exhibition center for the audience to be able to see both sides of the fabric, this method of installation was of particular importance in terms of confirming the three-dimensionality and spatial topology of fabric.

Transition of Thought II: From Sewing to Deductive Objet to Bottari

• In any occasion of the "Sewing" series, one is able to find sewn horizontal-vertical joints. Taking "Heaven and Earth (1984)" has a representative example, the work is of a horizontal-vertical structure formed by sewing various-sized square fabric pieces. The contour is also in the form of a cross. Here we find the horizontal-vertical system, frequently encountered in the history of cultural anthropology, appearing as an component sign of the universe and the archetype of production. Other works such as "Earth," "Your Portrait," and "Wall" repeatedly display the cruciform sign, and one recognizes that this is a binary composition of the horizontal-vertical signifying the yin and yang. Around 1989, the "Deductive Objet" appears. This second series is significant in that it marks a transition from surface work to three-dimensional work. Composed of works that covers or wraps curios or everyday objects with fabric, this series is of the flexibility of fabric added to the rigidity of the objet. If the previous work was an inductive production where the needlework that gave fabric tension gradually worked towards completing a form, this series worked oppositely. The artist given from the beginning an objet already structured in a horizontal-vertical manner, then she works deductively to reveal its original form by wrapping fabric around it. The motivation behind this way of production, also known through interviews, was the allure of the plain and clear structural beauty inherent in antique articles like the carrier(ji-gae), the sliding door frame, the spool, the shuttle, the clotheshorse, the ladder, all that evoked old memories. Coincidentally enough, these everyday articles each form a horizontal-vertical structure. The simple geometric structural beauty found in the deductive objets of the laid carrier or the doorframe and the trapezoidal ladder – it is not so different from the horizontal-vertical mosaic structure found in the "Sewing" series. It may be considered different because of the shift from surface structure to three-dimensional structure and the changes in material, but the structural systems are equivalent between both series; one can say that thought made the transition from the plane geometry of the x-y axis to the solid geometry of the xyz axis where depth is added. "Untitled (1991)" a work where a large circular steel rim used by gymnasts covered by fabric may not seem like a horizontal-vertical structure. But if were to imagine this round three-dimensional objet that rolls through space to be spread out on surface, the horizontal-vertical structure of a long, narrow ladder is conjured.

• When we notice that the rigid objet is the wooden support for the canvas and the tautly stretched canvas is the surface, the inference that this is another adaptation of the structural deconstruction of the canvas is possible. Before we go too far, it is necessary that we compare this with the analytic experimental painting movement, Supports/Surfaces, that took place in 70s France. Starting from a point of self-criticism on paintings, the artists of Supports/Surfaces revealed the very structure of the canvas in an effort based on structural epistemology to break away from the superior ideas in pictorial art, making various objets of binary oppositions by considering fabric and wood as signifiers that made meaning. It is difficult to know at the moment how much of this profound process Kim consulted, but a critical discourse that objectively reveals their inter-relation seems like a significant attempt to be made at another opportunity.

• At any rate, the "deductive objet" series, formed from three-dimensional structures, also has a site-specific characteristic in that it acquires meaning when it is installed in a particular location. For example, cloths hung on the walls or those stacked on the floor of the exhibition hall can only form meaning by covering that particulate site called the exhibition hall. Needless to say, the hard wall and floor stand in binary opposite to the soft pieces of fabric, following the production archetype of horizontal-vertical. Rocks in nature and multifarious pieces of fabric in "Lying in Nature," which took place in the valleys of Oksan Seowon in Kyungju, and the table and bed sheets in the "Deductive objets", in which they are used as tablecloths in cafeteria and restaurant of Biennale, are another cases that they leave the exhibition halls and become reinstalled in the specific sites of nature and the city, realizing the horizontal-vertical system by covering the given structure with cloth. The "deductive objet" I found most interesting was "Encounter, Seeing through Sewing"(1998-2002). The artist's body, upright, is none but the pointed needle, and the multi-colored pieces of cloth stacked on top of her head are that bed sheets right on the verge of being pierced. The issue concerning the Korean woman's identity from the viewpoint of general feminism at the sight of the new bride, both beautiful and doleful wrapped around in multi-colored fabric, is one to be dealt elsewhere. Here, we want to take a step away from feminism and first take on the interpretive project of inferring the more fundamental structural production archetype of the horizontal and vertical.

• Following the "Deductive Objet," the "Bottari" series, birthed in the PS1 studio in New York, is considered to be the case where the artist's thoughts transition from surface to three-dimensionality, then to location, then finally into another space. An everyday object consisting of wrapping cloth (bojagi) and miscellaneous contents, the bottari is associated with the nomadic origins of the Korean people, the moving customs of the commoner as well as the nomadic memories of the artist's childhood. Here, let us attend to the three-dimensional structure that the artist must have had to consider when wrapping the bottari each time. First, the act of taking four corners of the cloth and tying them together: The flat cloth is born into three-dimensional bottari only after the four corners of the cloth are gathered to the corner of the content and knotted cross-wise. The knot formed here is balanced only when the corners cross at right angles, and thus gives form to a proper bottari. If not, the knot of the bottari loses balance and the content inside becomes unpleasantly disfigured as if organs were spilling out. The most important moment in the transformation of the cloth into bottari (bojagi into bottari) is when the four corners of the cloth come together to form a horizontal-vertical cruciform. Anyone who has tied a bojagi would understand the important of this moment. One repeatedly ties and unties the knot to check the balance of the horizontal-vertical knot structure, also making sure with his eyes whether the bottari has enough tension to stay parallel to the ground. Only after this final inspect can we pick up the bottari and take our steps in movement.

• As the "Bottari" series is where Kim was able to establish her reputation as an international artist, its significance is noteworthy. The rectangular surface structure of the canvas turned into a variable form of three-dimensional structure, and from the screen where the image was permanently uncovered, into a structure where revealing/concealing, opening/closing are repeated through the untying/tying of the bottari, also possessing a kind of spontaneity where revealing/concealing co-exist through glimpses of cloths caught between the gaps in the bottari. On the other hand, the force of the bojagi that adds tension by tightly tying otherwise loosely sprawled fabric is nothing but the equivalent of the stretcher of the canvas, the needlework of the bed sheets, the objets that conferred formed onto multifarious pieces of fabric, each imposing tension. Put in a different location at every turn, the bottari is a vertical structure moving parallel along the horizon as well as an objet that actively communicates with its spectators with the splendid display of Eastern color and distinct ethnic presence in its space.

Time and space of the horizontal and the vertical

The place where the flowing universe and the mind stays##

• After "Wandering Cities – the Bottari Truck 2727km" in 1997, Kim presents the "Needle Woman" series and "The Laundering Woman" series consecutively. As if to weave different regions by riding the bottari truck through local highways and mountain roads, this time Kim becomes the needle (vertical axis) herself and passes through cities all over the world and throngs of people (horizontal axis), going beyond time and space to connect memory and experience as one. The artist always appears with her back against us, her long hair tightly tied, and we see in her surrounding crowds of people of various physiques and skin color passing her by in waves. But it is difficult to discern whether it is the artist who passes through the city dwellers all over the world or the other way around. When we look at water flowing, we are confused about whether we are flowing or the water. Such confusion of consciousness gives a sudden realization that whether it is the other or I that move, the logic of flowing remains the same. This brings to mind the Buddhist account that says beyond the uncertainty of human perception, all things flow and change and there is no immutable substance. The Avatamska Sutra also states that the agent of the flowing external world is one's mind. So the Needle Woman, standing still and looking at the waves of people, or the river with particles of a cremated body floating, seems to be a sign representing both the ever-renewing universe and the condition of the mind prone to change in an instant. Also, where the sky meets the earth, i.e. the horizon, the body of the artist lies at an angle with her limbs stretched horizontally. In this case the Needle Woman lies on flat ground, but in relation to the soaring mountains, trees and buildings, or even people moving around upright, her body lies at right angles. Thus it becomes relative which is horizontal and which is vertical. When one turns upside down and looks at the world, it is the world that seems turned upside down. The "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" series, her most recent work, displays the every changing landscapes of nature with 7-8 large projects installed depending on the kind of exhibition space. From Lanzarote Island in Spain and Pacaya Volcano in Guatemala, the artist recorded footage of lava erupting and solidifying, the crashing waves of the oceans and wet fog, the clouds and win, the movement of the earth and sand, and from Greenland she captured footage of glaciers – such video footage puts the spectator before the massive force of primordial nature. The artist is nowhere to be seen, but because the very viewpoint that captured the panoramic vision of nature is projected on the screen, the artist is beyond the boundaries of presence and absence. Flowing scenes of the 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air' are projected on all the walls, and the spectator who stands in the middle of the exhibition hall feels as the vertical axis, feeling as though all things in nature are continuously flowing.

• In Buddhism, when referring to the human being, one speaks of the Five Elements: the material element of body, the spiritual elements of sentiment, imagination, volition and judgement. One can argue that in this work the artist is absent, for she is condensed into invisible spiritual elements. But because the four basic components of the material element of body are 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air', it can also be said that through the landscape of 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air', the artist and the rest of human existence is presence as a metaphor. Like the ancient Greek materialist Heraclitus argued, is not the human body born already composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and wind, only to decompose back to the four, into nature? Then the images of nature in "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" may be like the image before a human's formation as well as the image it will return to according to the cycle of disappearance. Thus "Earth, Water, Fire, Air" series is, as mentioned in the artist's interview in February 2010, a meditative work where "questions of the unity of nature and mankind are posed." Furthermore, this serendipitous spark is that which confers the dynamism of life upon the cycle of the four elements, that is, 'Earth, Water, Fire, Air' in which earth becomes water, water becomes fire and fire becomes air; it is a spark that happens at the very moment the vertical spirit (mind or soul) intersects, fixed upright like the needle.

1. Life and Art

Once Nietzsche expressed his attitude toward knowledge like this: "I see knowledge from the viewpoint of art, and art from the viewpoint of life." What does it mean to see knowledge from the viewpoint of art? Creativity is the essence of art. People and events remembered in the history of art are those that created something new, going beyond manners and styles that preceded them. In most cases, in the area of scholarship and knowledge, we learn from existing achievements of other people, and end up merely reproducing without adding much to their achievements. Nietzsche called this philosophical labor, or knowledge labor, in the sense of repeating something given, and in the sense that we do it reluctantly and painfully, a contrast to play which we willing to do.
But even in the history of study or knowledge those who create something different from what was before are remembered. Seeing knowledge from the viewpoint of art is thinking and studying with the will to invent something new. Deleuze would name it 'flight,' in a sense that it is like drawing a line of flight from existing achievement, and in another sense that the history of art is composed of lines of flight and that knowledge, science, or study should be also defined by them. It may be replaced with the expression 'clinamen', an element swerving from inertial movement.
Nietzsche thought it is not enough to see knowledge from the viewpoint of art. So he added that we should see art from the viewpoint of life. What does it mean? Isn't art an activity pursuing beauty? On the contrary, we don't say life pursues beauty.
In Untimely Meditations (Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen), Nietzsche criticized modern knowledge as that which became separated from people's lives, turning into liberal arts. Though I am not sure about the pre-modern status of knowledge in the West, if we assume that philosophy means 'love for wisdom (philos+sophia)', following the Greek origin of the word, it must have had to do with the wisdom for living. In the pre-modern period, the role of history was also to teach how to solve the confronted problems based on past events. It was in the modern period that philosophy became a paranoid knowledge seeking for a firm ground of certainty, and history became a universal law that has its own logic of progress, achieving its purpose everywhere. Seeking for 'truth' became a sublime aim separated from life, taking knowledge beyond the realm of life.
If 'beauty' becomes a sublime aim existing on its own, it will carry our lives away from this world -- into an escapist world by rendering our real lives insignificant and contemptible, then to nihilism that denies real life by yearning for another world. In this context, Nietzsche must have meant that we should not regard art as an activity merely seeking for beauty. Beauty itself, art itself should not be the aim of art. In fact, isn't beauty itself a cohesive sense of the beautiful felt within the realm of life? Thus, isn't the content and standard of beauty subject to change according to the shifting ways of life? Didn't art occur when an activity of making something necessary in the course of life, such as ritual and practical things, acquire expressive originality? Isn't art an activity that becomes a part of life in which it participates with aesthetic peculiarity?
After all, seeing art from the viewpoint of life means to see art as an activity that betters our lives. It means that art should lead us to a better life. In other words, it would mean that a better life, more happy and exciting life should lead art. Or, it would almost mean that we demand for an art that leads us to such a life. We require art to acknowledge life, to stir happiness and excitement, to make us see something we have not seen before, to let us live with different sensibility, etc.
Every outstanding artwork is soaked with a life that an artist experienced, observed, thought of and imagined, though not always in the form of realism. Not only in Dostoevsky's and Goethe's, but also in Kafka's novel of absurdism and Borges' work of compression, there exists an insight into life, an understanding of the world. Not only Gogh's and Picasso's, but also the pictures of Klee and those of Magritte are filled with stimuli that make us see the world before us from a different perspective. Not only in Beethoven and Mahler, but also in the Beatles, Nirvana, Radio Head, or in the noises of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, new sensations are overflowing, letting us encounter every moment of life in such a different way. All of these make our life abundant. As time goes by, the new becomes the old, but even this process itself requires something new again. For every newness that emerges, our life is enriched that much more.
In this respect, an art as a creation may belong to artists, but an art as a way of life, endless self-overcoming, is not monopolized by artists. Artists make artworks with material, but we make artworks with our own lives. We should make our life art. It doesn't mean that we should decorate our life and make it look good, but it rather means that as we confront the things coming to us, we are to constantly change our senses, bodies and thoughts through them. And with these changes we create a different life.
Art participates in life through stimulating change in our senses and bodies that are otherwise resistant to it. While literature provides us a different sense of speaking and thinking, the plastic arts provide us with a different sense of seeing and feeling. Through different kinds of sound and rhythms of music, we obtain a different rhythm of living. It is perhaps for this reason that we should rely on artists' works in order to make our life art. Art participates in life and becomes a part of it in this way. I understand this is what Nietzsche meant when he said "we should see art from the viewpoint of life".

2. Settler and Nomad

Freud showed that a fixation of mind is a kind of disease. Trauma, a Greek word, literally means wound. It is a painful memory that remains indelible. It is a wound that is disappeared from consciousness because it's painful to recall, but remaining in the corner of mind, a place Freud calls unconsciousness, because it cannot be erased. It is a wound that is forgotten in the conscious memory but keeps reappearing in various forms because it has not actually disappeared. It is a wound that appears in transformed and distorted forms but cannot be extinguished because it is not in the area of consciousness. This is trauma.
Freud called 'fixation' a state in which there is a wound and our mind or desire is obsessed with it. A fixed desire keeps returning to our life as a hysterical reaction, obsessive neurosis or anxiety neurosis, i.e., the 'Return of the Oppressed.' Freud called these symptoms. If these symptoms keep occurring, it signifies a disease. In this sense, a mind fixed somewhere signifies a sickness. 'Adherence' is a state in which our mind is obsessed and fixed but is not a disease. Fixation is reactive, because it is related with a wound, but adherence is active, a kind of attachment. It is a reactive desire hiding itself in an active form. It is close to fixation (Besetzung) in the way it projects desire. It is a loose form of fixation, or a Be-setzung that is not strongly oppressed, easily appearing on the surface of consciousness. Fixation or adherence ties our desire to wounds and drives stakes into our lives. Therefore our life becomes a symptom of disease circling around the stake instead of an endless journey searching for the new.
Settlement is different from fixation in that we can change the place we settle and move to another place. In the state of settlement, we choose to stay even though we are able to leave, whereas in the state of fixation, we are deprived of the ability to leave. The state of settlement is neither obsessively reactive fixation nor active adherence, but it is a way of a passive projection of desire in that it tries to avoid the fatigue of a wandering life. It is a way of living in which we stop wherever we find 'success' -- whether in acquiring food or in enjoying something -- and attempt to maintain that success. The settler invents 'possession' for such maintenance. It is pronouncement that the profitable place belongs to them, that nobody is permitted to invade into it or share it. It gives form to a new reactivity. The passivity of avoiding invasion becomes a new reactivity preventing and pushing out any access from the other.
This reactivity creates a negative activity when it is transformed into an 'imperialistic' desire to secure and expand possession -- a negative activity which desires extinction of the approaching other. Money and capital provide the threshold of these changes. Within this inertia of desire, settlement becomes adherence, and soon fixation. Life seeking for comfort turns into one that destroys any comfort and peace. In this respect, it is not difficult to understand that though settlement is not a disease like fixation and adherence, when provided a slightly favorable condition, it could be an insane, sick desire that stakes one's entire life to increase possession and money.
Nomadism is defined by a vector contrary to settlement as well as fixation and adherence. It is opposed to staying and the fixing of projected desire. It is inevitable, of course, to stop and to stay from time to time, but the stop exists within the elements of movement, that is, a stop is just an element of movement, and staying is connected to another departure. Settler wants to possess and maintain any success, but nomad takes the ripeness of success as a sign that tells them it is time to leave, so they distribute their success to others, and leave to start new life.

One must notice that the nomad is different from the migrant. Migrants are the people who abandon and leave the place they have been settled when they have consumed everything or failed to get anything profitable. They abandon and leave the barren land in search of another profit. On the other hand, nomads are people who invent creative ways to live in a wasteland, whether it is prairie or desert, from which it seems nothing to get, in a land of failure. In this respect, nomad is not defined by wandering, migration or movement. For this reason Deleuze and Guattari suggested the paradoxical definition, "nomad doesn't move", or the 'unmoving nomad.'
Suppose we can define it in a slightly different way: that is, the migrant is one who abandons failure, but the nomad abandons success. Migrant is content with success and exploit it until it becomes barren, but nomad embraces failure and invent new ways to succeed, then leaving for another land when success is ripe. The nomad fights not only failure but also success. They confront failure rather than avoid and turn away from it, and fight success rather than remain content with it. In this sense, nomads are those who fight themselves, always leave the familiar self. Always open to strange lives, strange worlds and strangers, they change themselves through strange beings. They bring forth new differences within themselves through strangers.
Art is essentially nomadic in that it leaves and changes something familiar. It is nomadic in that it cannot succeed without leaving. However this is not the only type of art or artist. There is an artist who rose to fame from painting water drops, eventually spending a lifetime of repeatedly painting water drops. In this case, is success a blessing or a disaster? In fact, such a case is not uncommon. Marcel Duchamp once said that most artists repeatedly plagiarize their own successful artwork, and even master artists created just a few valuable works. Of course when artists give birth to difference in repetition and along repetition, and when such difference makes repetition another name for difference, we can acknowledge such repetition as another name of difference. However, the artists themselves are the ones to ask the question whether the difference within repetition is the difference that makes them leave their territory.
Let alone the artists who stay in their success, how many artists are there who are parasitic on the success of others? When the success of Impressionism was secured, many became impressionists in order to exploit such familiarity for the sake of profit. When cubic buildings became the international style, architects made a living out of profiting from churning out cubic buildings. They are all settlers. They have never even been migrants. Though prompted by a sizable scandal -- the distortion and attack on the part of the Church towards the statement, "Now the Beatles is more famous than Jesus." -- the Beatles makes a decision to stop endless performance which made new attempt impossible, embarking on a new musical experiment within the studio. The great albums of the later period, represented by 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', were made possible by leaving former success. John Lennon had begun to consider leaving the Beatles after the group achieved great success, establishing itself as a superstar; however, when he abandoned success and chose a new path, enduring blame, he found another world. In this period John Lennon was neither the Beatles nor a member of the Beatles.
Nomadism is leaving familiarity, success, and proficiency. In this respect, nomadism is another name of the way of endless renewal of life. It is another name of the way in which one makes life into art. If we can call the better way to live 'ethica', borrowing Spinoza's terminology, nomadism can be redefined as an ethica of making life into art. It is a passage through which art (renewing and stimulating life with a sense of flight) intervenes in life and a way in which art is rolled into (in-volve) life.

3. Nomadism and Art

There would be no other period where nomadism is more easily misunderstood than the so called 'globalized' period, in which the speed of production, distribution, consumption and culture all over the world is next to that of light. Capital is the fastest. The chain of increase is produced while the flow of financial capital is moving across national borders. And so does production. The laptop I am writing with has a Toshiba mark (Japanese brand), but its CPU is made in the USA, the RAM in Korea, the CD-ROM in Malaysia, and other parts have their own nationalities. Finally all of these are assembled in China. Not only high-tech products but also traditional products like clothes are produced and distributed across borders. Globalized production, globalized consumption etc. Company employees, sales people, consumers as well as capital and capitalists are drawing a globalized trajectory. The education system, such as college and graduate school, cannot be more globalized, and studying abroad is now a necessary qualification for getting a job. Trips abroad are now popular, even routinized. Social movements as well as the activities of intellectuals and artists are globalized. Globally scaled movements are proceeding everywhere in a generalized form. Moreover, mobile technology, such as the Internet, computers, smart phones and so on, is drawing a vector of movement in the daily lives of most people.
It is a commonly accepted idea that traveling life in the globalized world is nomadic. 'Digital Nomad' was once the copy of a commercial of a leading Korean company, and a TV show introducing new trends invited me for the reason that I wrote a book titled 'Nomadism.' These cases show the commonly accepted idea. But if the mind of an enterpriser, who says "The world is wide, and there a lot of things to do" and makes a business trip abroad less than every three days, is centered only on making money or is anxious about his family's comfort, we do not think of him as a nomad, regardless of the frequency of his travels. Or, though people cannot take their eyes off their smart phones, continuously fiddling about with them, we would not say they are nomadic, unless their thoughts and acts depart from the standard criteria of life. In this respect, Deleuze and Guattari's paradoxical proposition -- "nomad doesn't move" -- that separates the concept nomad from moving, and distinguishes nomad from migrant, seems to foresee this period.
It is not surprising that this is a period where books like Homo Nomad, in which moving life is universalized as another human nature, is written and ideas like the 'Job Nomad' -- one who constantly changes jobs -- is generalized as a new trend. The emergence of the intellectual, who mistakes nomadism for the moving mode of life, is persuasive within the boundary of commonsense, as far as it is close to the generally accepted idea. Although art is supposed to break generally accepted ideas and challenge commonsense, the phenomena of artists creating artworks on the subject of nomadism, is not difficult to understand.
Nothing is more commonsensical than to think of nomadism as a proper arrangement of items that symbolize moving or leaving, such as nomadic tents or bundles (bottari). However, what differentiates nomadism from settlement is not that it moves but that even when it stays, it stays in the vector of moving, and that the vector of de-territorialization has primary power even when it proceed with re-territorialization -- a deterritorializing while dismantling a given order, given commonsense or sense. It is not moving along the striae that control and organize flows, but it is operating vector, like a swirl, that is open to every direction, overflowing the striae. It is not tracing a visual form created by contours but it is to read the tactile surface, to capture and comprehend the singularity (singularité), or this-ness (theccéité) of each place, in a nearness within which contours disappear and the shape is indiscernible. Deleuze and Gahttari summarize this with the concept 'smooth space'. Nomadism is to create smooth space anywhere, to occupy it, and to gather the masses, or the public within it.
For this reason, it seems to me that to deterritorialize the entire arrangement around a western table by covering it with unfamiliar and different cloths, is closer to nomadism than the bundle (bottari) which symbolizes leaving or moving or to install a high-tech screen within an old temple, to make something that is not irrelevant but sufficiently distant, invade it, to deterritorialize the entire space to install a wide screen beside the elegant baroque palace and projecting images of an unfamiliar world on it, to displace the palace into a different order such is more nomadic than to mark the trace of movement with items that symbolize the nomad, or the nomadic shape supported by commonsense.
I should say likewise about the nomadism frequently discovered in works of Paik Nam June. Rather than to install a video work on a nomadic carriage or horse, to create new entities from mixing elements of humans and machines, while calling the commonsensical concept of boundary between human and machine into question, is closer to nomadism. And rather than artworks or performances using ethnic elements of the nomad, to bring the act of breaking commonsense about music, instruments and performance into one flat surface where non-music is connected in the name of music and non-dance is called dance, is closer to nomadism.
After all, we should say, then, it is necessary to create a nomadic art opposed to the concept of nomadism, or to create anew the form of nomad by deterritorializing the very existing form of nomad. Perhaps this could be a way to get art closer to nomadism in the age of large scale movements where movement and the appearance of it replace nomadism and erase the essence of nomadism. To invent a way of nomadic life beyond the way of moving life (which is already dominant), to operate the nomadic war machine in anew kind of space we now live in, to recreate a new relationship between art and life in the nomadic smooth space, to create an attractive singularity gathering the public into the space and to make it operate thus is the call of the will of the positive life that pleads with the artist.

• 문명에 의해 훼손되지 않은 자연 그대로의 풍광들. 물과 불과 공기가 어우러진 화산의 지층들. 그들은 자연의 태초의 모습이면서 동시에 수억 년의 세월을 견딘 노쇠한 모습으로 존재한다. 우리가 그 자연의 시간을 가늠할 수 없는 까닭은 그들이 정지한 풍경으로서가 아니라 끊임없이 살아 움직이는 유기체처럼 유동하고 새롭게 생성하며 변화하는 모습을 이루어내기 때문이다. 감각으로 지각되는 세계, 그러면서도 그 너머의 신비의 세계와 맞닿아 있는 자연의 풍경에서 작가는 ‘흙, 물, 불, 공기: Earth-Water-Fire-Air’란 사원소의 의미를 되새긴다.

• 2000년 로댕갤러리 전시 이후 첫 귀국전으로 마련된 김수자의 이번 전시는 지난 10년 동안 그가 세계 각국을 다니면서 진행해온 여러 프로젝트들의 가장 근원적인 지점을 제시한다는 점에서 흥미를 더한다. ‘보따리 작가’라는 별칭이 무색하게 이번 전시에서는 그의 트레이드마크인 화려한 원색의 이불천도 군중들도 그리고 자아의 소실점이라 할 그 자신의 뒷모습도 더 이상 등장하지 않는다. 대신 우리에게 생경하기만 한 꿈틀대는 자연 풍경만이 제시될 뿐이다. 도시적 삶과 파편화된 자아들, 그들의 사회적 관계와 모순들에 전념하는 현대미술의 지평에서 원시의 자연에 주목하는 일, 더 나아가 그 자연의 구성 원소들을 상기시키겠다는 발상은 현대미술의 문맥에서 한참 동떨어진 것으로 비춰질 수 있다. 하지만 누구보다도 동시대인의 삶의 양상에 주목하고 그에 대해 깊은 연민의 시선을 보내온 작가는 우리들 일상의 반대편에 놓인 자연의 구성 원소로써 우리의 삶을 재조명하고자 한다. 그가 처음 바느질을 경험한 사적인 순간과 자연의 흙, 물, 불, 바람의 원소는 이미 맞닿아 있었다고 해야 할 만큼 김수자의 작품세계는 삶으로부터 자연에 이르는 일관된 맥락을 형성하고 있다.

• 대학에서 회화를 전공하던 김수자는 1983년 어느날 어머니와 함께 이불보를 꿰매던 일상 속에서 우연히 경험한 매우 특별한 순간을 소중하게 간직하고 있다. 바늘이 천에 꽂히는 순간 바늘 끝을 통해 자신의 온 몸을 관통하던 어떤 에너지를 체감한 것이 바로 그것인데, 바늘과의 극적인 조우라 할 수 있는 이 경험을 계기로 캔버스의 평면에 대한 오랜 질문으로부터 세계의 깊이와 구조, 그 이면의 공허를 향해 나아가는 해답을 찾게 된다. 초기의 천과 바느질 작업이 수평의 평면에 물리적으로 관통하는 수직의 세계를 제시했다면<연역적 오브제(Deductive Object)>그가 걷거나<바느질하여 걷기(Sew
  ing into Walking)> 세계 각도시의 군중 속에서 움직임 없이 서있는 작업<바늘 여인(A Needle Woman)>, 뒤돌아서서 자연과 마주한 작업<빨래하는 여인(A Laundry Woman)>에서는 상징적인 바느질 행위를 통해 현실과 그 이면을 시각적으로 꿰뚫어 보고자 했다. 스스로를 바늘로 상정하여 사람과 사람 사이, 사람과 자연 사이를 매개하는 행위를 하면서 작가는 스스로의 몸이 ‘소실점’이 된다고 표현한 바 있다. 그 말은 천의 표면 뒤로 사라지는 바늘의 끝처럼 관계와 소통의 매개체로서 사람과 자연 속으로 사라지는 자아를, 관객으로 하여금 뒤돌아 선 작가의 몸을 통해 그 앞에 마주한 광경을 경험하게 하는 ‘타인의 아바타’로서의 자아 소멸을 의미한다. 자아의 소멸을 통한 타자와의 일체화는 바늘만큼이나 의미심장한 ‘거울’을 통해 더욱 본격화된다. 바늘이 관계성과 치유에 의미를 두면서 인간적 삶의 구조를 더 직접적인 다루었다면 거울은 ‘반영’이란 메커니즘을 통해 인간적 삶으로부터 그에 상반된 요소인 자연으로 나아가는 계기를 마련한다. 김수자가 거울을 최초로 사용한 것은 1999년 베니스 비엔날레에서 전시장의 막다른 벽면에 다다른 보따리 트럭 앞에 전면 거울을 설치함으로써 트럭이 전진할 가상의 도로를 확장하고 후면의 아르세날레 공간 전체를 감싸 안는 시도를 한 작품에서다. 이후 2002년부터 <거울 여인 (A Mirror Woman)> 시리즈를 전개하면서 그는 모든 사물을 비출 수 있지만 자기 자신만은 비출 수 없는 비존재(Non-Being)의 오브제인 거울을 자신과 동일시하게 된다. 작품으로부터 자신의 수행적 이미지를 제거한 것은 바로 그 이유에서이며 대신 작품의 내부에 관객이 휴식하고 명상할 수 있는 장소특정적 건축 공간을 구성하게 된다. 또한 바늘이나 보따리에서 다루었던 이중성의 화합은 상반된 것을 드러내는 상징적 거울을 통해 더욱 효과적으로 사유된다. 거기에는 자아와 타자, 남성과 여성, 감싸기와 펼침의 세계는 물론 실재와 가상, 정신과 물질, 해와 달, 양과음, 들숨과 날숨과 같이 자연의 원리에 근접하는 요소들이 적극적으로 다루어진다. 예를 들어 <거울 여인> 시리즈 중에서 가장 최근의 영상작업인 <해와 달>(2008)에서 김수자는 바다 수면 위에 드리워진 햇빛과 달빛의 이미지를 포착하고 이클립스로 인한 그 둘의 중첩현상을 다루면서 개념적으로 불가능한 양과 음의 합일을 시각화했다.

-세계 구석구석에서 만난 무수한 삶의 파노라마를 목도하면서도 그 너머의 세계를 지향해 온 김수자에게 자연이 피상적인 현상으로서가 아니라 흙, 물, 불, 공기의 근원적 요소로 인식된 점은 당연한 귀결로 보인다. 이 네 가지 요소는 그의 작품 전 영역을 관통하는 음과 양의 요소와 더불어 ‘세상 만물의 뿌리(Rhizome)’로서 인식된다. 물질로서의 자연의 4원소는 비록 계몽주의 이래 115개 원소의 일부로 파악될 뿐이지만, 사상적으로는 시공을 초월해서 동양의 오행사상(金水木火土)의 근간이 되는 것은 물론, 불교에서 말하는 만물이 생겨나는 다섯 가지 원소(地水火風空)의 핵심이자 서양의 철학적 전통으로서 뿌리 깊게 자리 잡고 있다. 우주를 네 가지 요소로 설명 하려 했던 기원전 6세기의 엠페도클레스(Empedocles)는자연의 사계절이나 인생의 네 단계(유아기, 청년기, 장년기, 노년기), 동서남북의 4방위 개념과 더불어 물질계를 흙, 불, 불, 공기 사원소의 혼합체로 파악했다. 그에 따르면 이 세상에서 창조되거나 소멸하는 원소는 없으며 다만 네 가지 원소 상호 간의 조합과 교환의 결과물만이 존재하는데, 원소들을 결합하거나 분산하는 것이 사랑(philia)과 증오(neikos)의 힘이라는 것이다. 동양의 음양사상으로도 대체될 수 있는 이 에너지와 물질 간의 역학관계는 세계를 생성과 변화의 역동성으로 이끄는 ‘영원 회귀’의 원동력으로 파악되고(니체) 에로스와 타나토스처럼 인간의 무의식을 구성하는 요소가 되기도 한다(프로이트). 물질로서의 자연이 인간의 내면과 긴밀하게 다시 만나는 지점. 김수자가 자연 속에서 인간의 삶을 파악하고 자연과 인간을 하나로 감싸 안으려 시도하는 이유이기도 하다.

• 스페인 카나리 군도의 란자로테 섬에 위치한 사화산과 과테말라 파카야 활화산을 촬영해 모두 7개의 독립된 영상으로 구성한 작품들은 대부분 우연의 산물로 포착되었다. 우연히 달리는 차 안에서, 길을 걷다가 걸음을 멈춘 사이 우연히 작가의 시야에 들어온 풍경들을 카메라에 담은 것이다. 자연의 근원적인 모습을 프레임 안의 의도된 도상으로, 또는 만들어진 상징체로 포착하는 일이 과연 가능한 것일까. 그것이 불가능한 미션일 때 작가는 프레임 밖의 세계를 향해 열려진 지표로서의 영상을 제시할 수 있을 뿐이다. 그러나 이때 우연히 얻은 영상들의 배열이야말로 순전히 작가의 몫으로서 지극히 창의적으로 이미지 너머의 원소들을 호명하고 작품 상호간의 배려깊은 연관관계를 구축함으로써 엠페도클레스가 말한 ‘우연의 필연성’이란 모순된 원리를 실현해낸다.

• 아뜰리에 에르메스의 공간구조상 독립된 방안에 전시된 첫 작품은 란자로테 섬의 화산지대를 어두운 밤중에 자동차로 달리면서 차창 밖 화산섬을 향해 플래쉬를 비춘 모습을 촬영한 것으로, 희미하고 둥근 손전등 빛 주위로 달무리처럼 풍경이 서린 광경을 보여준다. <공기의 불>이란 제목을 가진 이 작품은 밤’풍경 속 보이지 않는 공간인 허공의 깊이를 가늠하면 서 창조의 근원으로서의 공기에 대해 사유한다. 문명 이전의 어둠과 텅 빈 공간에 대한 은유이면서 인간의 무의식과 상상계에 대한 언급인 이 작품은 다가올 불의 생성을 암시하기도한다. 반면 본 전시장에 들어가 마주하는 <불의 공기>는 거친 바위에 부딪치는 파도, 연무 위에 떠오르는 놀라운 무지개, 그리고 장엄한 파도소리로 말미암아 가장 관객을 압도하는 작품이다. 드라마틱한 자연의 용틀임에 속에서 보는 이의 피부에 포말이 와 닿을 듯 생생함을 전해주는 이 작품이 불에 관한 사유인 것은 하나의 역설이 아닐 수 없다. 작가는 신기루처럼 나타났다 사라지는 무지개를 통해 텅 빈 무의식의 공간에서 태어난 불의 찬란한 욕망과 프로메테우스가 신들로부터 훔쳐온 문명의 기원에 대해, 그리고 상징계의 탄생에 대해 사유할 기회를 준다.

• 이어진 <흙의 불>과 <흙의 물>은 화산지대를 낮과 저녁시간에 자동차를 달리며 바라 본 풍경으로 첫 작품인 <공기의 불>과 더불어 빛이 풍경의 표면에 닿음으로써 변화하는 공간의 깊이를 탐구한 작품이다. 풍경의 평면에 맞닿은 빛의 바늘의 구조적인 공간 탐색이라고나 할까. 이들이 변모하는 인상을 갖는 것은 모두 부동의 대지를 대상으로 했음에도 불구하고 빛과 속도라는 유동적인 요소와 만나고 있기 때문이다. 이어지는 <흙의 공기>는 활화산의 불길이 화면 전체를 가득 채운 것임에도 불구하고 불에 대한 언급이 아니라 여전히 흙에 대한 사유로서 제시된다. 작가와 스텝들이 위험을 무릅쓰고 불구덩이의 이삼백 미터 근방까지 접근해서 촬영한 이 작품에서 정작 주목되는 것은 이글거리는 불이 아니라 돌덩이들이 타오르는 생명을 소진하다 남기는 재다. 에트나 화산에 몸을 던져 생을 마감한 현자(賢者)는 자연이 열반에 드는 것을 몸으로 체험하고자 했을까. 만물은 흙으로 회귀하고 그런 흙은 노년과 겨울, 그리고 죽음의 실재계를 떠올리게 한다. 이글거리는 활화산의 머리 위에는 맑고 푸른 하늘이 걸려있다. 역시 역설적이기만 한 <물의 공기>라는 제목을 가진 이 작품은 <흙의 공기>와는 불과 물, 땅과 하늘이라는 이중적인 대립항을 형성한다. 그것은 또 만지면 마치 단단한 저항감을 손바닥에 전해줄 것 같은 물결의 움직임을 포착한 <물의 흙>이라는 작품과 서로 비껴서 마주하고 있다. 모든 대립과 갈등을 치유하는 여신으로서 물은 공기의 공허함과 불의 야망, 흙의 비관을 모두 감싸 안으며 새로운 시작과 생명의 기원을 약속한다.

• 삶의 근원과 자연의 원소들이 눈에 보이는 그대로가 아니라 이면의 의미, 또는 원소들의 신비한 조합에 있다고 믿는 김수자의 작업은 마치 기표와 미끄러지는 기의의 퍼즐 맞추기처럼 완성이 불가능하다. 네 원소의 순열조합은 총 128개지만 그의 작업은 수학적 추론의 한계를 벗어나 우연과 돌연변이가 개입될 수 있는 자연의 순열조합으로서 바슐라르가 주장한 ‘물질의 상상력’까지 더해진다면 무궁무진한 ‘만달라의 만개(滿開)’를 기대할 수 있다. 김수자에게 작업의 완성이란 더이상 아무 것도 할 필요가 없어지는 순간이다. 그 순간이 오기까지 어떤 빛의 방출과 어떤 생명의 진화가 전개될 지 흥미롭게 지켜볼 일이다.

• 류병학
  2010년 새해 벽두, 오랜만에 국내 개인전을 열게 된 것을 축하 합니다. 이번 개인전은 로댕갤러리 개인전 이후 10년 만에 개최되는 국내 개인 전이죠. 당시 전시 제목이 <김수자: 세상을 엮는 바늘>이었던 것으로 기억합니 다. 일명 <보따리> 작업들과 <보따리 트럭> <바늘 여인> <빨래하는 여인> 등, 우 리가 익히 알고 있는 선생의 작업들을 총망라한 대대적인 전시였죠. 이번엔 <지수화풍(風)>으로 돌아오셨군요. <지수화풍>은 스페인의 화산섬인 카나리아제도와 과테말라의 파카야 화산 풍경을 담았다고 들었습니다.

• 김수자
  이번 전시에서 <지수화풍>이라는 제목을 붙였지만, 사실 저는 전시 제목을 한글로 쓰지 않고 라고 영문으로 표기 했었습니다. '풍(風) 즉, 바람(Wind)과 공기(Air)를 차별화하기 위해서였죠. 자연의 4원소를 동격의 출발점으로 보고자, 자연을 대하는 동양적인 태도로서 순환의 에너지를 포용하는 '풍'(Wind)을 배제하고, 원소 그 자체인 '공기' (Air)로 출발하기로 했어요. 이 프로젝트는 몇 년 전부터 생각해 온 것인데, 마침 서울 아뜰리에에르메스에서 신작 제의가 들어왔고, 또 란자로테비엔날레의 프로그램 일환으로 란자로테현대미술관으로부터 개인전 제의를 받았습니다. 그래서 사화산으로 이루어진 카나리아제도의 란자로테 섬을 이 프로젝트의 출 발점으로 삼고, 자연스럽게 에르메스재단과 란자로테비엔날레가 공동제작을 하게 됐죠. 이어서 일련의 사화산 작업을 마치고 과테말라의 활화산을 방문해 살아 있는 화산의 모습을 함께 담게 됐습니다.

• 류병학
  사실 이 영상 작업은 우리가 잘 알고 있는 <보따리>나 <바늘 여인> 작업과는 표면적으로 보기에 언뜻 다르다고 느낄 만합니다. 그래서 신작을 설명하기 전 에 이전 작업에서 어떠한 발자취를 거쳐 왔는지 차근차근 밟아 보는 게 중요할 것 같습니다. 이번 신작을 너무 일반적으로 이해하지 않기 위해서죠.

• 김수자
  <보따리> <바늘 여인> 같이 '인간'을 다룬 작업만을 본 사람들은 이번 신작을 보고 '자연'만을 주제로 다룬 작업이라고 생각할 수도 있겠지만, 사실 2000년도부터 '보따리'라는 제목 아래 일련의 자연을 감싸는 비디오 작업들을 진행했으나 국내에서 선보일 기회가 없었죠. '인간과 자연'이라는 주제는 제 작업에서 처음부터 존재해 왔습니다. 바늘과 천의 관계, 말하자면 천이 자연으로 전개가 되고 바늘은 몸으로 전개되었다고 봅니다. 또한 천과 바늘의 관계가 천을 통한 자연에의 성찰, 바늘을 통한 인간의 성찰, 즉, 내 몸을 통한 인류애의 성찰로 전개되었기에 결국은 ‘하나’라고 생각합니다. 달리 말하자면 천안(天眼)에 자연의 요소가 이미 있었고, 몸과 손과 마음의 연장으로서의 바늘에 인간의 요소가 내재되어 있다고도 할 수 있겠습니다.

• 보따리, 인간과 삶을 싼다

• 류병학
  동감합니다. 사실 10년 만의 국내 개인전이라고는 하지만, 그 10년이라는 국내에서의 공백 기간은 한편으로 해외에서 바쁜 일정 속에 새로운 작업을 꾸 준히 선보여 온 시간이기도 합니다. 따라서 그 과정을 조명해 봐야 선생의 작업을 더 깊이있게 이해할 수 있을 것 같아요. 우선 말꼬를 트기 위해서 <보따 리> 작업의 시작 동기에 대해서 짚어 보죠. 1990년대 중반쯤 이런 얘기를 하셨 죠 "보따리는 누구에게나 있는 것이고 내 주위에도 항상 있었다. 다만 그것을 알아차리지 못했을 뿐이다. 그런데 1992년 P.S. 1 작업실에서 작업을 하던 중, 우연히 고개를 돌린 순간 거기에 보따리가 보였다. 천 작업을 하려고 보따리를 싸 놓은 것을 나 스스로 깨닫지 못했던 것이다. 그 때 그 보따리는 전혀 새로운 보따리였다. 그것은 분명히 하나의 조각이었고 회화였다. 그래서 단순히 묶는 행위를 통해서 2차원을 3차원화할 수 있는 가능성, 즉 회화적 방법을 연출할 수 있었고 또한 볼륨있는 조각으로 자리할 수 있었던 것 같다." 이 내용을 보자 면, 이미 보따리가 하나의 조각 작품이 될 수 있음을 발견한 것인데, 그런 측면 에서 선생의 보따리 작업은 일종의 '레디메이드'라고 볼 수 있겠군요.

• 김수자
  네. 레디메이드(Ready-made)이자, 레디유즈드(Ready-used), 페인팅이 자조각, 그리고 삶의 궤적의 양면성을 드러내면서 통시적 시간성을 가진 오브제로 보죠. 저에게는 하나의 화두이지만, 한국인의 일상 속에 함몰되어 있는 오브제이기 때문에 제 작업이 한국에서 이해되기가 더 어려웠을지도 모르죠. 물론, 있는 그대로의 사물과 세계를 최소한의 행위로 제시하면서 새롭게 인식 하고 문맥화하는 것이 제 작업이기도 하고요. 사실 초기에 P.S. 1에서 발견한 보따리는 보다 더 형식적인 측면에서의 보따리라고 봅니다. '천'이라는 2차원 의 평면(Tableau)이 단순히 '묶는' 일상적인 행위를 통해서 3차원의 오브제이자 조각이 되는 변형(Transformation)의 순간에 주목했던 것이죠. 이후에 뉴욕 뉴뮤지엄이나 이세아트파운데이션에서도 <보따리> 설치를 선보였지만, 한 국으로 돌아와 개인전 준비를 할 즈음에는 제 시각에 변화가 생겼어요. 한국 사회를 재인식하게 됐고, 여성이자 여성작가로서, 그리고 합리적인 세계를 경 험한 사람으로서 우리 한국 사회를 바라보는 눈이 이미 달라져 있었어요. 즉 그 보따리는 단지 미학적이고 형식적인(Formalistic) 보따리가 아니라, 우리 삶의 리얼리티(Reality)라는 것을 깨닫게 된 거죠. 그때부터는 색색의 천 조각이 아닌 출처를 모르는 헌 옷들을 넣어서 보따리를 만들었고, 보다 더 '인간과 삶을 싼다' 라는 생각으로 작업을 했습니다.

• 류병학
  1990년대 말 선생의 작업을 보면서 그 형식적 측면에 대해 이런 생각을 해본 적이 있어요. 분명 레디메이드지만, 뒤샹의 레디메이드와는 다른 점이 있죠. 뒤샹은 '소변기' (일상품)을 '샘' (작품)으로 박제시킨 반면, '보따리' 작품은 일상 품과 작품 사이를 왕복합니다. 선생은 '일상품' 보따리를 작품 보따리로 전이시키고, 일정 전시 기간이 지나면 작품이 해체되어 다시 일상품으로 돌아가 고 그 '일상품 보따리는 다시 다른 형태의 '작품'으로 나타납니다. 1990년대 내내 선생의 전시 내용은 보따리를 싸서 다른 곳으로 가서 다시 펼치고, 그러면 서 '이동성이 강조되죠. 뒤샹의 레디메이드 후계자들을 예로 들자면, 칼 앙드 레의 벽돌 작업, 댄 플래빈의 형광등 작업 (Monument>, 제프쿤스의 진공청소기 작업 (New Shelton Wet/Dry Double Decker> 등을 보자면, 그것들은 고착되어 있어요. 그러나 선생 작업은 가변적이죠. 흥미롭게 도 보자기로 벽돌이나 형광등 진공청소기를 다 쌀 수 있는데, 그러면 그 형태는 다 다르게 변하죠. <보따리>가 어떤 요술적인 작품으로 읽혀집니다. 그 점이 선생 작업의 또 다른 형식적 측면이라고 생각합니다.

• 김수자
  천이 가진 자연의 속성인 가변성 때문에 제 작업이 확대되고 또 극복될 수 있었다고 믿습니다.

• 삶과 예술의 형식과 내용의 양면성을 결정하는 경계

• 류병학
  1994년 이후 작업에서 특히 '이불보를 많이 사용하셨죠. 예전에 어느 인터뷰에서 "이불보는 태어남부터 죽음까지 아우르는 내용을 담고 있다"라고 말한 바 있는데, 이 상징적인 내용이 바로 '장소성'을 말하고 있다고 생각해요.

• 김수자
  사실 제가 <보따리> 작업을 할 때 보통 많은 사람들이 보자기로 보따리를 싼 것이라고 생각하는데 사실 저는 이불보, 그 중에서도 한국의 전통적인 신혼부부 이불보 중 버려진 것들로 보따리를 싼 것입니다. 즉, 기능과 특정 의미가 공존하는 오브제라고 생각합니다. 이불보란 우리가 태어나서 사랑하고 꿈꾸고 고뇌하다가 죽어가는 장소'라는 점에서 말이죠. 즉 우리 삶의 프레임(Frame)입 니다. 그 프레임에 대해 또 하나 형식적으로 흥미로운 부분은 사랑 장수 수복 다산 등 평생 동안의 우리 삶의 기원들이 이불에 자수로 새겨져 있는데, 어쩌면 그 화려한 이불보의 기원과 축제적인 요소들이 우리 삶의 리얼리티와는 모순된다 고도 볼 수 있죠. 그래서 이불보가 펼쳐졌을 때 그것이 하나의 타블로 (Tableau)이자, 부부 성(Sex), 그리고 정착 가정 휴식 등의 의미를 내포하며 2차원적인 평면으로서의 장소성을 갖는다면, 보따리로 묶이는 순간에는 그 정반대의 컨텍스트를 가지게 되죠. 즉, 이동 이별 이주 분리 등 말입니다. 즉 보따리를 싼 이불보(Tableau)는 삶과 예술의 형식과 내용의 양면성을 결정하는 하나의 경계(Boundary)로 작용하는 것입니다.

• 류병학
  2002년 휘트니비엔날레에서 센트럴파크에 있는 카페에 설치한 작업 말입니다. 당시 이불보를 테이블보로 사용했잖아요. 현지인들은 그게 이불보라는 것을 알았나요?

• 김수자
  제가 작업에 대한 설명을 달지 않았더라면 몰랐겠죠. 사실 그 작업은 에딘버러의 프룻마켓 갤러리에서 1995년에 처음 선보인 다음, 1996년 마니페스타1, 1998년 일본, 그리고 휘트니비엔날레에서 네 번째로 선보인 겁니다. 물론 각각의 컨텍스트는 달랐지만요. 당시 '보따리를 펼친다'는 것의 의미는 일련의 보 따리 작업 이후에 그것이 다시 캔버스로 돌아가는 과정이라고 할 수 있습니다. 즉 이불보를 다시 캔버스로 되돌려, 보이지 않는 요소들을 비물질적인 방법(마 음)으로 감싼다는 개념입니다. 보따리를 펼쳐서 하나의 타블로로 만듦으로써 보이지 않는 것들을 타블로 안에 끌어들이는 거죠. 이를테면 카페에서의 사람들의 만남, 대화, 음식을 나누고 음악을 듣는 이 모든 소통 행위들을 '보이지 않게 감싼다' (Iinvisible Wrapping)는 개념으로 작업을 했습니다. 그 작업에서 나타난 비물질적인 요소들이 일련의 비디오 작업과 2006년 스페인 크리스탈 팔라스에서 선보인 <호흡: 거울 여인>과도 연계된다고 할 수 있어요. 크리스탈 팔라스 작업에서 건물 바닥 전체에 거울을 깔아 펼쳐진 바늘로서의 거울의 허 상과 실상의 바느질을 시도했고, 특수 필름을 건물 유리창 표면 전체에 부착하여 빛이 투과할 때 생기는 무지개 스펙트럼을 외부 공간에서 내부 공간으로 끌어들였어요. 또 삶과 죽음의 매 순간을 의미하는 저의 호흡 퍼포먼스 사운드를 설치하여 모든 요소를 일체화했습니다. 건축의 '허(Void)'의 공간을 건물의 피 부까지 밀어내어 그 건축물 자체의 구조와 거울의 양면성, 호흡의 양면성, 그리고 안과 밖의 양면성을 빛과 소리의 보따리로 제시함으로써 보따리의 비물질성을 극대화한 작업입니다.

• 류병학
  그렇군요. 저는 선생이 카페 테이블에 이불보를 깐 것을 직접 보지는 못했고, 어느 도록에 실린 것을 봤거든요. 그때 보고 참 쇼킹했어요.

• 김수자
  도발적이라고 생각하셨나요?(웃음)

• 류병학
  왜냐하면 특히 작업에서 신혼부부 이불보를 썼다고 하셨는데, 이불보라는게 특성상 신혼부부의 '잠자리'가 바로 연상되는데, 사람의 자연적 욕구로 보 자면 식욕과 성욕이 있잖아요. 그 두 가지가 여기서 딱 맞아 떨어지는 거예요. 과연 외국에서도 이게 이불보라는 것을 알았을까, 어떤 반응을 보였을까 궁금 했어요.

• 김수자
  처음에 에딘버러에서 전시했을 때 갤러리의 스텝이 와서 보고는 "You are Brave"라고 하더군요.(웃음) 이 작업은 어떻게 보면 도발적인 행위이지만, 한 편으로는 매우 수동적인 형태로 제시된 것으로 볼 수 있죠. 한국의 이불보 자체 가 자수도 섬세하면서 굉장히 화려하고, 오래되어 아름답게 낡은 것들도 많아 서 눈길을 끌기도 했어요. 물론 제가 주목하는 진정한 작업의 의미는 그 이불보의 문화적 미학적 가치에만 있는 것은 아니죠.

• "인간과 자연'이라는 주제는 제 작업에서 처음부터 존재해 왔습니다. 바늘과 천의 관계, 말하자면 천이 자연으로 전개가 되고 바늘은 몸으 로 전개되었다고 봅니다. 또한 천과 바늘의 관계가 천을 통한 자연에 의 성찰, 바늘을 통한 인간에의 성찰, 즉 내 몸을 통한 인류의 성찰 로 전개되었기에 결국은 '하나'라고 생각합니다."

• 류병학
  이렇게 2000년 로댕갤러리 개인전에 이르기까지 일련의 <보따리> 작업들을 다양한 형태로 작업을 진행해 왔죠. 광주비엔날레에서는 보따리 안의 내용 물들, 헌옷들을 산에 풀어 놓았구요. 인천 용유도에서 설치 작업을 한 후 사진 으로 남긴 것도 있고요.

• 김수자
  보따리 작업과 이불보를 펼치는 작업은 대개가 재활용된 것이에요. 한편으로 생각하면 작업들이 컬렉션이 안됐기 때문에 그렇게 되었다고도 할 수 있지만, 제 작업에 있어 결정성'이라고 할까요, 'Finish'의 개념은 없다고 보는 것이 옳 습니다. 아까도 말씀하셨지만 보따리를 싸는 행위는 항상 형태의 변화가 가능하다는 것, 그것이 늘 하나의 과정으로서 존재하는 것입니다.

• 공간의 축이자 시간의 축, 바늘 여인

• 류병학
  아까 나온 레디메이드에 대한 이야기로 다음 질문을 연결하고 싶습니다. 아 까 예로 든 작가들도 그렇듯, 레디메이드 작품이 알고 보면 다 공산품이에요. 공산품이 아닌 레디메이드가 나온 게 2000년도에요. 기욤 바일이라는 작가가 슈퍼마켓을 전시장에 옮겨 놓아 농산품을 처음 사용했고, 이후에 주목 받은 데 미안 허스트의 경우 상어처럼 수산품을 레디메이드로 쓴 거죠. 허스트가 그 다 음엔 해부학 모형을 크게 확대시켜 만들더니, 최근에는 다이아몬드로 해골을 만드는 것을 보고 '인간'을 레디메이드로 삼고 싶었구나 하고 생각했어요. 사 실 '인간' 도 레디메이드잖아요. 선생께서 이렇게 말씀하신 적이 있더군요. "아 티스트가 새로운 것을 만드는 사람이라는 말을 믿지 않는다. 이미 존재하는 것 에서 새로운 의미를 발견하는 게 아티스트의 역할이라고 생각한다. 하지만 내 가 어떤 물건을 사용했을 때는 그 물건을 사용한 사람의 삶을 사용하기 위해서 다"라고 말이죠. 제가 느낀 점은 이제 선생 자신이 레디메이드로 자리매김되면서 <바늘 여인>과 같은 영상작품이 나오게 된 게 아닌가 하고 연관지어 봤어요. 들뢰즈의 '~되기' 라는 말이 있듯, 선생의 작업이 바늘 여인되기' 빨래하는 여인되기' 그런 식으로 보이더군요. <바늘 여인> 작업은 1999년 일본 도쿄에서 시작한 작업으로 알려졌는데, 어떻게 시작하게 됐는지요?

• 김수자
  1999년 CCA 기타큐슈에서 제작 의뢰를 받았을 때, 무언가 퍼포머티브한 작업을 해야 될 것 같다는 생각을 했습니다. 그 때는 제가 뉴욕에 가서 살던 첫 해로, 나 자신이 삶의 벼랑 끝에 위치한 상태였고 정신적으로도 매우 첨예한 상태 를 유지하던 때였습니다. 그렇기에 제 몸에 대해 더욱 예민하게 인식하고 주목 하면서 '외로움'(Isolation) '자아'(Self) '타자'(Others)와 같은 주제에 대해 더 깊이 생각하게 되었죠. 원래는 '워킹(walking) 퍼포먼스'를 생각해서 무언가 결정적인 시간과 장소가 나오길 기다리며 수 시간 동안 도쿄 시내를 걷고 있었습니다. 그러다가 시부야에 도착한 순간 수십 만 명의 인파가 밀려 오고 밀려 나가는 그 길 위에서 저는 더 이상 한 걸음도 걸을 수 없는 순간을 경험했어요. 선불교에서 '악!' 소리라는 표현이 있는데, 그야말로 정말 가슴 속에서 '악!' 소 리를 지르며 꼼짝없이 서서 발을 뗄 수가 없었어요. 그렇게 그 자리에 부동의 자 세로 서게 되면서 비로소 걷는 행위의 의미, 말하자면 걷는 행위의 시간성을 통해 나 자신의 몸이라는 보따리에 싸여 누적된 모든 인파와 내 몸의 관계성을 이 해하게 된 것이었죠. 그 장소가 바로 첫 <바늘 여인> 작업으로 설정된 것입니다. 생각할 겨를도 없이 바로 퍼포먼스를 시작했고, 카메라맨에게 제 뒷모습을 기록해 달라고 한 후 그 자리에 그대로 움직이지 않고 서 있겠다고 했어요. 그 때 가 저에게는 가장 특별한 퍼포먼스 중 하나로 기억됩니다.

• 마음의 평정과 중심을 얻기까지는 시간이 좀 걸렸어요. 수많은 인파의 에너 지를 한 몸으로 받고 감싸며 대항하고 있었는데, 어느 순간 몰입의 상태에 다 다르면서 내가 싸고 엮으며 관계 지으려 했던 의도와는 정 반대의 현상이 벌어 지더군요. 그들로부터 아득히 멀어지면서 자유로워지는 거예요. 거기서 완전한 해방을 느끼면서 나도 모르게 입가엔 끝없는 평화의 미소가 절로 스며 나오고, 내 가슴은 인류애의 연민과 사랑으로 가득 차오르고 있었죠. 그 수많은 인 파의 물결 너머, 인파의 수평선 너머로 후광 처럼 떠오르는 흰 빛을 봤어요. 그 잊을 수 없는 경험을 하면서 '세상의 모든 인류를 한 사람 한 사람 만나고 싶다'라는 생각을 하게 되었죠. 그렇게 많은 사람들을 만나기 위해서 각 대륙의 8개 대도시를 방문하면서 <바늘 여인> 프로젝트를 이어갔습니다.

• 류병학
  그 8개 도시가 도쿄 상하이 델리 뉴욕 카이로 라고스 런던이었죠. 그 후에도 다른 도시들, 네팔의 파탄, 쿠바의 하바나, 브라질의 리우데자네이루, 차드의 은자메나, 예멘의 사나와 이스라엘 예루살렘에서 이어진 것으로 기억합니다.

• 김수자
  <바늘 여인>의 두 번째 시리즈입니다. 사실 첫 번째 <바늘 여인> 시리즈에서 는 내 몸이 어떤 '공간의 축'으로 위치했다면, 2005년 두 번째 작업은 앞서 8 개의 대도시를 돌아다니고 세계를 경험한 이후 정치적 종교적 경제적 사회적으로 첨예한 갈등과 문제에 봉착해 있는 도시들을 찾아 내 몸을 '시간의 축'으로 제시하며 인류의 보편적 휴머니티를 찾고자 했습니다. 특히 네팔의 파탄은 방문 당시 내전 중이어서 수많은 총성을 들으며 작업을 진행했어요. 이 작업들 은 첫 번째와 달리 리얼타임이 아닌 슬로우 모션으로 제작했어요. 그래서 첫 번째 버전에서 내 몸의 퍼포먼스적인 측면이 부각된다면 두 번째 버전은 한 사람 한 사람과의 관계성이 더 드러나지요. 시간과 시간의 교차, 몸과 몸의 부딪힘, 정신의 교감의 통로가 더 드러나고 내 몸이 공간보다는 시간의 축으로서 더 작용을 하게 된 거라고 생각해요. 왜냐하면 내 몸은 부동성(Stillness)이라 는 제로(Zero)의 시간의 영역(Zone)에 있고, 그 제로를 슬로우 모션으로 확장 했을 때 그것은 과연 어떤 시간인지를 탐구하게 된 것이니까요. 연장된 제로의 포인트인 내 몸(Zone of Zero)에서, 화면 속에서 걷는 이들의 시간(Slow Mode), 그리고 이것과의 관계를 바라보는 관객의 시간(Real Time), 이렇게 3 자의 서로 다른 시간성이 공존하며 관계 맺어가는 것을 볼 수 있죠.

• 류병학
  <바늘 여인>의 뒷모습은 흥미롭게도 카스파 다비드 프리드리히의 <안개 낀 바다를 건너는 방랑자>(1818)의 뒷모습 풍경화를 연상시키는데요. 그렇게 수많은 인파가 눈 앞에서 밀려오는 것을 마주하는 순간에서는 과연 무슨 생각이 들 까 너무 궁금해요. 저라면 오만가지 생각이 다 들 것 같은데 말이죠. 말씀 중에 앞에 빛이 보였다고 했는데 그것은 완전히 평정심을 얻는 것을 의미하잖아요.

• 김수자
  <바늘 여인>이나 <빨래하는 여인>을 프리드리히의 작품과 연관시켜서 해석 하는 이론가들이 서구에 꽤 있었죠. 프리드리히의 작품을 많이 소장하고 있는 어느 미술관에서 그의 작품과 제 작업을 나란히 놓겠다고 제 작품을 컬렉션한 적도 있어요. 흥미로운 관점이지만 정신 세계나 작업 의도는 차이가 있을 것 같습니다. 예전에 인도 델리의 무나강 옆의 화장터를 방문한 후 강가를 따라 드라이브를 하던 중 문득 어떤 에너지가 느껴져서 잠깐 차에서 내려 강둑으로 내려간 적이 있어요. 그 강물이 흐르는 장면을 본 순간 '여기다 하고 바로 그 자리에서 퍼포먼스를 한 것이 바로 영상 <빨래하는 여인>이 되었죠. '장소성' 에 있어 계속되는 이야기지만, 저는 그 장소에서 어떤 특별한 에너지를 느껴야 만 작업을 할 수 있습니다. 물론 그 에너지를 느끼게 되기까지는 시간이 소요되지만 말이죠. 그러다가 어떤 에너지가 느껴졌을 때 바로 그 자리에서 서슴없 이 작업을 하게 됩니다. <빨래하는 여인> 퍼포먼스를 할 때는 내 몸을 비껴가며 흘러 떠내려가는 야무나 화장터의 부유물들, 삶과 죽음, 생명의 무상함과 그 에 대한 연민, 그리고 내적으로는 나 자신과 주검의 정화 예식을 하던 중 굉장 한 혼란에 빠지기도 했어요. 강을 바라보면서 과연 흐르는 것은 강인가 나인가 하는 혼란 말이죠. 그러다가 나중에서야 깨닫게 됐습니다. 강이 흐르는 것처럼 보이지만, 흐르고 있는 것은 사실 가장 부동의 자세로 확고히 서 있는 나 자신 임을 말입니다. 내 몸이야말로 정말 흘러가고 사라질 것이라는 자각 말이죠. 나중에 가만히 생각해 보니, 어떻게 내가 그렇게까지 혼란을 느낄 수 있었을까 하는 생각이 들더군요. 결국 제가 생각한 답은 내가 너무나도 집중했기 때문에 그 집중이 마치 바늘 끝과 같았다는 거죠. 그 집중의 중심에는 경계가 없어요. 바늘은 위치만 있을 뿐 어떤 대상화될 수 있는 물질적 흔적이 없는 거예요. 바 늘 중심으로부터 세계는 끝없이 확장되어 있고 동시에 축소되어 있기 때문에 거기에는 어떤 경계도 기준도 없습니다. 안과 밖이 공존하는 시점에서 제가 혼란을 느낄 수밖에 없었던 거라고 생각해요.

• 류병학
  제가 보통 '집중'을 묘사할 때 사용하는 단어가 '몰입' 이거든요. 그만큼 거기에 빠지는 건가요?

• 김수자
  빠지기보다는 어떤 '상태'라고 보고 싶어요. 어떻게 보면 가장 중립적인 상태라고 할까요. 사실 집중하고 있다는 것은 아무것도 집중하지 않은 상태죠. 집중하지 않으면서 그것이 평정을 향한 방향성을 가지고 있다는 거죠.

• “각 원소들은 서로 순환하고 연계되는 관계입니다. 그것을 4가지 원 소로 각기 바라보는 과정에서 각 원소들의 '홀로 설 수 없음, 기대어 있음'을 드러내 보고자 했습니다. 결국 그 각각의 요소가 '하나' 이고 결국 우리 '몸'과 일치한다는 것, 또 자연의 힘과 그 연약함을 늘 느 끼면서 작업했습니다.”

• 4원소의 순환과 연계성

• 류병학
  앞서 언급한 네팔의 파탄, 쿠바의 하바나 등 대부분 역사의 장소성을 내포한 곳들이 등장합니다. <등대 여인>의 경우, 찰스턴의 모리스섬 등대를 다양한 색 상의 빛으로 감쌌죠. 알고 보니 찰스턴은 미국 남북전쟁의 발발지인 사우스 캐 롤라이나의 수도입니다. 그 외의 작업도 그 장소성이 보따리나 이불보의 장소 성처럼 묘하게 삶과 죽음이 엇갈리는 지점을 엿볼 수 있습니다. 이번 신작의 장소성 역시 어떤 의미심장한 내용이 느껴집니다. 왜 스페인의 화산섬인 카나리제도의 란자로테 섬과 과테말라의 화산을 선택한 건지요?

• 김수자
  물론 제가 란자로테 비엔날레에 초대되어 방문한 것이 계기가 되기도 했지 만, 몇 년간 자연의 4원소에 관한 작업을 꿈꾸고 있었기에 그 특별한 땅을 주저 없이 탐색하게 됐어요. 지금 생각하니 화산의 생명줄인 '불'이 완전히 소멸한 장소를 선택한 것이 더욱 의미 있다고 생각하는데, 그 사화산이 바로 자연의 '니르바나(Nirvana)였다는 자각 때문이죠.

• 류병학
  이번 <자수화풍>이 기존에 우리가 알고 있던 선생 작품의 형식과 조금 다르다 는 점에서, 감상하는 데 있어 당황스러운 부분도 있을 것 같아요. 이전 비디오 작업의 경우는 '인파와 작가' 라는 관계성이 형성되기 때문에 보는 이가 어떤 드라마를 형성할 수 있었는데, 이번엔 관객 스스로가 드라마를 형성해야 하는 상황이니 조금 난감할수도 있겠죠. 그런데 저는 이번 작품을 보면서 거기에 선생의 뒷모습 만 없을 뿐이지 여전히 지난 작업과 같은 맥락이라는 생각이 들었어요. 선생의 뒷모습이나, 바로 관객으로 바뀐 것이라고 말이죠.

• 김수자
  사실 제가 등장하지 않고 <바늘 여인>과 똑같은 형식으로 지나가는 인파를 촬 영한 <Sewing into Walking─Istanbul〉(1998)이라는 비디오 작업이 있었어요. 카메라가 제 몸을 대신하고, 카메라 렌즈가 제 눈을 대신한 작품이라고도 할 수 있는데, 고정된 프레임으로 인파가 오가는 장면을 20, 30분간 담고 하나는 거 리의 소리를, 또 하나는 티벳 승려들의 독경을 담아 두 개의 채널로 제작한 작업 입니다. 이번 작업에서 사람이 부재하는 것은 과 비슷한 맥락입니다. 이 작업에서의 시점이 카메라의 눈이 바라보는 시점이라면 <바늘 여인>에서의 시점은 나 자신이 내 등을 바라보는 시점입니다. 그러나 이번 작품에서의 나의 시점은 나와 관객의 몸 너머에 존재하는, 단순한 풍경 이상을 바라보는 시점이라고 보고 싶습니다. 즉 '제3의 눈'의 응시라고 할 까요. 궁극적으로 관객과 작가의 몸이 한 곳에 위치하게 되는, 즉 <바늘 여인>에 서 관객이 내 몸에 주목하지 않는 순간 나의 몸을 입고 바로 내가 선 자리에 서서 내가 보는 거리와 풍경을 바라보는 것과도 같은 맥락이라고 할 수 있습니다.

• 류병학
  아까 작품을 바라보다가 재미있는 체험을 했는데, 보통 영상 작업을 볼 때 프로젝터의 렌즈 부분을 가리면 관객의 그림자가 화면에 생기잖아요. 작품 쪽으로 가까이 가다보니 제 그림자가 바다의 물결 한가운데에 생기더군요.

• 김수자
  사실 제가 <바늘 여인>이나 <빨래하는 여인>을 상영하면, 관객들이 자주 그 앞에 서서 자신의 몸을 오버랩해 보곤 합니다. 제 뒷모습을 바라보다 보면 어느 순간 제 모습이 걷히면서 제 등을 바라보는 자리가 아닌, 내 몸에 관객의 몸을 대입해 나의 시점으로 한걸음 다가가게 되죠. 마치 축지법을 쓰듯이 말이죠. 저로서는 <바늘 여인>의 다층적 시점이 시사하는 바가 의미있다고 보는데 그것은 관객이 기존의 이미지를 바라보는 시점이 <바늘 여인> 이전의 태도와는 완전히 달라졌다는 것을 목격하기 때문이지요.

• 류병학
  <지수화풍>의 총 7점의 작품 제목이 전부 은유적이에요. 우리가 일반적으로 짓는 제목과는 다르죠. 이를테면 물결이 치는 바다를 촬영한 영상의 제목은 <바다의 파도>가 아닌 <물의 대지>입니다. 그래서 유심히 바라보다 보니, 만일 바다 장면에서 물을 땅으로 본다면 파도의 물결이 마치 땅 위의 산이라는 풍경처럼 보이는 거예요. 그런 것들을 의도한 건가요.

• 김수자
  그렇게 바라봤죠. 물은 불의 요소를 가지고 있고 땅이 불과 물 공기의 요소를 가지고 있듯이, 각 원소들은 서로 순환하고 연계되는 관계입니다. 그것을 4 가지 원소로 각기 보는 과정에서 각 원소들의 '홀로 설 수 없음, 기대어 있음'을 드러내 보고자 했습니다. 그것들의 연계성, 내적인 역동성에 제 나름대로 주목하려는 방식, 이를 테면 물에서 땅의 요소를 주목한다는 의미에서 타이틀 을 <물의 땅>로 명명했죠. 대지를 해질녘에 촬영한 것은 땅을 하나의 물의 속성 으로 바라보고 <땅의 물>), 또 불과 공기의 관계를 치환해서도 바라봤어요. <<불의 공기>>. 이 4가지 요소는 사실 순열 조합하면 16개의 관계성이 나오는데 각기 두 가지의 요소가 엇물려 있으므로 32개의 각기 다른 조합이 가능하다고 봐야겠죠. 말하자면 그 4원소에 대한 사색을 시도하는 하나의 출발점이라고 봐도 좋을 것 같아요. 그런 의미에서 저는 결국 그 각각의 요소가 하나' 이고 결국 우리 '몸'과 일치한다는 것, 또 자연의 힘과 그 연약함을 늘 느끼면서 작업을 했죠. 불 속에 있는 인간성, 즉 물속, 땅 속, 그리고 공기 속에 있는 인간 성 그것은 과연 무엇인가, 결국 자연과 인간은 하나라는 일체성을 근간으로 한 질문들을 담고 있어요. 특히 화산 용암이 돌이 되어 떨어지는 모습을 실제로 마주한 채로, 펄펄 끓는 용암이 땅 속 깊은 곳에서 솟구쳐 나온 다음 흘러 화석 이 되고 먼지가 되는 장면을 목격했어요. 3000m 고지에서 그 뜨거운 땅을 밟고 열기를 느끼며 작업을 하면서 우리가 밟고 있는 이 땅 자체가 너무나도 뜨거운 숨 쉬는 생명체라는 것을 몸소 느꼈죠. 그 열기의 스러짐이 자연이 그리는 극적인 장면(Tableau Vivant)을 연출하는 동시에 작은 화산석 하나에서 먼지 에 이르기까지, 그 모든 자연 요소들을 각기 하나 하나의 생명체로 재인식하게 된 계기가 되었습니다.

• 류병학
  한 작품은 온통 칠흙처럼 캄캄한 곳을 달리는 자동차에서 손전등을 비추어 빛이 비추는 부분만 보였다가 사라지고 다시 나타나곤 합니다. 처음에는 그것 이 무엇일까 궁금했지만 곧 그 풍경이 화산을 중심으로 달리는 자동차에서 빚을 비추는 곳을 촬영한 것임을 알게 되었습니다. 나타났다 사라지는 그것은 바로 화산에서 뿜어져 나온 용암(욕망의 불덩어리)이 식어서 만들어진 것이었구요. 그 영상에서 '모든 인간은 재로 돌아간다' 는 무상함을 느낄 수 있었습니다. 끝으로 Art in culture 독자를 위해서 이번 신작을 어떻게 봐주면 좋겠다고 한 말씀 부탁합니다.

• 김수자
  글쎄요. 어떻게 봐달라고 주문하기보다 저는 '이것을 같이 보고, 질문하고, 나누고 싶다'고 말씀드리고 싶군요. 끝없는 회화적 여정으로의 질문과 함께, 처음이자 마지막 질문인 '생명'의 문제에 대해서도 재 질문을 던지고 싶습니다.

• Ryu Byounghak: I'd like to say, your recent series of art works feels slightly different on the surface from Bottari and A Needle Woman, which are well known to us. So before we look into the new work, I think it is very important to retrace one by one your footsteps in the making of these earlier works.

• Kimsooja: People who have seen my Bottari pieces and A Needle Woman series — works that deal with humans — may think that my recent works — Earth-Water-Fire-Air, are only about nature. Nevertheless, I have continued to make a series of video works that deal with the themes of humans and nature simulateneously; which is something that has been present in my work since the beginning of my career. From my perspective, nature is an extension of a fabric and the needle is an extension of a body. In this sense, I think the relation between the fabric and the needle has evolved through the contemplation of nature as fabric, and a human body as a needle, that meditates towards humanity. In the end, these two are one.

Bottari, Wrapping Humans and Life

• Ryu: So it seems we need to shed some light on this path to understand your work thoroughly. To start the conversation, let's discuss the motive of Bottari. In the mid-1990s, you once said, Keeping bottari (bundle) is a very common domestic practice in Korea, and bottaris have been around me my whole life, especially, since I began working on sewn pieces using used cloth and clothes in the 80s. I became aware of new possibilities for conceptualizing bottari from a mundane daily object to a completely new way of making painting, sculpture and installation. This opened up a new vision of its cultural, aesthetic, socio-political, and philosophical dimensions. One day in my P.S.1 studio in 1992, I turned my head and there was a bottari that I had put there a while before, which I used to look at everyday. When I gazed at this bottari in that moment, a completely different perspective emerged; a totally new bottari was sitting there. I had been wrapping and unwrapping bottaris for my clothes for sewn pieces, but I hadn't seen its hidden formalism and meanings before that moment. That bottari in front of my eyes was a completely new object and discovery. It was a sculpture and a painting and a ready made and a used object — all without doing anything except simply making a knot. Through this simple act of tying up, bottari making opens up a possibility for transforming two dimensions into three; which simultaneously transforms the object into both a pictorial plane and a sculptural volume.

• Ryu: With this content, we can say you already found that bottari can be a sculpture and, in this way, your work Bottari is a sort of ready-made.

• Kimsooja: Yes. 'ready-made', in the sense that it has been existing as an object and a form, and at the same time, a 'ready-used' object, in the sense that it is made from materials which have already been used by people.

• Bottari is a fluid and transformable ready made and ready used. However, both contexts co-exist as a oneness in my bottari. As the nature of both a painting and a sculpture exists in one single body of bottari, and this object reveals the reality of life, it also has a diachronic temporality. To me, bottari contains radical aspects in many senses, but in Korea it is just an object that is so embedded in daily life, that this work might have been hard to understand and recognize distinctly as an artwork because it is so closely tied to daily life practices. My work is all about recognizing new artistic value and contextualizing and recontextualizing mundane daily life objects, and daily life actions with the least maniplulation. In fact I see the bottari that I rediscovered at P.S.1 in 1992 as more pro forma. I was focusing on the moment of transformation that the fabric, the two dimensional tableau, becomes the three dimensional object and sculpture by the ordinary act of tying. I have shown the installation Bottari also at the New Museum and Ise Art Foundation, New York, in 1993 but my vision changed around the time when I came back to Korea and prepared for my solo exhibition (1994). I had a new understanding of Korean society as a woman, and also as a person who had experienced the reality of an open society. That is to say, I came to understand that bottari wasn't just an aesthetic or formal object, but one made of the "reality of our lives". Since then, I started to use not only fragments of fabrics and clothes of various colors and patterns, but also used clothes from anonymous people as a pre-existing form. I began to work with the thought of wrapping humans, our life and memories rather than simply taking a formalist approach.

• Ryu: Looking at your works from late 1990s, I had a thought about formality. They are ready-mades for sure, but they are different from the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp had fixed a urinal, a common product, into Fountain, the artwork, but Bottari travels back and forth between the common product and the artwork. You also transform a common product: bottari into the artwork Bottari, then after a certain period of time the art work is disassembled and turned back to a common product, and then a common product bottari appears again as an artwork in a different form. Through the 1990s your exhibitions were about wrapping the bottari, then going to another place and unwrapping it again, by doing this its mobility is emphasized. Looking at the successors of Duchamp's ready-made, like Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII also known as The Bricks, Dan Flavin's Monument made with fluorescent lights and Jeff Koons' New Shelton Wet/Dry Double Decker arrangement of vacuum cleaners, we can see that they are each fixed. But your works are fluid. Interestingly, you can wrap all three items: the brick, the fluorescent light and the vacuum cleaner, with the fabric and the shape changes differently in each case. Bottari is read as the work of a certain kind of magic. I think that is the other aspect of formality in your works.

• Kimsooja: The fabric naturally possesses fluidity, so I hope that my works can be expanded to transcend all its limits.

The Border that Determines the Method in Life and Art

• Ryu: Especially in the works after 1994, you used bedcovers a lot. In a past interview, you once said the bedcover holds the contents that covers us from birth to death, I think this symbolic content is telling of a sense of place.

• Kimsooja: Actually when I was working on Bottari, many people thought I wrapped the bottari with Korean traditional wrapping fabric (bojagi), but I only used bedcovers. More precisely, I used traditional Korean bedcovers for newlywed couples. I think the bedcover is a field in which function and specific meaning coexist; in the sense that it is a place where we are born, love, dream, suffer and die. It is a frame for our life. Within this frame is the wishes of our whole lifetime — love, long life, wealth, and fertility are embroidered as forms and letters. Perhaps this might be considered a contradiction when we consider that this everyday, almost mundane yet colorful object — the bedcover — is covered with aspirations and festive elements. So, when the bedcover is unfolded, it is a tableau that has a place to stay. It is a two dimensional surface that implies memories of the loving life of a couple, sex, rest, stability, or family and comfort. However, the context gets reversed when it is tied into a bottari; suddenly it suggests dislocation, mobility, departing, migration and separation. The tableau (bedcover) that wraps and forms the bottari acts as a 'border' determining the dichotomy in life and art.

• Ryu: Let's talk about the work you installed at the cafe in Central Park, for the Whitney Biennial, in 2002. You used bedcovers as tablecloths. Did the local audience know they were bedcovers?

• Kimsooja: If I did not provide an explanation about the work, they would not have known. As a matter of fact, I showed the tablecloth installation first at Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 1995, then in Manifesta 1, and again at Setagaya Museum in Japan in 1998 as well as at the Central Park café for the Whitney Biennale 2002. At that time, after a series of bottari works, the meaning of unfolding the bottari became connected to the process of returning them into the original form of a canvas. In other words, the idea of using a bedcover as a tablecloth was to wrap invisible elements in the space, with mind and gaze, by turning the bedcovers back into a canvas. By unfolding the bottari and presenting it as a tableau, it folds invisible activities around the table into the tableau. For example, in cafes, people meet, talk to each other, share food and drinks, listen to the music and so on. I presented the tablecloth installation to wrap all these intangible communicational interactions, under the concept of an invisible wrapping. Ephemeral elements that appeared in the work are connected to the site-specific installation called To Breathe - A Mirror Woman, shown at Crystal Palace in Spain. At Crystal Palace, I intended to juxtapose the illusion of the mirror and the reality of space together — mirroring as a sewing activity — by covering the entire floor in mirrors. I also installed translucent film on all the glass windows of the architectural structure, in order to diffract the sunlight into a rainbow's spectrum when it penetrates the interior space from its source in the exterior space. Also, I unified all the elements of the notion of sewing by installing the amplified sound of my breathing — inhaling and exhaling — as voice performance. Holding the void of the space attached to the skin of the architecture, I presented the mirrored structure of the building itself, like a double-sided crystal palace with a division of a mirror surface on the ground so that it creates a negative space of the palace as a sewn architecture — a closed bottari — with the sound of my breathing creating a bottari of light and sound. In that, this work maximizes the immaterial character of the concept of bottari.

• Ryu: I see. Although, I didn't see the installation of the bedcovers on the cafe tables firsthand, I did see it in a catalog. It was shocking. Especially after you mentioned that the bedcovers you used were intended for newlyweds. And bedcovers, by their characteristics, immediately convey the love making of newlyweds. In human natural desires, there are appetites and the libido. In that work, the two just fell into place. I wondered did the local public know that these were bedcovers, and how did they react to them.

• Kimsooja: At the first exhibition in Edinburgh, an audience member came to see the installation and she said that I was brave (laugh). In a way this work is provocative, but on the other hand it is presented in a very passive form. Some of the Korean bedcovers are quite exquisite and have delicate needlework, and there I used many beautifully preserved examples, so that the work drew a lot of attention. Yet the true meaning of the work that I am concentrating on is not just the cultural and aesthetic value of the bedcover.

Axis of Space and Time, A Needle Woman

• Ryu: I want to connect the next question to our earlier conversation about the ready-made. Once you said, "I don't believe in the aphorism that the artist is the person who makes a new thing. I think the role of the artist is to find a new way of reading the existing world with specific observations, and by providing new contexts or concepts. However, whatever material I used at that time, it was mostly to refer to the life of the user." Based on my feeling, I made the connection that your video works, like A Needle Woman, had come about as you turn yourself into the ready-made. Like the Deleuzian notion of becoming, your works came to me as becoming a needle woman and becoming a laundry woman, in a fashion. It is known that A Needle Woman started in Tokyo, Japan, in 1999. How did you come to start this work?

• Kimsooja: When I was commissioned to do a project with CCA KITAKYUSHU, I simply thought that I would like to do some kind of performative piece. In my first year living in New York City as an artist in exile, I felt that personally I was standing on the edge of a cliff — which kept me mentally very sharp. So, as I was becoming more aware and concentrating on my body more sensitively, I began to think deeply about subjects like isolation, the self and the other. Initially, I had been walking around downtown Tokyo for a couple of hours, waiting for a certain decisive time and place. Then I arrived at Shibuya, the street where hundreds of thousands of people flood in and out, and I experienced a moment in which I could not walk one step more. In Zen Buddhism, there is a sound which expresses awakening, "Ak!". I was shouting the inner scream, "Ak!" in a silence that I kept inside of me, and I couldn't move my feet but just had to stand still right at that specific moment in that location. Having that experience of standing still in that place, I have come to understand the meaning of walking. In other words, the relation between my body and the presence of a crowd accumulated in the bottari (my body), through the accumulated time and energy in the act of walking. I set that place for the first performance of A Needle Woman. Without even time to reconsider, I thought "This is it!" and started the performance right away and told the cameraman to record my appearance and the crowd in a certain frame from behind. I remember that performance was one of the most special experiences of my life. Over the waves of oceans of people, beyond the horizon of the people, I saw bright white light rising beyond the horizon of humanity. My mind was filled with love, joy and peace as well as compassion for all humanity. Through this unforgettable experience, I reached the point where I felt that "I wish to meet every single human being in the world." To meet everyone in the world, I continued the project A Needle Woman visiting eight metropolises on each continent. Looking back at all these events, I realized that all of these attempts to meet others was only a way to meet my own true self.

• Ryu: The eight cities were Tokyo, Shanghai, Deli, New York, Cairo, Lagos and London. After that, I remember you continued to other cities, such as Patan, Nepal, Havana, Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, N'Djamena, Chad, Sana'a, Yemen and Jerusalem, Israel.

• Kimsooja: These are the cities I performed in for the second series of A Needle Woman. In the first series, I placed my body as an axis of the space in the 8 metropolises in different continents, while in the second series, I presented my body as an axis of time. From my experiences visiting the first eight cities which were facing severe political, religious, economic and social conflicts within the country or with other ones, I decided to visit and confront the conflicting reality of the world choosing these 6 cities. Especially when I was visiting Patan, in the Kathmandu valley in Nepal, the country was in the midst of a civil war so I heard a lot of gunshots during the working process and saw many armed soldiers. These works, different from the first series, were made in slow motion so that the world I see as an equal value and delicate emotional relationship between my body and passers by, is more pronounced. In the first version which was shot in real time, the performative aspect of my body and the tension between my body and the passers by was more visible. I think the intersection of the times; the psychological relationship of the bodies and the passers by stand out more in the second version (2005) and my body reacts more as an axis of time rather than space. Because my body is in the time zone of zero — stillness — I was wondering "what kind of time it is when zero is expanded within this stillness showing in slow motion?". In fact, it is eternity. We can see the three different temporalities — my body as the extended point of zero (in the zone of zero); the time of the people who are walking in the street (in slow motion); and the time of the audience who watch the relation of these (in real time), and how they coexist and relate to each other.

Circulation and Connectivity of the Four Elements

• Ryu: Most of the places that were mentioned earlier, posess a historic sense of place like Patan, Nepal and Havana, Cuba. In the case of A Lighthouse Woman, you wrapped the lighthouse of Morris Island, Charleston, with various colored lights. In this way I discovered that Charleston, the capitol of South Carolina, was where the United States Civil War began. In other works, there are cities whose sense of place oddly has an alternating point of life and death, too, like the sense of place of the bottari and the bedcover. Also there is a feeling of a certain significance in the sense of place of Earth-Water-Fire-Air. Is there a reason you chose Lanzarote, the volcanic island in the Canary Islands, Spain, and the volcano in Guatemala?

• Kimsooja: Surely an invitation from Lanzarote Contemporary Art Museum and a subsequent visit to Lanzarote Biennale, 2009, served as momentum, but I had been dreaming of a project about the four elements of nature for years, so I explored this exceptional location without hesitation. Looking back on it now, the choice of the place where the fire — the lifeforce of the volcano — is completely extinguished, is more meaningful when considering that the extinct volcano was the nirvana of nature.

• Ryu: I had a funny experience earlier when I was looking at the work. When you look at a video work, the lens of the projector sometimes gets covered by a viewer, and a shadow appears on the screen. So by approaching the work closely, my shadow rose in the middle of the sea waves.

• Kimsooja: In fact when I screen A Needle Woman or A Laundry Woman, from time to time audiences overlap their bodies on the screen by standing in front of the work. When viewers are watching my back on the screen, at some point my figure is removed, and they replace my body — and my point of view — with their own. It's like the magic of foreshortening. For me, what the multilayered point of sight in A Needle Woman suggests is very interesting. I sometimes see that the different perspectives of A Needle Woman affects the audiences' point of view in analyzing a photographic or videographic image in terms of the relationship between the artist, the subject and the viewer, by establishing three different perspectives which is an approach that hasn't been examined or discussed before in photography and video or film making.

• Ryu: All eight titles of each work in Earth-Water-Fire-Air are metaphoric. They are different from common titles. For example, the title of the video of the sea of waves is not waves of ocean but Earth of Water. So I studied it carefully, and could see then that the waves looked like a mountain on Earth if I looked at the water in the ocean as a landscape. Was that your intention?

• Kimsooja: As I looked at it, water has the element of fire, as well as air and earth, and earth has the elements of fire, water and air as well. Therefore, each element circulates and connects to the others. In the process of looking at them as four separate elements, I intended to reveal that they cannot stand alone and are leaning on each other as humans. As a method of addressing their connectivity and internal dynamics, as a means of defining the element of earth in water, I also looked at the relationship of fire and air by switching them (Air of Fire). When permutated the combinations are 16, and when two elements in each pair are alternated there can be as many as 32 combinations. In other words, this can be considered as a starting point for trying to contemplate the four elements. In that sense, the work comes from feeling the power and weakness of nature; understanding that in the end, each of the elements are one and unified within our body. This led me to ask: what is the humanity of fire, or what is the humanity in water, earth and air? The work contains these questions based on the unifying principle that humans and nature are, after all, one. Notably, when confronted with the lava, which becomes stone and falls apart in reality, I witnessed the boiling magma spurting out from deep in the Earth, running and becoming the lava stone; soon after turning into dust. Stepping on the hot ground and feeling the heat while working on a plateau 3000 meters high, I realized that the ground that we all walk on is a hot, breathing, physical organism. In the disappearance of the heat, a tableau vivant was created, and as that occurred, I had the opportunity to recognize one by one all the elements of nature: from the small lava stone that evaporates into dust, into 'nothing'; just like human destiny.

• Ryu: In one of the works, a car is driving through a dark place and shining a flashlight on and off so that only the place where the light is on can be seen and vanished again. At first I was wondering what that was, but soon I found out the scene centered on the volcano and was lit and shot in the place where the flashlight you lit towards the landscape from the car. The thing that appears and disappears is made from the cooled down lava (a fireball of lust) spewed from the volcano. In the video, I could feel the brevity in which every human must turn to ashes. Lastly, for the audience, may I ask how you would like them to appreciate the work?

• Kimsooja: Well, rather than mentioning how to question, I would like to say that I want to observe, and share this with you. With a question for the endless pictorial journey, I want to ask once again the first and the last question: what is the matter that this life is made of?

• Maxa Zoller
  Your work is concerned with boundaries between the self and the other. Cloth, the needle, and the activity of wrapping, sewing, walking, and breathing have become not only methods, but philosophical tools to investigate the liminal space of where the self ends and the other begins. I would like to start this interview with two of your works, the multi-channel video installations A Needle Woman (1999-2001, 2005) and then work our way back to your early bottari sculptures. In a way, this interview will work like a Russian doll in which the largest part includes the smallest, which in turn already anticipates that in which it is nesting. As your work is not linear, but cyclical and interconnected, I thought that this would be an appropriate way to gain insight into the relationship between content and method in your complex practice. The first and second versions of A Needle Woman are eight- and six-channel video installations respectively, which show a woman standing still in a crowd in different metropolises around the globe.

• Kimsooja
  Yes, the first series was performed and filmed beginning with Tokyo, then continued to Shanghai, Mexico City, London, Delhi, New York, Cairo, and Lagos (Nigeria). When I traveled around the world performing this first series, I learned a lot about the reality of the political and cultural differences around the world. When I was invited to present a piece for the Venice Biennale in 2005, the whole world was facing conflicts caused by the Iraq war, which created tensions between Muslim countries and the United States, and this conflict contaminated the rest of the world. I felt the urgency to create the same performance, focusing on cities in conflict, to witness the world, while keeping the same form and frame as in earlier performances. I decided to place my body in the middle of conflicted cities that were suffering from poverty, violence, postcolonialism, civil war, and religious conflicts. This is how I chose Patan (Nepal), Jerusalem, Sana (Yemen), Havana, Rio de Janeiro, and N'Djamena (Chad). I performed and documented all six cities in a few months in 2005. There is also a third, single-channel video made in 2009, which was commissioned by Nuit Blanche, Paris. With this version, separate from the first two versions, I decided to focus on different realities in Paris, performing in three neighborhoods that represented multi-cultural communities such as the BarbËs marketplace, a typical Parisian community on Rue de Montreuil, and a touristic location, the Champs-ElysÈes.

• Maxa Zoller
  I would like to quote the German curator Volker Adolphs who very eloquently wrote about the first A Needle Woman: I Like a needle, she pricks into the colorful social tissue of the cities, sewing different societies together. Kimsooja sees the needle as an extension of her body; she overcomes in-between spaces and disappears again. The thread remains as a binding and mediating trace of the ghost in the fabricís weave. . . . But it is also possible to see this the other way around. In this case the unceasing, endless wave of people is the stationary and enduring part, and the artist is the being in motion, who will go on, pass away, decompose, and disappear. I Can you talk about how you developed this extraordinary series of videos?

• Kimsooja
  Before I started using video as a medium for my performative practice, I was painting using Korean bedcovers and traditional clothing. I have always retained my artistic position as a painter. All of my experiments in different media have been a continuous evolution of my painting practice. Iive always been aware of Western art history and I have been writing my own painting history by contemplating my reality and condition as a Korean woman in a larger society. Iive been searching for my own methodology, one that articulates my questions about the structure of the canvas, nature, and the world focusing on horizontality, verticality, and duality but at the same time questioning the self and the other to unite them. I continued my sewing practice for almost a decade (1983-92). My documentary video about my daily practice of working with Korean bedcovers in nature, Sewing into Walking ─ Kyungju (1994) was the first video when I discovered that my body functions as a symbolic needle that weaves the great fabric of nature. That is how I started using video not because I was particularly interested in image making, but because the camera's gaze weaves the reality of the world and the video's frame is an immaterial way of wrapping object a bottari.

• In 1999, when the Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, commissioned me, I thought to make walking performances using my body, one in the city, the other in nature. I began by walking for a couple of hours in different parts of Tokyo, but I couldn't find the right moment and energy to define it, nor the precise methodology to film it. At last, I arrived in the Shibuya area where hundreds of thousands of people were coming and going. I was completely overwhelmed by the huge crowd and its accumulated energy. I was screaming inside and had to stop and stand still right there. At that very moment, I realized the meaning of my hours of walking: I immediately decided to perform standing still and document the performance from behind.

• Maxa Zoller
  So A Needle Woman is not so much about being a global citizen, but rather it developed out of a moment of personal crisis?

• Kimsooja
  Yes, it was a very personal encounter and contemplation of myself, others, and humanity. At first, I didn't think about the global citizen. I started the performance more as an existential question, but Iive been more and more engaged with the world since this first performance contemplating humanity's destiny and feeling compassion for it. At the beginning of the performance it was very difficult to resist all the energy on the street and I was truly vulnerable, standing still, as a woman totally naked, psychologically. But during the performance I found my own space and time and I learned how to breathe, how to be still, how to relax different parts of my body, and how to focus. It was like being in a vortex that created an enormous sound, but was silent at its core.

• I experienced an amazing transformation and transcendence while performing in Tokyo. While the crowd was walking toward me, I perceived a white light coming from behind them, like a light coming through the eye of the needle. By the end, my mind was full of love, happiness and peace, and I was enlightened while looking at the waves of people coming and going. After the powerful experience of that performance, I was eager to continue the same performance on other continents and to meet everyone in the world.

• Maxa Zoller
  In these performance videos, you stand in for the needle that stitches all these different pieces of the world together, your long black hair becoming the eye of the needle. Over the many years of your sewing, wrapping, and performing art practices you have developed your own philosophical topology of the needle.

• Kimsooja
  In the first performance video, I used my body as a symbolic needle that weaves the great fabric of nature, but I was also conscious of the needle as an object having many dualities. A needle is used in healing, but it's also used to connect separated part so both actions performing pain. The needle is a hermaphrodite, and has a void, the eye of the needle, which allows the thread through, which in a way represents our soul and spirit. At the same time, the needle is an extension of our hands and body, so it combines the body, the spirit, the physical and the void, the material and the immaterial.

• Maxa Zoller
  In what way is the second version different from the first?

• Kimsooja
  In the second version, I chose cities that were in conflict. For example, Patan was caught up in a civil war at the time; I saw soldiers with guns everywhere and heard many gunshots. Through colonialism, Havana is related to the United States, which later blocked free travel between the two countries. Rio de Janeiro has issues of violence and poverty, as well as postcolonial issues; I visited the favelas and experienced severe violence and danger there. N'Djamena is in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world and one with post-independence problems. Sana is in Yemen, which has political and religious conflicts with Israel. I had to travel from Sana via Jordan to Jerusalem, as there was no other way. We think we live in a global society and believe that we should be able to travel freely, but in fact, it is more and more difficult to travel freely and we have to take risks to live our lives.

• In the second version of A Needle Woman, I considered my body more as an axis in time, whereas in the first version, I considered my body as an axis in space. I wove in different societies, economies, and cultures by positioning myself at zero time slowing down the movement of people on the street in relation to the real time of the audience. In this way, I created three different durational modes: real time where the audience is located, zero time where I stand still, and a slowed-down time as the passersby move around me. I am still questioning what happened when I stood still at point zero and I keep thinking about the permanency in it.

• Maxa Zoller
  I want to talk about the relationship between the passersby and the camera. Sometimes people approach the camera and, through the lens, look directly at us, the audience.

• Kimsooja
  In terms of photographic perspectives in performance and video, it's like having a third, hidden eye. Before I made the first A Needle Woman, I did another video, Sewing into Walking ─ Istiklal Cadessi(1997), in Istanbul. I positioned the camera (without myself) within a fixed frame so that people on this main street would be framed (wrapped) when they are coming and going, without manipulating them. If I compare the relationships to the A Needle Woman performance, the camera could be replaced with my body and the lens with my eyes. I wasn't aware of it while performing the first A Needle Woman, but Sewing into Walking was one of A Needle Woman's origins, which I might have to revisit at some point. I tend to go back and forth from different boundaries of my practice, away from and back to the central question. I think this enables me to grasp how I relate my eyes and my body to the audience, myself, and the location, creating different layered viewpoints. It's interesting for me to place my body in the center and as an observer.

• Maxa Zoller
  Letís talk about the role of your body in these performances. By positioning your back and not your front to the camera, you complicate the relationship between yourself and the stream of people walking toward you, the camera, and the viewer. In a way, it is through the reaction of the passersby that we come to identify with you, that we see your front.

• Kimsooja
  By positioning the camera away from the audience, I was able to stay anonymous; conversely, the audience could assume my position and focus on what I was experiencing. For example, in Lagos, I performed in the middle of the marketplace and there were kids and adults carrying the goods they were selling on their heads. They stood still, watching me from start to finish, a mirroring of what I was doing. At the same time, the audience in the exhibition space viewing this performance/video can also enter my body at a certain moment and experience what I perform.

• Maxa Zoller
  In other words, by becoming the mirror and the needle between the audience and the world, you remove yourself.

• Kimsooja
  In a way, I objectify myself as a needle and as a mirror to the audience. I believe that painters are always trying to find their own mirror on the surface of their canvases in order to find their own identity. I was also trying to question where the boundary lies in To Breathe ─ Invisible Mirror/Invisible Needle (2003ñ2005), a video, and The Weaving Factory (2004), a sound performance work; the two were presented at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. We can never stop gazing at the endlessly transforming color field in To Breathe ñ Invisible Mirror/Invisible Needle because we cannot truly measure its depth or define its surface. This is also related to my early painting practice. The bottari represents a physical wrapping practice, as a canvas, an object, and a sculpture; however, I use the mirror as a physical and symbolic material having a similar function to video in terms of framing the images. Similar perceptions exist also in sound and light works ideas about wrapping immateriality within space. There are materialized and dematerialized elements that run parallel in my work, but in the end, they coexist as one.

• Maxa Zoller
  I recently read Jean-Luc Nancy's text on the Noli me Tangere story in the Gospel of St. John in which the resurrected Christ encounters Mary Magdalene and says to her, I Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father. I In A Needle Woman you serve as a sort of apparition; you produce difference by inserting your body in these particular environments. The reactions range from indifference to a rather threatening curiosity but nobody touches you, as if you are saying, I Noli me tangere.

• Kimsooja
  I think it has to do with the transcendent element of performances that deal with time. This is also true of A Laundry Woman ─ Yamuna River, India, the performance I did in Delhi in 2000 on the bank of the Yamuna River, right next to a shmasana, a Hindu cremation site. The debris that you see on the river is from the cremations burnt body parts, flowers, and pieces of wood are slowly floating and passing by my body. I was contemplating human destiny, the purification of the burnt bodies and myself. In the middle of the performance, I experienced an unbelievable confusion I couldn't figure out if the river was moving, or if my body was moving while standing still. After a while, I found myself back in the center of the flow and away from the confusion. After this performance, I learned from the confusion. My inner and physical gaze was so focused that there was no boundary between myself and the other, like a needle's point that has no physical dimension, but only a location, and is open to the void. It was not the river that was in motion, but my body in time, which seemed to be a solid, physical entity that flowed and then disappears.

• Maxa Zoller
  I think that this experience also applies to the viewer. Speaking for myself, I entered a trance-like state in your exhibition at Baltic, Gateshead, England (2009), where you presented the A Needle Woman and A Laundry Woman installations.

• Kimsooja
  Yes, there is a kind of hypnotic element to time's passing. Time is a repetition of each moment of breathing inhaling and exhaling and this repetition creates a hypnotic state. I was so concentrated and focused on one point which was nowhere. There are no orienting points at the very tip of the needle, so you cannot relate yourself to anywhere, but at the same time you can relate yourself to everywhere. I learn from each performance, which offers deeper questions, and that's why I cannot but continue my work.

• Maxa Zoller
  The needle is like a threshold or an interface like a skin.

• Kimsooja
  Yes, that's why I consider the mirror as an unfolded needle as it has a similarity in its nature.

• Maxa Zoller
  Your understanding of the mirror as an unwrapped, unfolded needle is fascinating. Earlier you mentioned To Breathe ─ Invisible Needle/Invisible Mirror. Could you tell me about the particular needle-mirror relationship in this work?

• Kimsooja
  I find the needle and the mirror very interesting in that their identities are not revealed. The needle always functions dually as a medium that connects things, but at the same time it can also hurt. Only by hurting can it heal, and that's when its function as a medium manifests. In the end, the needle leaves the site.

• Like the needle, the mirror is also an interesting object in terms of identity because it reflects everything but itself. The mirror creates a plane that reflects the self, and the illusion of the self. It's similar to the surface in painting, something I was always aware of because of the approach I had in my sewing practice. I did not begin my sewing practice because I was particularly interested in sewing, or the feminist aspects of the medium, or because I was a skilled seamstress, but because I was interested in the question of the fabric's surface as a canvas and in the questions about the Other, the self, and their relationship.
  The whole process of questioning and answering is like pushing a needle into the fabric (canvas) and pulling it through as a repetitive action. This circular movement of sewing-as-dialogue led to my wrapping fabrics around Korean folkloric objects and to bottari pieces as a three-dimensional form of sewing. The moment I discovered bottari was very intuitive and astonishing. I was staring at the ordinary bottari in my studio when suddenly it presented itself as a new painting, a new sculpture, and a new object. The journey with the bottari truck in Cities on the Move ─ 2,727 Kilometers Bottari Truck (1997), and the whole idea of the mirror concerns the mirror as a border. I spent much of my childhood near the Korean Demilitarized Zone where I heard casualties on the border; this must have drawn my attention to the idea of borders. It's not unrelated to the constantly changing spectrum in To Breathe ─ Invisible Mirror/Invisible Needle.
  When I was invited to create a piece for La Fenice, I knew that it's an opera house and discovered that singing is all about breathing. I wanted to emphasize that element, but I also realized that breathing is the same as sewing inhale and exhale and it can be the defining moment of life and death. So breathing is related to sewing and defining a surface's depth. With the changing spectrum I wanted to incorporate my breathing with the audience's within the architecture, so I could embrace the architecture as a living, breathing body.

• Maxa Zoller
  To Breathe ─ A Mirror Woman, also made in 2006, is clearly related to the La Fenice installation. Can you tell us about this large-scale intervention in this extraordinary space?

• Kimsooja
  It was in the Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, and organized by the Reina SofÌa. When I saw the space I was stunned by its beauty; I thought it was an absolutely beautiful object in itself that didn't need anything added. So instead, I decided to empty the space in order to push the void out, all the way to the exterior of the building. I covered the entire glass facade with diffraction grating film, which diffused the light into a rainbow spectrum, and placed mirrors across the whole floor to reflect the structure of the building, creating a virtual space.

• I also added the sound of breathing from La Fenice, The Weaving Factory: there are two different stages, the sound of inhaling and exhaling, and the sound of humming. The result sounds like a chorus of my own voice echoing and bouncing on the mirrored floor. Depending on the light and time of day, the color spectrum changed endlessly and amazingly. In a way it was a bottari of light and sound, combining all the different concepts of needle, mirroring, breathing, and wrapping all of these elements together in one space.

• Maxa Zoller
  I want to return to Sewing into Walking ñ Kyungju, a key work that connects your architectural installations, the color and video projections of the 2000s, and your early bottari works. In that work, you use breathing and walking as an extension of the sewing and wrapping practices in the bottari.

• Kimsooja
  I didn't intend it to be a video. I just wanted to make a documentary record of how I related to fabric in my daily practice, so it was done quite naturally. But when I reviewed the video, especially in slow motion, I discovered the transitional nature of the performative element in my daily life.

• The fabrics I use are mainly bedcovers for newly married couples in Korea, and are gifted to the bride and groom by the bride's parents. The performance ended with me wrapping all the bedcovers together, tying them into bundles, and then leaving the site.

• The bed is the frame of our lives: where we are born, where we dream, love, suffer, and die. So wrapping and unwrapping the bedcover has a symbolic meaning for me: wrapping life and death, in the end. When unfolded, the bedcover signifies a couple, family, love, settlement, and location. When wrapped into a bundle, the bedcover suggests the opposite, separation and dislocation, migration, and the status of refugees. When a Korean woman says, I Wrap the bundle, it means she is about to leave her family to pursue her own life so in Korean society it has a feminist element as well. By working with the boundaries of wrapping and folding, I have been able to create different perspectives and dimensions in my work.
  The first bottari I made (or rather discovered) was in 1992 in my studio in P.S. 1, New York. Bottari were always with me in my studio and as part of the Korean household, I used them to store things and fabrics from the beginning of my sewing practice, which started in 1983 but I didn't pay much attention to it until later. I was turning my head and looking around at my studio and there was this unusual object, so familiar but totally distinctive. It was a unique painting and at the same time a sculpture made with one very simple knot, a readymade, and a ready-used object. So it was a surprising new discovery: a three-dimensional sewn object made by wrapping which was a three-dimensional canvas a painting and a sculpture. Since then, live developed projects and installations that defined different dimensions and concepts of bottaris.

• Maxa Zoller
  These bottari also raise questions related to modernist practices of medium-specificity: what is a canvas? What can be done with a canvas?

• Kimsooja
  Bottari are very much linked to our bodies and our daily lives. I consider our bodies as the most complicated bottari, so for me the bedcover is like a skin. Without that close link to reality, it would be less meaningful, more abstract, and I wouldn't have been able to create a broader question and concept for my work. It's quite interesting for me to discover the parallels between aesthetic and formalistic evolution and the physical, psychological, and philosophical examination of our body, sexuality, human relations to the world in general, even political problems within bottari.

• Maxa Zoller
  Earlier you mentioned your upbringing close to the Demilitarized Zone. Can you share some details about this time in your life?

• Kimsooja
  My father was in the military service from the Korean War until he retired. We moved from one city to another, one village to another every other year, wrapping and unwrapping. As a nomad, I have always been aware of the border, not only in my own work, but also physically and psychologically. I always felt a certain awareness of the Other, or a danger when I lived in that region. Since I was a little child, I have been very sensitive to the pain of others, which could be related to my experience near the DMZ. I was always aware of places other than my own, which is not unrelated to my use of fabric and questions on boundaries in different practices. Without realizing it, I began to discover more about my own history and destiny through my work. At the Venice Biennale in 1999 I installed D'Apertutto, or Bottari Truck in Exile, a bottari truck installed in front of a mirrored wall and dedicated it to the refugees of the Kosovan War. The mirror opened up a virtual exit, but it was a road that you could not pass through so it also represented the frustrations and conditions of the refugees.

• Maxa Zoller
  Traveling also features in your video Cities on the Move ─ 2,727 Kilometers Bottari Truck for the exhibition of the same title.

• Kimsooja
  I was very inspired by the exhibition's title, which was linked to my life. The distance traveled for over eleven days in Cities on the Move was very meaningful to me the bottari truck and my body as another bottari sitting on top endlessly moving like a line on a graph, in time and space. I was very much aware of time in this performance, looking back at my past and forward to the future, and drawing lines along the journey onto the topology of the South Korean land.

• Maxa Zoller
  Is that why the video is in slow motion?

• Kimsooja
  Not necessarily, but I think slow motion can reveal much more of the realities around us, ones that don't often get much attention. In a way it resembled my inner rhythm or my mind's wavelength.

• Maxa Zoller
  Your work is not linear, but as I said in my introduction, moves in different directions, all of which are interconnected. It has a somewhat crystalline structure. As a last question, I would like to ask you about the relationship between the different stages in your early practice.

• Kimsooja
  In one of the earlier pieces, The Heaven and the Earth, a crucifix shape from 1984, I used pieces of my grandmother's clothing, which I sewed together I'm still using remnants in other works. In another piece, Portrait of Yourself from 1991, I assembled parts of used clothing from anonymous people, it was like a network of invisible existences. In the sense of human bodily traces and relations, it can be compared to A Needle Woman. In Mind and the World (1991), I wrapped a bamboo pole with used clothing and then leaned it against the center of the sewn surface pieces. Looking back, I think of this pole, in relation to the sewn fragments of used clothing, as being like my mind and body leaning toward humanity and the world, just as A Needle Woman stands in front of the world.

• Retrospectively, I realize that I was able to evolve all these earlier practices with used fabrics because wrapping fabrics onto objects, or bottari, in the end was the same methodology as sewing: wrapping the surface of a fabric with threads around. The cruciform and circular structures were already there, and that might have been how I could continue this work, without a pre-conception, responding directly to the physicality of the materials, only following my intuition and the urgency of my desire.

"Whether we try to make it or not, the sound is heard" [1]

• 자연의 4원소 '물, 불, 흙, 공기'와 그것의 유기적 결합을 근간으로 하는 김수자의 신작 <Earth-Water-Fire-Air, 2009>는 시각적으로만 보면 전형적인 화산지대의 자연풍경들로만 구성되었다. 이 풍경들은 작가의 의도 적 개입, 인위적 변형, 혹은 그 어떤 연출도 가하지 않은 '자연현상' 그 자체를 포착한 것이다. 작가는 관객을 그 자연 앞에 말없이 데려다 놓는다. 도쿄, 상하이, 뉴델리, 뉴욕, 멕시코 시티, 카이로, 런던, 라고스 <바늘여인, (1999-2001)>, 파탄, 하바나, 예루살렘, 사나, 리오 데 자 네이로, 자메나 <바늘여인>(2005) 등, 세계 곳곳의 수 많은 사람들 속으로 관객을 데려다 놓듯이 말이다. 단, 세계 구석 구석에서 펼쳐지는 다양한 삶을 목도하며 그곳으로 관객을 안내하던 작가의 뒷모습이 여기서는 더 이상 보이지 않는다.

• “<바늘여인>에서의 시점이 나 자신이 내 등을 바라보는 시점이었다면, 이번 작품에서의 나의 시점은 나와 관객의 몸 너머에 존재 하며, 단순한 풍경 이상을 바라보는 시점이다. 즉 '제 3의 눈'의 응시라고 할 수 있겠다." [2]
  작가의 뒷모습은 에서 '카메라의 눈'으로 대치되며, 작가의 시점은 카메라의 눈을 응시하는 '제 3의 눈'이 된다. 그리고 이 '카메라의 눈'은 우리에게 잘 알려진 그의 보따리 작업에서 '보따리'가 인간의 보이지 않는 삶을 감싸고 펼치는 거대한 프레임 (보따리-프레임)으로 존재해 왔던 것과 동일한 맥락에서 가동되고 있는 것이다. 360도로 회전하는 그의 '카메라의 눈'(보따리-프레임)은 뉴욕과 멕시코 사막의 하늘, 땅, 천둥번개, 눈, 안개(<보따리, 2000-2001>)를 포착하는가 하면, 고정된 카메라의 눈은 이클립스 현상과 검푸른 바다 수면 에 반사되는 햇빛과 달빛을 응시하며<거울여인: 해와 달> (2008), 이제 에서 카나리 군도와 과테말라의 화산지대의 자연현상들을 그대로 담아내고 있는 것이다. 작가의 뒷모습이 카메라의 위 치로 이동되고, 카메라의 눈이 '보따리-프레임'과 동일선상에서 작동하는 이 작업들은 그간 김수자의 모든 작업들을 개념적으로 횡단하며, 인간의 보이지 않는 삶과 자연에 숨겨진 무한한 에너지와 연관성을 찾아 나선다. 김수자는 이제 도처에 존재하지만 그 어느 곳에서도 보이지 않는 이 '제 3의 눈' 으로 전환되어, 자연과 인간의 관계, 그것의 근본적 성찰이라는 '대주제' 에 대한 직접적 언표 혹은 그 어떤 해석을 유보하고, 관객에게 이 자연의 웅변에 동참할 수 있는 무한한 가능성을 열어 놓고 있다. 의 '제 3의 눈'은 어떠한 세계로 관객을 초청하는가? 그것은 바로 자연의 원리, 물질의 근원, 인간과 삶의 본질, 그리고 그것의 상생의 세 계인 것이다. 자연의 4원소 '물, 불, 흙, 공기'는 서양철학의 뿌리를 이루 고 있기도 하지만, 우주 만물을 이루는 다섯 가지 원소를 근간으로 하는 동 양의 음행오행설 또는 만물생성의 다섯 가지 원소를 원칙으로 하는 불교철학의 근간이기도 하다. 동서양 사상의 핵심이 되는 이러한 원소들, 그것의 상호결합이 생산하는 에너지는 만물의 생성과 소멸이라는 회귀 적 순환구조를 사유하게 하고, 자연(물질)과 인간의 신비한 연관관계를 깨닫게 하며, 인간의 삶을 사유한다.

-“물은 불의 요소를 가지고 있고 땅이 불 과 물, 공기의 요소를 가지고 있듯이, 각 원소들은 서로 순환하고 연계되 는 관계다. 그것을 4가지 원소로 각기 보는 과정에서 각 원소들의 '홀로 설 수 없음, 기대어 있음'을 드러내 보고자 했다.” [3]
이러한 사유를 연장하며, 김수자는 에서, '자연현상 그 자체'를 통해 서 '물, 불, 흙, 공기'의 역동적 관계와 그것의 무한한 에너지를 가시화 하 고 있다. 스페인 카나리 군도의 란자로테 사화산과 과테말라 파카야 활화 산을 촬영한 7개의 풍경들은 각각의 독립된 제목을 갖고 있으며, 여기서 제 목과 각 이미지와의 관계는 두 가지 원소들의 순열조합체계를 기반으로 한 가지 원소 속에 감춰진 또 다른 원소를 암시하거나, 혹은 두 가지 원소들의 유기적 관계와 그 에너지를 가시화하고 있다. 이글이글 타고 있는 붉은 용암<Fuego de Tierra / Fire of Earth>, 그 용암을 내려다 보고 있 는 청아한 하늘<Aire de Agua / Air of Water>, 검푸른 바다 물결 <Tierra de Agua / Earth of Water>, 화산바위에 부딪히는 파도 속에서 출몰하는 무지개<Aire de Fuego/ Air of Fire>, 동일한 화산 지대를 낮, 저녁, 밤에 자동차를 타고 서서히 달리며 촬영한 세 개의 다른 풍경들<Fuego de Aire / Fire of Air>, <Fuego de Tierra / Fire of Earth>, <Agua de Tierra / Water of Earth>)... 하지만, 이 원소들의 조합은 동양과 서양의 그 어떤 특정 사상에 대한 직접적 참조를 허용하지 않는다. 작가는 이러한 사상들의 설득력보다 자연, 그것을 이루고 있는 원소들, 그 원소들의 자유로운 결합과 교류를 통해서 인간의 근원과 존재방 식을 사유하고자 하는 것이다.
김수자 작업의 특징 가운데 하나는 그것이 무엇을 다루든 간에 -도시, 사람 들, 삶, 세계 그리고 자연- 그것을 바라보는 관점과 사유하는 방식, 그리고 그것에 관한 질문을 던지는 태도에서 찾아 볼 수 있다. 그의 작업은 작가/주 체가 이 세계를 바라보는 관점을 타자에게 일방적으로 전달하지 않으며, 작 가/주체가 보는 세계는 더 이상 하나의 일관된 메시지를 향하고 있지 않다 는 것을 말하고 있다. 그렇다면, 각기 다른 요소들의 복합적 집합체로서 이 세상의 '풍경'을 아우르는 '주체'는 그의 작업에서 어떻게 반영되고 있는가? 전 세계의 다양한 도시들, 자연, 사람들, 그들의 삶에 주목하며, 그것을 향 해서 있는 이 '작가주체'는 거대한 자연 앞에서 내면적 긴장과 갈등을 반 영하는 낭만주의적 주체도 아니고, 현세를 초월한 절대적 숭고를 추구하는 미국 추상표현주의 영웅적 주체도 아니며, 감각적 경험과 시각을 연결하며 인지적 현상을 제안하는 현상학적 주체, 혹은 사회문화적 침적을 발굴하는 고고학적 주체도 아니다. 김수자의 작업은 이제 더 이상 과거와 같이 이러 한 '하나의 주체'를 모색하거나 반영하지 않는다. 그의 작업은 시공간 속의 다수 주체-관객의 공존과 그 익명의 주체들의 다각적 관점의 탄생을 알리고 있는 것이다. 관객이 <바늘여인>, <빨래하는 여인>의 '뒷모습'에 주목하 는 순간 관객은 '작가의 몸'을 입고, 바로 작가가 선 자리에서 작가가 바라 보는 세계 그 이상의 것을 바라보게 되는 것이다. 출처를 알 수 없는 그 누군 가가 사용했던 이불보로 버려진 헌 옷들을 싸며, 그것을 싣고 이 세상 곳곳을 찾아 나서는 <보따리> 작업 또한 동일한 맥락에서 읽혀질 수 있을 것이다. 김수자의 작업에서 관객은 더 이상 작가가 제시하는 하나의 관점을 수용 하는 수동적 주체가 아니다. 그의 작업에서 관객은 능동적 주체로서 작가가 안내하는 삶의 형태들 안에서 적극적으로 살 수 있는 것이다. 그래서 관객은 더 많은, 또 다른 삶들을 이해하고 포용하기 위한 긴 여정을 작가와 함께 떠 날 수 있으며, 이 세계의 다양한 현실, 서로 다른 사람들, 그리고 그들의 삶을 공유하게 되는 것이다.
김수자의 작품들은 대부분 극도로 정적이고 절제되어 있으며 지나치리만치 단순한 구성을 갖고 있다. 그 어떤 내러티브도 없으며, 극적인 플롯도 존재 하지 않는다. 하지만 그의 이러한 작품들은 놀라운 웅변력을 갖고 있다. 그 것은 바로 김수자 작업 속의 사물들(보따리, 바늘, 거울)의 웅변을 통해서 펼쳐지고 있다. 그의 사물들은 마치 고대 수사학자들의 의인법prosopopoeia을 연상시키는 설득력으로 관객을 서서히 압도하고 있다. 이 '의인법'은 단순히 사물의 의인화된 이마주리에 멈추지 않고, 의인화된 사물들이 생각을 할 수 있다는 데서 출발하며, 사물들에게 말을 하게 한다는 보기 드문 수사학 가운 데 하나다. 일반적으로 사물들을 통해서 신의 지혜를 말하게 함으로서 인간 의자만 혹은 어리석음을 일깨워 주었던 이 의인법은 인간에 대한 연민과 애정에서 출발하고, 인간과 삶을 이해하고 보듬으려는 김수자 작업의 사물들 의 체험을 통해서 그 효력을 드러내는 것일지도 모르겠다. 작가가 어머니와 함께 이불보를 꿰매던 어린 시절, 바늘 끝이 천을 꿰뚫는 순간, 작가는 자신 의 몸을 관통하는 알 수 없는 에너지를 느꼈고, 각기 다른 천 조각들을 하나 씩 연결하면서 탄생한 하나의 거대한 이불보에서 삶의 애잔한 냄새를 맡았다.

• "바늘은 미디엄, 신비, 자웅동체, 추상, 바로미터, 샤만이다. 그리고 나의 몸도 그러한 것이다" [4] 라는 작가의 선언과 함께, 이 '바늘-몸'의 세계 를 향한 조용한 웅변이 시작된다. 바늘이 된 작가의 몸은 바느질을 한 땀 한 땀 뜨듯 세계 곳곳, 각기 다른 문화, 다양한 삶, 인간의 사랑, 연민, 번뇌, 외로움 등을 연결하며, 형형색색의 '삶의 보따리'를 탄생시킨다. 각양각색 의 인종, 문화, 그리고 그것의 '다름'의 흔적들은 이 보따리에 새겨지고, 또 다른 시공간에서 또 다른 이야기들과의 만남을 시도하는 것이다.
  바늘은 시공간의 '축'이 되고, 그 축은 또 다른 다수의 주체와 타자의 '연결' 을 허용하며, 관객과의 동시적 소통을 가능하게 하는 매개체가 된다. 보따리 에 담긴 인간사의 희로애락과 함께(보따리 트럭 시리즈), 세상의 모든 인류 한 사람 한 사람과의 만남을 가능하게 하는 '바늘'(<바늘여인>, <빨래하는 여인> 시리즈)은 나와 타자, 집단과 개체, 인간과 세계에 대한 사유를 가능 하게 하는 '거울'(<거울여인> 시리즈)과 조우하며, 관객을 이 사물들의 행 보에 다시 한 번 자연스럽게 동참시킨다. 크리스탈 팔라스 바닥 전체에 깔린 거울은 '펼쳐진 바늘'이 되어 거울의 허상과 실상의 바느질을 시도하며 <호흡: 거울여인>(2006), 같은 해 베니스 라 페니체 극장에서 공연된 <호흡: 보이지 않는 바늘/보이지 않는 거울>(2006)은 원색 모노크롬 프로젝션과 자신의 들숨과 날숨을 녹음한 사운드 작업과 함께 관객을 삶과 죽음 의 명상으로 초청하며 몸/바늘/거울의 완전한 비물질화를 통해 물질과 정신 의 합체를 지향한다. 그리고 이클립스eclipse 현상을 포착한 해와 달, 검푸른 바다 수면에 반사되는 햇빛과 달빛의 자연현상을 담은 <거울여인: 해와 달>(2008)을 통해서 마침내 작가는 인간과 우주의 호흡과 합일을 시도하며, 만 물의 근원, 자연의 원리에 대한 질문을 열고 있다. 그리고 바로 이것에 대한 보다 풍요로운 질문들이 바로 에서 지속되고 있는 것이다. 작가의 몸은 '바늘'을 통해서 이 세상의 삶들을 관통하고, 또 '거울'이 되어 인간의 내면과 외면, 존재와 비존재의 양면성을 연결하며, 그 바늘과 거울은 들숨과 날숨을 내쉬며 삶과 죽음을 이야기하고, 물질과 비물질의 세계를 넘나든다. 그리고 이 바늘과 거울의 행보는 인간, 자연, 우주로 확장되며, 만물의 근원과 본질의 세계로 그 여행을 시작한 것이다.

• 90년대 초반부터 지금까지 관객들은 '바늘'과 '보따리'를 통해서 끊임없이 이동하는 작가의 몸과 함께 김수자의 작업세계에 동참해 왔다. 그의 퍼포먼 스와 오브제들에서 포스트 모던적 유목주의 혹은 글로벌 컬처를 읽는 사람 들도 있고, 그의 작업에 등장하는 한국적 오브제들과 색깔, 동양문화에 대 한 참조들을 민족적 정체성, 페미니즘 등과 연결하는 사람들도 있다. 이동, 다문화주의, 다름을 지향하는 오늘날, 각각의 문화적 코드와 참조들은 소 속 집단의 정체성을 반영한다. 하지만 각기 다름의 자율성을 보존하려는 시 도들, 또 그것의 평이한 공존만을 지향하는 것이 오늘날 예술의 현주소라고 생각한다면, 역설적으로 이러한 정체성들은 민속적 혹은 이국적 요소들로 남을 수 밖에 없는 운명을 갖게 되는 것이다. 물론 오늘날 작가들은 그들 고유의 문화에 대한 참조들과 지역적 코드들을 기반으로 작업한다. 김수자의 작업세계도 물론 예외는 아니다. 하지만 중요한 것은 김수자 작업에서 이러 한 요소들이 지역을 넘어서 전지구적 차원에서 그 의미를 구축하며, 순회할 수 있는 경로를 형성하고 있다는 점에 주목해야 한다. 즉, 그의 작업은 각기 다른 문화적 종자들의 다수성 사이에서 모종의 협력을 시도하며, 또 그것의 특이성들간의 지속적 번안을 제안하기 때문이다. 그의 작업 전반에서 감지 할 수 있는 미니멀리즘 미학과 '레디유즈드' 개념은 한국적 오브제들, 지역 적 문화, 그리고 동양 사상을 서구 미술사와 연결시키고, 새로운 번안을 거치며, 인류의 삶을 순회할 수 있는 특이적이고 독창적인 경로를 형성하고 있다. 김수자의 보따리, 이불보, 바느질 등은 한국전통, 동양사상과 서구 미술사적 코드를 가로지는 하나의 모델을 탄생시켰다. 김수자의 모든 사물들은 레디메이드 오브제들이다. 물론 '레디메이드 개념은 오늘날 더 이상 우리의 관심을 끄는 이슈는 아니다. 핵심은 김수자가 레디메이드 오브제들을 취한 것에 있다기 보다는, 그 레디메이드 개념을 어떻게 확장하고 전환시켰는가에 있다.

"나의 작업은 이미 존재하는 오브제의 개념을 재정의하고 있다. 이 선재성(先在性)은 특히 서양의 관점에서는 일상 속에 감춰져 있다. 미술사는 이러한 선재성을 말하지 않고, 오브제의 선재성을 개념화하지 않는다. 이것은 누군가가 이것을 그 본래의 기능으로부터 떨어져 나오게 하며, 재현/ 퍼포먼스의 프레임 안에서 보여주었을 때 비로서 개념화되는 것이다. 미술 사에서 오브제의 고유한 컨텍스트를 창조한다는 것, 이것이 나의 작업이다. 나의 작업은 그 이전의 삶이 없는 새로운 오브제를 만드는 일과는 아무런 관련이 없는 것이다. "[5]
보따리, 이불보, 혹은 다른 사물들에 대한 그의 관심 은 이미 만들어진 것(행위/결과물)에 있는 것이 아니라 그것이 어떻게 사용 되어져 왔는가(시간/경험)에 있는 것이다. 즉, 작가가 누군가가 입었던 헌 옷가지나 덮고 살았던 이불보를 사용했을 때, 작가는 그 물건을 사용한 사람의 '삶'을 사용하는 것이다. 김수자는 익명의 사람들의 다채로운 삶이 배어 있는 이불보, 보자기, 보따리를 통시적 시간성을 가진 특이적 오브제로 전 환시키며, 우리 삶의 흔적을 더듬어 보고, 사람의 숨결을 느끼며, 인간애를 찾아 나선다. 그의 작업에서 '레디메이드readymade'에서 '레디유즈드readyused, 로의 이행은 이불보를 꿰매고, 보따리를 싸며, 수 많은 사람들을 만나고, 그 들의 삶의 여정에 동참하는 '수행성'을 통해서 전개된다. 그의 이러한 수행적 태도는 작가 스스로 익명 가운데 하나가 되어 또 다른 익명의 삶을 감싸고 펼치며, 이미 존재하는preexisting 하지만 보이지 않는 삶의 궤적을 드러내 며 재맥락화하고 있다. 알록달록한 이불보는 인생만사가 새겨지는 삶의 프레임이 되고, 형형색색의 보따리는 이러한 익명의 삶을 포용하는 유연한 그릇이 되며, 이러한 모든 것을 연결하는 바늘-몸은 자신을 소멸시키며 익명의 주체들을 가시화하는 제스처가 된다. 그리고 화면에서 사라진 작가/주체는 '제 3의 눈'이 되어 보다 근원적인 삶에 대한 사유를 시작하고 있는 것이 다. 이미 누군가에 의해 사용되었던 오브제들의 보이지 않는 시간들, 삶, 그 리고 그 흔적을 통해서 현재를 맥락화하는 과정은 김수자의 작업에서 언제나 최소한의 개입과 최소한의 행위로 탄생된다. 그의 작업의 최소한의 미학은 '아무 것도 만들지 않으며, 그 무언가도 되려고 하지 않는' 일종의 참선 과정과도 같다. 만들지 않으면서 만든 것보다 더 강렬한 것을 드러내는 것, 소멸을 통해서 영속성을 가시화하는 것, 최소한 것으로 최대한의 것을 말하는 것, 이것이 바로 김수자의 작업세계인 것이다.

"Whether we try to make it or not, the sound is heard" [1]

• The new work of Kimsooja, Earth-Water-Fire-Air (2009), which is based on the four elements of nature—earth, water, fire and air—and their organic combination, seems to consist only of typical natural landscapes of a volcanic area, when seen in just a visual context. These landscapes capture the "natural phenomenon" itself, without any deliberate intervention, artificial transformation or staging on the artist's part. The artist silently brings the spectators before nature, as she previously took them amidst the numerous people in various places of the world such as Tokyo, Shanghai, New Delhi, New York City, Mexico City, Cairo, London, Lagos (Needle Woman, 1999-2001), Patan, Havana, Jerusalem, Sana'a, Rio de Janeiro, and N'Djamena (Needle Woman, 2005). However, the rear view of the artist, who had guided spectators to witness the diverse lives taking place in every corner of the world, is no longer visible. "If the perspective in Needle Woman was me looking at myself from behind, my perspective in this work exists beyond the bodies of spectators and me, and is a perspective that sees more than simply the landscape. In other words, it is the gaze of the 'third eye'." [2] The back view of the artist is replaced by the eye of the camera in Earth-Water-Fire-Air, and the perspective of the artist becomes the "third eye," which gazes through the eye of the camera. The "eye of the camera" is mobilized in the same context as "bottari"—the tied bundles in her well-known works—existed as a gigantic frame (bottari-frame) to encompass or spread out people's invisible lives. Her "eye of the camera" (bottari-frame), rotating 360 degrees, captures the sky, land, lightning, snow and fog of New York and Mexico City (2000-2001), while the stationary eye of the camera stares at the eclipse, the sunlight and moonlight reflecting off the dark blue surface of the sea (Mirror Woman: Sun and Moon, 2008). In Earth-Water-Fire-Air (2009), it captures directly the natural phenomena of volcanic areas in the Canary Islands and Guatemala. These works, in which the back view of the artist moves to the position of the camera, and the eye of the camera works at the same line as the "bottari-frame," conceptually transverse all Kimsooja's previous works, in search of a connection with the infinite energy hidden in humans' invisible lives and in nature. Now in Earth-Water-Fire-Air, Kim is turned into the "third eye," which exists everywhere but cannot be seen anywhere, withholding direct comment or interpretation on the "greater theme" of the relationship between nature and humans, or fundamental reflection on this, but opening up infinite possibilities to spectators to participate in the eloquent speech of nature.

• To what kind of world does the "third eye" of Earth-Water-Fire-Air invite viewers? It is a world of principles of nature, origins of matter, essence of humans and life, and mutuality and coexistence of all such qualities. The four elements of nature—earth, water, fire and air—are the roots of western philosophy, but also related to the five elements (metal, water, wood, fire and earth) that form everything in the universe according to the eastern theory of yin, yang and wu xing, or the five elements of creation (earth, water, fire, wind and void) according to Buddhist philosophy. Such elements, which are the core of Eastern and Western thought, and the energy created by their mutual combination enable us to think about the recurrent structure of circulation known as the birth and death of all things, to realize the mysterious relationship between nature (matter) and humans, and to ponder on the life of humans. "As water has an element of fire and the earth has the elements of fire, water and air, each element is in a relationship of mutual circulation and connection. In the process of looking at them separately as four elements, I intended to reveal their 'inability to stand alone, and dependency'." [3] In extension of such thought, through this work Kimsooja visualizes the dynamic relations of "water, fire, earth and air" and their infinite energy through "the natural phenomenon itself." Each of the seven landscapes taken of the dead volcano of Lanzarote in the Spanish Canary Islands, and of the live volcano of Pacaya in Guatemala, has an independent title. In these works, the relations between the titles and images suggest a different element hidden within a certain element based on a permutation or combination structure of sets of two elements, or visualize the organic relation between two elements and their energy. Blazing red lava (Air of Earth), the clear blue sky looking down upon the lava (Air of Water), dark blue waves of the sea (Earth of Water), a rainbow emerging from the waves breaking against the volcano (Air of Fire), three different landscapes taken while slowly driving along the same volcanic terrain in the day, evening and night (Fire of Air, Fire of Earth, Water of Earth)... But the combination of these elements does not allow direct reference to any particular ideology of East or West. The artist wants to contemplate not on the persuasiveness of such ideology, but rather on nature, the elements that form nature, and the origin and methods of existence of humans, through free combination and exchange among the elements.

• One of the characteristics of Kimsooja's work, regardless of what it deals with—city, people, life, the world, or nature—can be found in the perspectives or ways of thinking about these, and the attitude of raising questions about them. This indicates that her work does not communicate the artist/subject's viewpoint of this world to others one-sidedly, and that the world seen by the artist/subject no longer aims at a consistent message. If so, how is the "subject," which encompasses the "landscapes" of the world as a compound collective of different elements, reflected in her works? This "artist-subject," who pays attention to the world's diverse cities, nature, people and their lives, is neither a romantic subject who reflects inner tension and conflict before colossal nature, nor a heroic subject of American abstract expressionism who pursues absolute sublimity transcending this world, nor a phenomenological subject who presents perceptional phenomena by connecting sensuous experience and visual sense, nor an archeological subject who excavates social-cultural vestiges. The work of Soo-ja Kim no longer pursues or reflects a "single subject" that has emerged in the history of art. Her work announces the coexistence of numerous subject-spectators within time-space, and the birth of those anonymous subjects' multilateral perspectives. The moment the spectator focuses on the "rear view" of Needle Woman or Woman Washing Clothes, he/she will wear "the clothes of the artist's body," stand exactly where the artist stands, and see beyond the world the artist sees. The relationship between subject and spectators of the work Bottari, in which discarded old clothes are wrapped in a blanket cover once used by someone of unknown origin and are carried all over the world in search of something, can also be read in the same context. In Kimsooja's work the spectator is no longer a passive subject who accepts a single perspective presented by the artist. In her work the spectator is an active subject who lives positively within the forms of life through the guidance of the artist. Thus, the spectator can leave together with the artist on a long journey to understand and embrace even more and different lives, and can share the world's diverse realities, different people, and their lives.

• Most of Kimsooja's works are extremely static, continent, and extraordinarily simple, having no narrative or dramatic plot. They present amazing eloquence, however, through the speeches of the objects (bottari, needle, and mirror) in her works, which slowly dominate the spectator through persuasive powers reminiscent of the prosopopea of ancient orators. This "personification" is not simply confined to personified imagery, but is one of the rare oratories that start from the idea that personified objects can think, and that they can be made to talk. This method of personification, which generally has made objects speak about the wisdom of god to enlighten people about their arrogance, ignorance or limitations, now seems to reveal its effect through the experiences of the objects in Kimsooja's works, which start from compassion and love for humankind, and attempt to understand and embrace humans and their lives. As a child, while sewing blanket covers together with her mother, the artist reports feeling a mysterious energy flow through her body at the moment the point of the needle pierced the cloth; as she connected the different pieces of cloth together one by one, she smelled the delicate scent of life from the gigantic blanket cover. With the artist's declaration—"The needle is the medium, mystery, hermaphrodite, abstraction, barometer, and shaman. And so is my body" [4] —the quiet, eloquent speech begins. The artist's body becomes a needle connecting different cultures, diverse lives, people's love, compassion, agony, loneliness, etc., throughout the world as if she were taking stitches one by one, finally giving birth to the "wrapping cloth (bojagi) of life," in a variety of colors. All sorts of races, culture, and traces of their "differences" are marked on the bojagi, which attempts to meet with more stories in other time-spaces.

• The needle becomes the "axis" of time-space, which allows "connections" among many other subjects, and serves as a medium that makes simultaneous communication with spectators possible. Along with the joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure of human life contained in the bottari (Bottari Truck series), the "needle," which enables encounters among all human beings in the world (Needle Woman, Woman Washing Clothes series), meets with the "mirror" (Mirror Woman series), which enables thought about me and others, the group and the individual, and the human and the world, once more bringing spectators into the paths of these objects in a natural manner. The mirrors spread across the entire floor of the Crystal Palace become a "spread-out needle," attempting to sew together the false image and the real image (To Breathe — A Mirror Woman, 2006), and the monochrome projection of primary colors and the recorded sounds of the artist's own inhalation and exhalation, performed at the Teatro la Fenice, Venice in the same year under the "same title," invite spectators to a mediation of life and death. Through To Breathe: Invisible Needle/Invisible Mirror (2006), performed at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, which seeks merging of material and spirit through the complete dematerialization of body/needle/mirror, and through Mirror Woman: Sun and Moon (2008), which captures the sun and moon during an eclipse, the natural phenomenon of sun and moon light reflecting off the surface of the dark blue sea, the artist ultimately aims to become one with the breath of humans and the cosmos, opening questions about the origin of all creation and the principles of nature. And abundant questions on this matter are continued in Earth-Water-Fire-Air. The artist's body penetrates the lives of the world through the "needle," connects the dualities of the inner and outer aspects of the human, as well as of existence and non-existence, by being a "mirror," and this needle and mirror breathe in and breathe out as they talk about life and death, going back and forth between the worlds of material and nonmaterial. The paths of the needle and the mirror then expand from the human to nature and the universe, beginning a journey to the world of the origin and essence of all creation.

• From the early 90s until now, spectators have participated in Kimsooja's world of work together with the endlessly mobile body of the artist through "needle" and "bottari." Some read post-modern nomadism or global culture in her performances and objects, while others have made connections between the Korean objects, colors and references to Eastern culture that appear in her work, and national identity or feminism. Of course, in today's culture, which pursues movement, cultural diversity and difference, each cultural code and reference reflects the identity of the concerned group. If, however, we assume the state of art now as the effort to preserve the autonomy of each of the differences, and to pursue their mere coexistence, ironically, such identities will be destined to remain as folklore or exotic elements. Artists' work today is based on references to their unique culture and regional codes, and Kimsooja's world of work is no exception. But what is important is that such elements in her work transcend the local and construct significance in the global dimension, forming a circuit. That is, her work seeks cooperation among the multiplicity of different cultural seeds, and proposes continuous adaptation among their peculiarities. Minimalist aesthetics and the "ready-used" concept, which can be sensed throughout her work, connect Korean objects, local culture and Eastern thought to the Western history of art, undergo new adaptations, and form extraordinary and creative routes that enable us to journey through the life of humankind.

• Kimsooja's bottari, blanket covers, needle work, etc., have created a new model that traverses Korean tradition, Eastern philosophy and art-historical codes. All of Kimsooja's objects are ready-made. Of course the "readymade concept" is no longer an issue of interest for us today. The point is not the fact that Kim took the readymade objects, but how she expanded and transformed the concept of readymade. "My work redefines the already existing concept of the object. This preexistence is hidden within daily life, particularly in the perspective of the West. Art history does not speak of such preexistence, and does not conceptualize this idea. It is only conceptualized when someone makes it break away from its original production, and shows it in the frame of representation/performance. To create a context of its own in art history: this is the work I do. So my work has nothing to do with making a new object without a previous life." [5] Her interest in bottari, blanket covers and other objects is not in the "already made (action/result)," but in how it has been used (time/experience). In other words, when the artist uses old clothes or blanket covers that were worn or used by someone, she is using that someone's "life." Kimsooja transforms blankets, wrapping cloths and bottari, permeated with the colorful lives of anonymous people, into unique objects with diachronic aspects of time; follows the traces of our lives; feels the breath of the people; and sets out in search of the love of humanity. The transfer from "readymade" to "readyused" in her works is carried out through a certain "acetic practice," stitching blanket covers, wrapping bottari, meeting many people, and participating in their life journeys. This ascetic attitude and practice enable the artist to become an anonymous being, wrapping and unveiling other anonymous life, revealing and re-contextualizing the preexisting but invisible tracks of life. The colorful blanket-wrap becomes a frame of life embellished with all deeds of life; the flamboyant, multicolored bottari becomes a flexible vessel that embraces such anonymous life; and the needle-body, which connects all of this, becomes a gesture to visualize the anonymous subjects while extinguishing itself in the process. Moreover, the artist/subject, who has disappeared from the picture-plane, becomes the "third eye," beginning contemplation on fundamental life. The process of contextualizing the present through the times, lives and traces of objects once used by someone is always born with minimum intervention and minimum action in Kimsooja's work. Such aesthetics of the least in her work process is a kind of meditation, "making nothing and being nothing." Making nothing but revealing something more powerful, visualizing perpetuity through extinction, and saying the most with the least — this is Kimsooja's world of work.

바다로부터, 불로부터, 꿈으로부터, 땅으로부터, 공기로부터, ─ 미겔 에르난데스.

• 김수자는 2009년 스페인 란자로테에서 열리는 다섯 번째 비엔날레를 위해 란자로테 섬에서 촬영된 다섯 개의 영상 프로젝트를 진행시켰다. 땅, 물, 불과 공기는 생명력과 힘의 원천이자 동서양을 막론하고 고대의 철학자들이 물질의 실체를 형성한다고 믿었던 요소들이다. 이 네 개의 요소들은 더 큰 상징적 의미를 지닌 하나의 무언가와 연결되어 소크라테스 이전부터 시작되어 엠페도클레스 때에 와서 더 구체화 되었으며, 중세, 근대의 유럽사상과 문화에 막대한 영향을 미쳤다. 아리스토텔레스의 이 개념은 에테르, 즉 천공이라는 하나의 요소를 더 했다는 점에서 인도나 일본 불교문화의 그것과 일치한다. 한국이나 중국과 같은 동양국가에서는 바람이 공기를 대신한다.

• 김수자는 화산과 바다로 이뤄진 란자로테 섬의 자연 속에서 살아있는 생명체로써 완전히 의존할 수 밖에 없는 이 본질적인 원소들의 힘과 영감 뿐만 아니라 동시에 환상과 창조적인 발상의 근원지를 발견한다. 김수자는 우리에게 불에서 물을, 땅에서 물을, 공기에서 물을 보기를 원하며 이와 마찬가지로 반대의 상황, 즉 공기에서 물을, 땅에서 물을, 물에서 불을 보기를 원한다. 이들은 어쩌면 작가의 말처럼 물은이 나머지 요소들을 동시에 보여주기도 하지만 그 요소들이 지닌 특징들은 유일하고 독창적인 것이다.

• 처음 세 개의 영상들인 <Fuego de Tierra / Fire of Earth>, <Agua de Tierra / Water of Earth> 그리고 <Fuego de Aire/ Fire of Air>의 동일한 “여정”을 다루며, 이들은 3부작을 이룬다. 이는 작가가 섬의 바위 지역들을 지나며 낮과 밤에 걸쳐 느리게 촬영하여 얻어낸 결과물로써, 각각 불, 물과 공기를 우리에게 일깨워준다.

• 첫 영상인 <Fuego de Tierra / Fire of Earth>은 낮에 촬영한 것으로 섬의 주간 풍경을 보여준다. 카메라는 화산섬의 바위투성이 지형을 보여주며 우리로 하여금 땅의 표면을 피부처럼 느낄 수 있도록 해준다. 이 작품에서 보여주는 광범위한 파노라마적 시선은 두 번째 밤의 풍경에서 보여주는 제한적인 시야와는 대조적이다.

• 카메라는 우리를 이 바위투성이 섬으로 안내하며, 때로는 빠르게, 때로는 느리게 움직이며 트롱프 뢰유 효과를 만들어낸다. 마치 화면 배경에 있는 산은 가만히 있는 반면 화면 전방의 바위 지형은 빠르게 또는 느리게 움직이면서 화산에 의해 까맣게 탄 바위들이 용암에 의해 지평선을 따라 흘러가는 또는 심층에서 움직이는 듯한 착시 현상 보여준다. 가끔씩 뒤에 위치한 산도 움직이고 있는 듯한 느낌을 주지만 전방의 바위들이 흘러가는 것과는 반대 방향으로 보이며 지면이 이 산 주위로 원형을 그리며 끊임없이 돌고 있는 것처럼 보인다. 모든 것을 감싸는 동시에 끊임없이 움직이는 화면과 대조를 이루는 고요함은 기묘한 분위기를 자아낸다. 이는 황폐한 바위 지형을 통해 극대화 되며 우주와의 관계를 통해 만들어지는 모든 에너지와 영성을 전달한다. 이것은 또
  한 이러한 기묘한 지형의 특징이기도 하다.

• 두 번째 영상인 <Agua de Tierra / Water of Earth>은 작가가 란자로테 섬을 차를 타고 돌며 느리게 촬영했다는 점에서는 첫 번째 영상과 같지만, 낮의 풍경과는 사뭇 다른 밤의 풍경을 보여준다. 여기서도 역시 트롱프 뢰유 효과를 찾아볼 수 있다. 전편과 마찬가지로 지면의 움직임과 배경의(이 경우는 하늘) 움직이지 않는 굳건함이 반복 되나 지형은 매우 모호하다. 전편에서 보여 주었던 전체적인 풍경에 반해 이제는 밤의 어두움과 빛의 부재함으로 인해 부분적으로만 보인다. 빛이 없음으로 지면의 비중이 더 커진다. 낮의 영상에서 볼 수 있었던 산의 모습들은 하늘의 어두움에 가려져 없어진다. 이 영상에서는 움직임의 효과가 다양한 반면, 움직임의 방향은 낮의 풍경과 동일하게 유지 된다. 지면과 배경이 합쳐진 밤의 풍경을 보고 있으면 깊고 어두운 강물이 땅과 하늘 사이에서 흐르고 있는 듯한 느낌을 준다. 이 영상은 마치 바위투성이의 산들 덤불들을 보지 못하도록 밤의 어두운 유령들이 화면 전체를 꽉 채운 것 같다. 영상 중간 중간에 가로등이나 나무들이 매우 빠른 속도로 지나가는 것을 볼 수 있고, 이는 또한 움직임의 속도에 따라 시각적으로 홍수나 증수와 같은 자연 현상들을 연상시킨다.

• 세 번째 영상인 <Fuego de Aire / Fire of Air>에서 작가는 같은 화산 바위 풍경을 달리는 차 속에서 스포트라이트로 어둠에 싸인 밤풍경을 비춘다. 불빛이 비추는 부분을 영상의 중심에 담고 그 주위는 어두운 화면 그대로 촬영한 것을 보면서, 우리는 빛이 물리적인 실체와 부딪치지 않는 이상 어두움이 이를 흡수한다는 것을 알 수 있다. 불빛의 희미해짐과 선명해짐이 반복되며 우리는 풍경의 사물들을 잘 식별할 수 없게 된다. 불빛이 선명해지면 바람이 흔들어 놓은 듯한, 또는 구름 회오리 같은 화면이 보인다. 밤이 되면 날이 밝아지기 전까지는 어두움이 모든 것을 감싸고 있다. 빛은 공간을 밝게 하는 힘의 원천이기도 하지만 하나의 물체와 맞닥뜨리지 않는다면 그대로 어두움에 흡수된다. 빛이 물체와 맞닥뜨릴 때만이 이의 에너지를 흡수할 수 있게 된다. 작가의 말처럼 “어두움과 거리는 물질 세계에서 공기 중 에너지를 흡수하는 역할을 한다.”

• 빛의 생성과 소멸은 신비한 분위기를 형성한다. 작가가 들고 있는 스포트라이트는 대지를 환히 비추는 태양과 같이 풍경을 추상적인 이미지로 만들어 버린다. 이 이미지는 바람이 휩쓸고 지나간 구름의 회오리를 연상시키기도 한다. 란자로테의 바위투성이 밤 풍경은 없어지고 빛과 구름의 여상만 남게 된다. 지평선 너머로 아주 작은 불빛들만이 가끔 보일 뿐이다.

• 이 3부작은 자연의 빛과 어두움 또는 빛의 부재뿐만 아니라 인공적인 불빛들이 어떻게 인간의 지각과 연결되어 있는지 알려준다. 빛과 어두움, 사람의 관점과 물리적 세계가 정작 눈에 보이는 현실과 얼마나 직접적으로 연관되어 있는지도 알려준다. 우리의 눈이 현실을 넘어서 환상을 보게 될 때에 느껴지는 신비로움을 느낄 수 있다. 이 영상들에서는 공상과 실제가 서로를 보완해주며 우리가 평소에 인지하는 것들을 넘어서 더욱 깊은 진실로 우리를 안내한다. 땅의 움직임, 생명의 꿈틀거림, 행위의 속도, 덧없음..., 이 모든 것들은 이 일련의 작품들 속에 녹아있는 뚜렷한 특징들이다.

• 이 프로젝트에는 추가로 두 개의 독자적인 영상들이 더해진다. 물과 공기, 이 두 요소를 더 강조하는 <Aire de Fuego / Air of Fire>와 <Tierra de Agua / Earth of Water>이 바로 그것들이다. 물과 공기가 활동을 시작하면 이 둘의 조화가 뿜어내는 힘은 대단하다. 바다의 끊임없는 요동과 공기의 흐름 속에서 감지되는 작은 파동들이 이 영상들에 담겨있다.

• 에서 작가는 바다가 땅과 맞닥뜨리는 한 모서리를 선택한다. 화강암으로 이루어진 절벽에서 촬영된 이 영상은 아름다운 무지개의 형성을 보여준다. 하얀 거품 파도가 바람의 힘을 받아 절벽에 부딪치는 순간 물안개가 공기 중에서 부서지고 요동을 치며 환상적인 무지개를 만들어내는 것을 볼 수 있다. 마치 죽어있는 땅에 생명력을 불어넣기 위해서인 마냥 파도들은 절벽에 부딪쳐 수포를 뿜어낸다. 영상이 끝나면 화면은 칠흑같이 어두워지고 무지개와 파도의 환상적인 조화는 우리의 기억 속에 남게 된다. 공기의 힘으로 절벽에 부딪쳐 부서지는 파도의 소리만이 귓가에 들릴 뿐이다. 이러한 영상의 이미지와 소리의 분리는 시각과 청각이 어떻게 조화를 이루어 우리의 의식에 특정의 의미를 부여하게 되는지를 보여준다. 절벽에 부딪쳐 부서지는 파도의 소리, 공기 중으로 흩어지는 파도의 아름다움, 어두운 바위를 배경으로 피어나는 다채로운 무지개의 섬세함, 이 모든 것들은 자연이 지닌 눈부심에 대한 찬가이기도 하지만, 만남과 창조의 신비로움을 뜻하기도 한다.

• 두 번째 영상인 을 촬영할 때 김수자는 고정된 프레임 속에서 일렁이는 바다의 표면을 촬영함으로써 살아 움직이는 회화처럼 보이도록 한다. 어디로 향할지 예측할 수 없는 파도의 끊임없는 움직임은 보고 있는 사람으로 하여금 최면에 걸린 듯한 느낌을 받게 한다. 이 느낌은 바다가 제공하는 자연적인 색채의 다양함으로 인해 더해진다. 부드럽고 반복적인 파도의 움직임은 마치 바다가 들려주는 아름다운 화성과도 같다.

• 김수자는 자연으로부터 자신의 완전한 프로젝트인 이 다섯 개의 영상들을 얻어냈다. 뿐만 아니라 실체와 관객의 환상을 적절하게 조화해 자신의 작업에 신비함과 감정의 교차를 더하고 있다. 김수자의 이 일련의 작업들은 우리에게 세계에의 보다 다양한 지각방식과, 기존의 자연에의 새로운 의미 창조의 가능성을 열어준다.

of sea, of fire, of dreams, of earth, of air. ─ Miguel Hernández

• For the 2009 5th Lanzarote Biennial, Kimsooja has undertaken a project of five videos, filmed entirely on the island of Lanzarote, that tackles the subject of the four elements that have been employed by philosophers since antiquity to describe the essential components of material reality and the source of all energy and life, both in Western traditions and in the East: earth, water, fire, and air. Always charged with great symbolism, the four elements which date back to the time of Pre-Socratic philosophers and later received a more precise explanation from Empedocles, persisted through the Middle Ages to modern times and profoundly influenced the development of European thought and culture. These Western conceptions coincide with Indian, Japanese, and Buddhist traditions, which like Aristotle added a fifth element, ether (or the container of the cosmos) and with the Buddhist tradition. In some Asian countries like Korea and China, air is substituted for wind.

• Kimsooja has uncovered, in the volcanic, ocean landscape of the island of Lanzarote, the force and inspiration of these elements, the essential energy that we all depend on as living beings, as well as an invitation to fantasy and a source of creativity. Kimsooja compels us to see fire in water, earth in water, air in water, and therefore, also the opposite: water in air, water in earth, water in fire. In a way, as the artist notes, water alone would suffice to represent all four elements, even though one might imagine that each element admits only a singular and unique representation.

• The first three videos: Fire of Earth; Water of Earth and Fire of Air, share a common "journey" and form a trilogy. They have been filmed in different moments of day and night, in slow motion, while the artist was driving though the rocky landscape of the island. Each one of these videos evokes the elements of fire, water, and air, respectively.

• The first video, Fire of Earth, was filmed during the day, and depicts the island's daytime landscape. The camera leads us through the island's rocky scenery, and makes us feel the body of the earth as if it were a skin. The camera's ample panoramic lens serves as a counterpoint to the partial vision of the nocturnal scene in the second video.

• Here, the movement of the camera, sometimes sped up and other times slowed down, guides us through the rocky scene creating a trompe l'oeil effect: it looks as though the mountains in the background remain still, while the rocky terrain of the foreground moves faster, then slower, creating the illusion that the sea rocks, charred by the volcano's fire, are gliding across the landscape as if being dragged by a lava flow or a movement from deep inside the earth. At times, the mountains in the background also seem to move, but in the opposite direction as the foreground's rocky landscape; or that the fore is spinning, turning around the mountainous background in a circular motion of eternal return. The silence that envelopes everything and counters the ceaseless movement creates a mood of estrangement that is heightened by the moonscape of the boulder field, transmitting all the energy and spirituality of cosmic connection, typical of these extraordinary spaces.

• The second video, Water of Earth, filmed at night and also in slow motion while driving, roams the nocturnal landscape of Lanzarote with a substantially different impact than the daytime film. Here we also encounter a trompe l'oeil effect. Again we experience the dynamic of mobility in the foreground and immobility in the background (in this case the sky), as in the daytime video, but here, the vista is obscured. In contrast with the complete view of the first video, our vision is now reduced by the darkness of night or absence of light. Also, due to the absence of light, the foreground takes on a larger role. Here the fore stands out against the sky, and the mountains that appear during the daytime disappear almost completely into the background. In this video the effect of movement occurs on several levels and always flows in the same direction. Altogether it resembles a deep river of dark waters moving quickly in the background and sliding slowly into the fore. The background is covered with scrub and rocky hills that appear like ghosts darkened by the night and almost completely fill the frame obscuring our view of the bottom. Sometimes the screen is pierced by poles or trees that pass across our field of vision like shooting stars. The varying degrees of acceleration evoke many other natural processes such as streams, floods, and rapids.

• In the third video, Fire of Air, the artist illuminates the darkness with a spotlight while driving through the fields of volcanic rock. Focusing in on the center of the frame and leaving the rest of the screen dark, we see the blackness that envelops everything, except when the light collides with a physical object.

• With the appearance and disappearance of light, and therefore the landscape, the images become unrecognizable. When the light appears, what we see is like a sort of swirling cloud, blowing in the wind. The night's darkness envelops everything until the light reappears. The light here is the source of energy that illuminates the space but is also absorbed by the darkness when it does not cross a physical object. Only when the light crosses or collides with something physical does it consume its energy. And as the artist herself notes, "darkness and distance play the roles of absorbing light in a vacuum and consuming the source/energy of light in physicality."

• The appearance and disappearance of light creates an aura of mystery. The spotlight that the artist guides, like the sun lighting the earth, turns the landscape into something ethereal, abstract, resembling an eddy of clouds being swept away by the wind, spinning like a Ferris wheel of light. The rocky, nocturnal landscape of Lanzarote disappears and turns into a mass of light and clouds. Only every so often do tiny points of light appear on the horizon.

• This trilogy speaks about how natural light and darkness, or lack of light, as well as the use of artificial light is associated with our modes of perception. In some way, it reveals how our visual reality is directly related to light, darkness, perspective, emptiness and physicality, simultaneously creating the mystery of our vision that goes beyond reality and lead us into the realm of fantasy. Fact and fiction are paired in these videos, opening our minds to a deeper reality that transcends habitual perceptions.

• The movement of the earth, the movement of life, the acceleration and deceleration of events, the fleetingness of life… these elements also become manifest in contemplating this work.

• This project is accompanied by two individual videos, Air of Fire and Earth of Water, which focus on the elements water and air and the energy generated when both come into play. To do this, Kimsooja selects two particular moments in the continuous movement of the sea and the undulating waves produced by air currents.

• In the first, Air of Fire, the artist selects a segment of sea where the ocean joins with the earth on a cliff of black volcanic rock to depict the beautiful spectacle of a rainbow forming. When the waves of white foam, propelled by the wind, collide with the cliff, breaking and jumping through the air, the colors of the rainbow appear in their entire splendor. These waves soar to the top of the cliff, dispersing droplets as if to revive the fields of volcanic rock. In the middle of the video, the picture disappears from the screen and it goes black, leaving on our retina the image of the waves and rainbow, while we continue to hear the sound of water crashing against the cliff and dispersing with the force of the air. This separation of image and sound shows how meaning is created and reconstructed at the intersection of the auditory and visual senses. The sound of the waves breaking on the cliff, the beauty of foam leaping through the air, the appearance of a rainbow set against dark rocks, all of this is a hymn to the glory of nature, but it also drives us to question the mystery of creation.

• In the second video, Earth of Water, Kimsooja films another section of the sea, framed as if it were a living painting. Rolling waves, continually shifting the movement and form of their own landscape, create a hypnotic mood that is enhanced by the gray scale of the sea's natural palette. One wave, gentle and repetitive, like a harmonious melody, rippling the sea.

• Through these five videos in Lanzarote together with living volcanic and the sky scene in Guatemala that will be evolved in the future, the artist employs the reality of landscape and its materiality in order to transform beyond it. Juxtaposing fact and imagination, she imbues the series with elements of ambivalence and mystery. These works convey our diverse modes of perception and the creation of new meanings.

• Sunjung Kim
  I would like to begin with a question about your video installation, A Needle Woman, perhaps your best-known work. It was made from 1999 until 2001, and was shot in various locations, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Delhi, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Lagos, and London. Could you describe your experiences in those cities and countries, and the background of the work?*

• Kimsooja
  When the CCA (Center for Contemporary Art) Kitakyushu [in Japan] approached me about a new project, I had the idea of making a performance video that would show the relationship between my body and the people on the streets of Tokyo. But it wasn't clear what form it would eventually take. At first, I got on and off crowded subway trains, and walked around for two hours. After this two-hour-long period, when I arrived to a street in Shibuya, where hundreds of thousands of people were constantly passing through, like waves of a human ocean ebbing and flowing - I suddenly became aware of the meaning of my ‘walking'. It was a breathtaking moment. I had to stop on the spot and stand still- creating a contradictory position against the flow of the pedestrians, like a needle or an axis, observing and contemplating them coming and going, weaving through and against my body as a medium, like a symbolic needle. I determined to record this experience of standing motionless in a crowd, viewed from behind. I immediately let the cameraman know and documented the performance. As if facing and sustaining a giant surf, my body was completely exposed to everyone in the middle of this street, and in the course of this intense standoff, my body and mind gradually transcended to another state. In other words, as I accelerated the state of my isolation, the presence of my body seemed to be gradually erased by the crowd. Simultaneously, as the sustained immobility of my body was leading me toward state of peace and balance in my mind, I passed the state of tension between the self and others and reached the point in which I could bring and breathe others into my own body and mind. My heart began to slowly fill with compassion and affection for all human beings living today. Experiencing the extreme state that the body and mind could reach and embrace sympathies for humankind, paradoxically, liberated my mind and body from the crowd. I saw the aura of a bright white light emerging from an unknown source beyond the horizon, and I cannot help but feel that it was a mysterious, transcendental experience.

• Kimsooja

• After the Tokyo performance, I had a desire to see all of the people in the world, and the series A Needle Woman came out of this desire, in which I visited eight metropolises on five different continents. The relationship between my body and the crowd of each city was different in each instance, and the responses I got were also quite diverse. According to the geographical, cultural, religious, and socio-economic conditions, people responded completely differently to the body of the performer as an other—or an Asian female—and my inner reaction also manifested itself in various ways.

• In this work, I established the immobility of my body as a symbolic needle, and further questioned my relationships with others through the act of a social, cultural sewing. At the same time, I see this video series as an extension of my bottari work, in which I tried to embrace the humanity within myself.

• Sunjung Kim
  A new version of A Needle Woman was made for the 2005 Venice Biennale, with footage you shot in rather dangerous places riddled with many social and political problems. I'm curious about the reasons why you selected those cities and what kinds of issues you wanted to address in such backgrounds.

• Kimsooja

• The first series of A Needle Woman consisted of real-time videos that focused on the spatial dimensions created by the body as a symbolic needle, or an axis within various spaces, in the midst of densely populated metropolises. The new version I presented at the 2005 Venice Biennale takes more of an interest in the cities that are experiencing poverty, violence, post-colonialism, civil wars, and religious conflicts—Patan, within Kathmandu Valley (Nepal), Havana (Cuba), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), N'Djamena (Chad), Sana (Yemen), and Jerusalem (Israel). My intention was to present a critical perspective on current conditions of humanity. Created in slow motion, this new series places my body at the zero point on the axis of time, and explores temporal dimensions by showing the contrast between my motionless body and the others' slow motion. This work also shows the subtlety of the relationship between bodies, and their emotional transitions and psychologies. This was another opportunity for me to explore the question of time, which has been important to me since my first video, Sewing into Walking.

• Sunjung Kim
  To Breathe: A Mirror Woman, which was presented in your solo exhibition in the Palacio de Cristal, commissioned by The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, was a work that changed the context of a given space and its spatiality. It seems that the work places emphasis on changing a space, and on the experience one may have in that space. If your earlier work had been about the two-dimensional experience of visiting different places via performance translated into video, this work asks viewers to experience the very space in which it is shown. Could you discuss the background and intention of this piece?

• Kimsooja

• To Breathe: A Mirror Woman is a site specific project that brings together and amplifies the relationships between yin and yang ,and the concepts of the needle and sewing, that I have been developing for two decades. - from sewing into wrapping, sewing into walking, sewing into looking, and sewing into breathing. The idea of this project is based on wrapping the transparent architecture of Palacio de Cristal building into a bottari of light and sound. I incorporated the diffraction grating film with the entire glass pavilion of the Palacio de Cristal, to create a constantly changing spectrum of colors; the sound element consisted of a chorus blended from my own breathing and humming. Both elements were absorbed in and reflected out onto the mirror that covered the whole floor of the building, expanding a "void" within the skin of the architecture, and even becoming one with viewers' bodies and breaths as a sanctuary.

• The body is an important element in your work. If A Needle Woman substitutes your own body for the needle, what does A Mirror Woman do? What kinds of metaphorical functions are performed by the needle and the mirror?

• If A Needle Woman featured my body as a tool, which symbolizes the needle, in A Mirror Woman, the mirror functions in lieu of the body, that observes and reflects the "other." One can see the linguistic operations of anthropomorphizing the "needle" and the "mirror," which draw out the meaning of the works.

• Sunjung Kim
  I didn't have a chance to visit your public project A Lighthouse Woman, and only got to see photographs of it. How did you start this project?

• Kimsooja

• The piece was commissioned as part of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2002, under the theme of "Witness of Water, Witness of Land". Charleston was one of the coastal cities of importation for African slaves. My work consisted of projecting a lighting sequence onto a lighthouse that had been out of commission for almost forty years in Morris Island, , where the devastating Civil War began. The piece was intended to breathe life back into the lighthouse and to commemorate the numerous lives lost in the war. The lighthouse was wrapped with a spectrum of nine colors, which gradually changed in a thirty-minute cycle in rhythm with the waves. A Lighthouse Woman structurally symbolized the body of a woman waiting for her husband and lover, children and brothers, who had gone off to war. I installed another work at the Drayton Hall Plantation House: four black carpets embroidered with the names of the slaves who worked there, which were placed in front of the fireplaces of the house.

• Sunjung Kim
  Your Bottari Truck addresses mobile globalism. Does the importance of this work lie in the concept of globalism in mobility? Or is it the notion of identity or "being" in the global era?

• Kimsooja

• I wasn't thinking about globalism when I made Bottari Truck, as I have never made a work related to a particular "ism" or category. I was always interested in the notion of body, personal histories and memories, and the questions of human despair and desire. I think this particular piece began to be interpreted from the perspective of globalism because the notions inherent in it came to be considered an important point of departure for globalism —such as location/dislocation and locality — and the work evolved with this social change. While I was performing 11 days throughout Korea, I was paying attention to the mobility of the bottari truck, and the continuity of both the bottari truck and the stillness of my body on the move. The truck was a moving sculpture, loaded with histories and memories, and its constant mobility, and the immobility of my body, co-incided on a temporal and spatial grid.

• Sunjung Kim
  It seems to me that works such as Bottari Truck and A Needle Woman are located on a "border." They also encompass dualities such as inside and outside, life and death, pleasure and sadness. What would you say constitutes your interest in the border?

• Kimsooja

• One might say that a consciousness about the "border" forms a sensitive spiritual axis in my thoughts. The idea connects with Eastern spirituality, which interprets all of existence in terms of yin and yang. Awareness of "border" in my work can refer to the question of the surface in painting, which was one of the starting points in my earlier sewing work. I consider the canvas as a mirror of identity, upon which artists are searching for their whole lives.

• Perhaps, my obsession with "border" also has to do with my childhood, which was spent near the dangerous border of the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ).

• Sunjung Kim
  In your 1994 solo exhibition Sewing into Walking, you developed the concept of "sewing" into "walking" by transforming "sewing stitch by stitch" into "walking step by step." Did your engagement with sewing start from a feminist point of view, or would you say that it started from personal experience?

• Kimsooja

• This sewing practice didn't arise from a feminist point of view, or because I was particularly fond of, or good at, sewing. At that time I was exploring the structure of two-dimensionality and the world and its methodologies. One day in 1983, I was sewing a bedcover with my mother and suddenly came to realize possible formal, aesthetic, psychological, and cultural anthropological implications of the act of sewing. It was a question and an answer that came to me like a lightening bolt, or a divine revelation. I have to say that it was like a fated encounter between the universe and the needle, my hands and my body, that became an unforgettable event. This realization was completely unrelated to works that were made as part of the feminist art movements taking place in the United States and other places. As the notions of the "needle" and "wrapping" developed, the notion of sewing also expanded and evolved to relate to other acts of daily life, such as walking, looking, breathing, and mirroring.

• Sunjung Kim
  Please describe the new works you are planning.

• Kimsooja

• In the long term, my wish is to make my artistic desire disappear. In the short term, I'd like to make works that are like water and air, works that, like most of my works, cannot be possessed, but can be shared by everyone. I'd still like to wander around the world and answer questions that come to me at each moment, freely using any media. I will continue to be working without any preconceived plan, and answer questions that come to me through the evolution of my ideas.

• Sunjung Kim
  What do "Korea" and "Korean" mean for you?

• Kimsooja

• My Korean identity and my life in Korea are my main source of inspiration, but this source isn't always a positive one. Korea seems to me to be a land of shamanistic energy. I will continue to live as an anonymous outsider, as an anarchistic cosmopolitan.

• Kelly Gordon
  What is your process when you make video works? Do you begin with notes, diagrams, sketches, or storyboarding? How much does it change on site?

• Kimsooja
  I basically refuse to "make" things, and I try to keep everything as it is and as natural as possible. My ideas are almost never written down or based on stories. For example, when I was trying to do a commissioned video performance for CCA Kitakyushu, I had in mind a walking performance but I wasn't completely sure how to realize it in that particular environment. I was walking around the city with the videographer for a couple of hours because I couldn't find an idea for doing the performance in that cityscape in relation to my body and spirit. Finally, when I arrived at a street in Shibuya, where hundreds of thousands of people were constantly passing through, like waves of a human ocean ebbing and flowing, I immediately understood the significance of my walking. I had a clear awareness of the contrast created between my body and the environment around me. It was a breathtaking moment. I had to stop and stand right there, remaining motionless against the flow of the people walking. I became like an axis, observing and contemplating the moment of people's coming and going, weaving past my body as a medium, like a symbolic needle. This is the moment when the standing still performance that occurs in A Needle Woman first happened.
  This is also how I worked for A Laundry Woman - Yamuna River, India. I stopped while passing by the Yamuna, next to a cremation facility, where all the debris was floating by. In that moment, I found the connection to the location and time within my spirit and body, and I immediately asked my videographer to start documenting my performance.
  Usually the performance lasts a maximum of thirty minutes, as that is the threshold of how long I can keep my body still. By the time my body reaches its limit, and through intense focus on the relationship of the self and the other, I experience different stages of awareness and a new perception of the status of my body and the world around me. For example, there was a moment during the A Laundry Woman performance when I was completely confused whether it was the river moving, or me. Then I came to the awareness that my concrete body was standing motionless but that, in another sense, it was also running and would burn to ash very soon.

• Kelly Gordon
  In several of your videos, including A Laundry Woman - Yamuna River, India, you appear with your back to the camera in a dark, featureless outfit, almost like a silhouette. Is this to suggest that you represent an "everywoman" character? Or a Sprecher figure, like those in Renaissance paintings who bear witness and offer authenticity to a scene? Do you draw from other literary or artistic inspirations? During the shoot, how do you retain the expression on your face that the viewer cannot see?

• Kimsooja
  There have been interesting comparisons made between Casper David Friedrich's paintings and my performance videos, especially with A Laundry Woman and A Needle Woman. Actually, the Museum Folkwang in Germany exhibited my work next to Casper David Friedrich's paintings. As I turn my back towards the audience, my body functions as a void through which viewers can look and contemplate what I am gazing at, placing themselves in my position. Yet I still have to create a corporeal figure that witnesses, mediates, and contemplates on the here and now in each location.
  I am not interested in showing my identity, but I can't imagine ever using a surrogate to replace me. The work should be performed with my own awareness of the energy of the location. If I were to substitute someone else, the figure would become empty, and would have no connection to this idea of the here and now. The most important aspect of my performance videos is what I experience within myself during the process. I actually don't care much about the resulting video piece, but when the experience is strong and special, the actual video seems to be strong and special too, so I just focus on the moment. To concentrate on the here and now I need inner silence and motionlessness. The performance comes from my awareness of other people or the river passing by rather than from my intention. I don't perform in order to make videos; rather, I make videos to document the moment of performance and my awareness.
  Most audiences are curious about my facial expression while my back is turned. I don't want to show my face as it will draw people's attention to my identity rather than what I am experiencing as an anonymous figure. My approach in making these videos is not to guide the audience in a specific direction but to leave the experience open. I do not borrow or reference things in my work. The pieces usually develop from my intuition, which is based on my experiences and the conditions of my life, rather than from logic. At the same time, I believe in the logic of intuition.

• Kelly Gordon
  Which comes first, the idea or the site? You have filmed all over the world but the sites often feel very similar and have a trance-inducing quality. Do these attributes inform how you select the sites? What is your technique for making the viewer feel vividly there—present with you?

• Kimsooja
  I usually don't plan things in advance; I just let it happen—sometimes waiting, sometimes wandering around until the right moment arrives. It arrives when I feel the energy, accumulated from that precise time and place, in my body. Then I immediately start a performance. It is a temporary mobile temple that I establish. This only happens when I am ready and have been searching for some connection between my mind and body and a specific context of space, culture, geography, and the conditions of nature and human beings within a place. The whole process feels true to myself. The performances and videos seem to be vivid and engaging to the viewer as a result.

• Kelly Gordon
  Your video works suggest a timeless dimension on several levels. While the works typically have ambient or minimal sound, one can imagine a voice-over beginning with "Once upon a time..." Yet even the videos from ten years ago seem very current.

• Kimsooja
  Your perception of my work with regards to the spectrum of time is interesting. It is true that it looks current but at the same time quite old. I think this is because through most of my work I've been pursuing a sense of universality that is timeless and fundamentally truth—general human experiences. I also think that the present tense is created as the presence of my body as it functions as a medium or a void, through which the audiences gaze, rather than as an static and iconic representation. I don't believe in creating something new but in inventing new perspectives based on mundane daily life as it relates to contemporary art.

• Kelly Gordon
  What are you working on now, and how is it like or unlike A Laundry Woman - Yamuna River, India and your other video works?

• Kimsooja
  All my projects can look similar and at the same time be totally different. I've been working on a project called Mumbai: A Laundry Field since 2006, and am adding a couple more channels now. I've been to Mumbai again this year to film in another slum area where many people sleep on the streets, and I plan to go back this summer to film during the monsoon season. It is quite different from the other videos I've made so far, closer to a documentary format, without commentary but with edits. This piece brings together many of my previous practices relating to fabrics, the human body, and humanity, so it has a retrospective element to it.
  Another video I am making now is called A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon, which is a four channel video I filmed in Goa, showing the parallel relationship with The Sun and The Moon overlapped on top of the ocean waves and its reflections. I still have a series of videos I've been working on since 2005, involving architectural cityscapes around the world, which I haven't been able to finish yet. Other than that, I have a few other site-specific architectural projects I am currently working on in Europe, as well as a few other site-specific projects.
  I actually don't think about consistency and the pieces' relationship to my other work. I believe they must be related naturally in the larger scheme. I only focus on trying to break my own boundaries by constantly questioning and opening up new horizons.

• Kelly Gordon
  Your work often explores the physical and metaphorical aspects of materials and threads. What is the source of your fascination with textiles? How has this been manifest as your practice has evolved?

• Kimsooja
  My fascination with fabric as a medium began when I was sewing a Korean bedspread with my mother in 1983. At this time I was questioning the "dimension of the surface on painting," and also searching for a methodology that could reveal the horizontal and vertical structure of the world in a way not yet examined in the history of painting. When I put a needle into the structure of the fabric, which has both a vertical and horizontal surface, I was thrilled and exhilarated, as if a ray of energy that seemed to come from the whole universe was penetrating through my body and my hands, and reaching to the needle point where it met the surface of the fabric. I was also interested in the fact that sewing layers on top of the structure of the fabric in a circular, performative way. This was the moment of my encounter with the yin and yang energy that has evolved in many different paths and levels in my practices.

• Kimsooja, who comes from a nomadic tradition in which all of one's possessions were designed to be folded up and taken away, recalls Chen's "transexperience" in both her heritage and her current experience as a woman living between her Korean past and her Western present. Her sculpture and installation works are combined with or accompanied by performances in which she appears as an alter ego known variously as A Needle Woman, A Mirror Woman, or A Beggar Woman. In the video A Needle Woman, 1999-2001, Kimsooja sits impassively, her back to the camera, in front of a variety of bustling streets — in Cairo, Delhi, Lagos, London, Mexico City, New York, Shanghai, and Tokyo — becoming a kind of motionless center, a cosmic outsider, existing in another time and consciousness apart from the world around her.

• A Mirror Woman: The Ground of Nowhere, 2003, a sixty-foot-high vertical cylinder of white fabric, was installed in the lobby of Honolulu's colonial-era City Hall, whose atrium roof Kimsooja arranged to have reopened. Sealing off all but the opening to the sky directly above the fabric column, she placed a mirror floor on the ground the column's center, so that visitors who stepped inside found themselves standing on a piece of sky. Meanwhile, the fabric swayed gently in the breeze, creating a seemingly living, breathing space. Clouds drifting above and reflected below suggested, paradoxically, the feeling of rolling on an open sea. As part of an arts festival celebrating Korean immigration to the United States, A Mirror Woman referenced the immigrant's sense of destabilized identity, but it also provided a universal experience of merging with earth and sky.

• Within the confines of our linear notion of experience and imagination, the conjunction of sun and moon is merely an idea and, to us, unthinkable. Exceptional constellations of planets, such as the eclipses of the sun and the moon, are, by their very essence, quite different, for these do not feature the two celestial bodies at the very same time, but more the moment of shadow when the one is moving in front of the other and robbing it of light. The actual conjunction of sun and moon bursts the bounds of our reality, in a way that has always been conceived as metaphor for expressing the transgression of the impossible, the transgression of the duality of day and night that occludes all formulae and laws of time and place. The conjunction of sun and moon is the icon of impossibility.

• When, in her video installation A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon, Kimsooja lets us experience precisely this impossibility on screen, she is not working with tricks. The sequence of images unfolds in real time, for the full duration of sunset and moonrise. One could almost say that the work of art in itself, however, remains invisible: it is the very point where Kimsooja is standing and observing the events in the sky. The artist is positioned on a spot, which is precisely gauged by seismograph, in fact at the zero point of a place, in that splice of space between the planets, in the chink between the orbits of sun and moon, on the verge of consciousness, at the brink of the mirror. The rest is waiting, with a fixed camera and an open frame, so that the rise of the moon and the setting of the sun are able to overlie one another.

• Yet what does this say about the event, which the viewer is experiencing in that pictorial space, spanned between the four walls of Kimsooja's latest 4-channel video installation? For the fascination that takes hold of the viewer is immense; when, right at the threshold, one is caught up by the incessant sound of waves, when one gazes, transfixed, onto that horizon of the ocean which, in barely noticeable motion, traverses a silvery pane of light that has risen from the endlessly soft, shallow waves, whitely shimmering, roseate in reflection and alabaster in transparency, whilst the line of the horizon is left more and more below. And at the same time, and just as slowly, a red glowing ball of sun that glimmers in the foam moves closer to this extremely large moon, at some point touches its upper outer edge, enters into the circle of the moon, touches from inside against that selfsame edge to glide with the same slowness, yet moving freely, across the silvery surface of that circular pane and at some point, touch from inside against its lower edge and then, still touching this lower edge from the outside, gradually leaves the moon to move closer to the horizon, gradually, almost unnoticeably yet all of a sudden, immerses itself into its space of haze and disappears. There are several forms of motion that interlink in this pictorial space: not only do sun and moon draw closer to one another in the opposing orbits of their rise and fall. In ancient harmony, the waves of the ocean surge and join in with the orbits of the planets: the more the moon rises, the more the waves pull back, and over and over again wash over the sand. Shadow-like, against the light, palm leaves stir in the wind as if to tune in with the chorale in this momentous gathering of breath. For the waves that ceaselessly wash over the sands, withdraw, only to spill over the sand again, seemingly inscribed in the cosmic harmony of the huge orbital paths of the moon and those of the sun that, as we know, embody the illusion of the actual movement of the earth. The slow rhythm of the barely noticeable motion is in alignment with the shallowness of the waves, which at no single moment ever rear up into dramatic walls of water but, restrained and soft, roll on in horizontal dynamics in accompaniment to the line of horizon. The longer one is transfixed by this sequence of images, the more it appears as if the planetary orbits and the waves of the ocean are borne and pulsated by one single respiratory movement, as if one could imagine something like a cosmos, the founding principle of which lies in the simplest of movements, namely that of aspiration and exhalation, a constant contraction and expansion. This all engulfing breath is described by Hermann Broch after his contemplation of nature at night: "The quietude aroused by the drawing of breath, the night filled with the drawing of breath and, evolving from night and tranquillity, that omnipresence, that breath of the world in sleep. The dark exhaled, became more and more structured, filled with minion upon minion, ever more terrestrial, ever more abounding in shadow. (...) And that breathing being wandered through the breath of the night, over field and garden and sustenance, they too drawing their breath; and the breath of the universe opened itself to receive the creature, opened to the Oneness of the world that, in receiving love, receives its own structure." [1]

• The singularity of the work of Kimsooja, however, is that she does not illustrate such an idea as cosmic breath or universal principle that might well apply to the creation as a whole, but vice-versa, she derives it from an "almost" everyday observation. For were one to gaze like Kimsooja and her camera, one would after all be able to observe this conjunction of sun and moon, this respiratory chorale of the planetary orbits and the movement of the ocean every single month. In fact it is this fundamental principle of breathing that correlates very distinctly here with her previous work. And it is only in viewing this new video composition that the dimension of the light and sound of her former composition To Breathe (invisible mirror / invisible needle), 2005, now becomes clearer; for this work, Kimsooja composed a genuine chorale from the sound of her own breathing and performed it at the Venetian theatre La Fenice; coloured light projections switched their respiratory rhythm as they took their cue in front of the closed stage to then roam through the audience. A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon also relates to the performance A Needle Woman, Kitakyushu, 1999, when Kimsooja, in supine position, nestles close to a rock to become part of that breathing horizon, her back turned towards the viewer whose gaze she can thus transport conjointly with her own into the far distance. Likewise related to this work is also the complex performance of A Needle Woman between 1999 and 2001, when Kimsooja placed herself as immovable vertical axis in the midst of crowds of people who are streaming by, this one single moment of an encounter gauged in an extended time. For what we see when looking at the planetary orbits of A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon is indeed this, an encounter between differing time currents that meet up at one particular point.

• It might well seem to be symbolic of the work of Kimsooja when, on a second wall in A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon video installation, she shows the slow, gleaming approach of a shallow wave as it rolls to splay out over the sand, which has become a mirror of the returning waters and reflects the glowing spot of light from the sun. Infinitely gentle, the flat wave slinks towards the mirror of light, touching its outer edge, to spill a little more over this second sun before withdrawing, only to start again. The soft gentleness of this wave as it spreads over the sand calls to mind that fabric which in Korea traditionally has served as a Ybulbo, which is the Korean word for these artistically woven and decorated cotton or silk bedcovers that can be wrapped for multiple uses as a Bottari (a bundle). For people sleep on these spreads, children are born on them; they serve to wrap up items for safekeeping or for travel and were also used to carry the ill, or to cover and transport the deceased. Not only does this reflecting imagery relate to this fabric, one of the principal leitmotifs in Kimsooja's work, but also, and above all, the motif of the mirror emerges that in like manner is one of the recurrent elements in her work and plays a major role in her installation A Mirror Woman, 2002: here, a number of lines of these traditional bedcovers were suspended across a large interior space; the walls were mirrored, so that countless fabrics were reproduced in endless space. The performance A Laundry Woman, Yamuna River, 2000, in Delhi also could be understood as the imagery of a mirror; for once again, as immovable axis of time, the artist stands on the bank of the burial river; a few miles further down the river the dead were being burnt; and some residue of the decoration that was not combustible was borne onwards by the river together with ashes of the incinerated bodies. With her back to the viewers, her gaze carries their eyes into the distance, over the river and its horizon and the comparison with the mirror is set: whereas the river will ever continue to flow, the artist becomes conscious of her own shorter span of life. A sort of leap in time is set in scene, derived from observation of the world around us and culminating in the laws of the universe.

• And this is exactly what is happening when in the A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon the sand is washed over, when the waves roll leisurely to the shore to play with the sun mirror: an everyday perspective that in the sequence of orbital imagery becomes an insight into cosmic motion. For the longer one contemplates this pictorial space, the more it seems as if it were the most natural thing that the motion of the waves, which at some point touch the mirrored sun, is inscribed in the imagery of wandering orbits of sun and moon. What is so breathtaking about this? Is this phenomena not related to the question of boundaries, the awesome secret of dynamics and power that seem, just as with the waves, to set constraints on the motion and expansion of the moon, the sun and the earth? Time and again, Kimsooja uses her observations of the world around us to span and create her own spatiality, one that is far removed from our understanding and touches upon the enigmas of the cosmos. Hardly any mystical train of thought would seem to open the door to such abundance of imagery as in Judaism, where those dynamics of a power, which is able to dictate here and no further, is considered as one of the divine manifestations, namely Shaddai. What is so surprising about this term, which denotes the forces of equilibrium of the universe, is that the cabalistic numerical value of its letters is 314; in other words, it corresponds exactly to the Greek pi. So that the mathematical, transcendental number for the rapport between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, i.e. the very tension and expansion of the circle, reflects the ancient mystical conceptions of Shaddai. [2] These spherical movements also coincide in the work of Kimsooja with the notion of cosmic forces, when moon and sun wander across sea and sky and, spellbound, we watch how they traverse the horizon of the earth, well knowing that this horizon, like the movement of the sun, is nothing but a deception of our own restricted range of vision. In the imagery of the 4-channel video installation A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon, the other walls, the third and the fourth, show formations of water that are immersed in the roseate silvery light of the moon as it rises at the same time as the sun sets. In one of these sequences, the camera takes a close shot of the heaving sea without shoreline or horizon. The viewer merges into the incessant breathing of the sea, as it gives forth its waves, allowing them to rise and subside in eternal circuit, as if the sea were fitted with a flywheel. On the fourth wall, shallow waves lap over some small rocks, swelling upwards to cover them, only to withdraw again to release the stones. Rather like a fixed marking, the stones appear to be parameters for the motion of the waves; here too, an encounter takes place between differing conjunctures. It is the endless repetition of the motion of the waves that gives a homogeneous sense of time; because of the persistent contraction and expansion of the ocean, the breathing of the sea, the viewer becomes susceptible to the circuit of the celestial bodies in the selfsame endlessness of their return. In this image, time is tangible; it is duration; as Bergson would say, a "homogeneous medium" which leaves behind the dimension of a succession of events. [3] It would be possible here to draw a comparison with the myths surrounding the wheel, the association of the potter's wheel, i.e. the principle of creation and the unremitting whirl of its cycles. The sole chance of escaping from this constant rotation is, as Indian and Asian sages teach, [4] by concentrating on the innermost Self. And that is why, more on a sublimed level than from a formal aspect, one could say that this work A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon has the strength of being the sum of Kimsooja's oeuvre — up to the present day.

• However, when the works of Kimsooja consistently bring over this moment of supreme and absolute presence, this concentration on the innermost Self, then it is possible to recognise here her utter self-containment and inner repose, where quietude and meditation are more an inner position than any exceptional condition and penetrate every moment of her day. In the same way, her work is embedded in the direct, close observation of the world surrounding us.

• This too is how the photographs The Sun - Unfolded were generated that strike as if from another world. Magical circles of spectral colours take concentric shape around the sun, like rays of light that unfold in concentric waves. The Sun - Unfolded is the name of these concentric circles that are reminiscent of a mandala. The distinctive element of the work of Kimsooja is, however, that these photographs are not manipulated; they were taken on the brink, as it were, by coincidence, whilst preparing the video A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon on Goa beach. It is paradoxical that it is in particular these photographs, which seem to complete this work; as if the sunlight itself reveals its secret and in one wave-like respiratory movement, unfolds the energy that lightens our vision day by day.

• And it is interestingly this somewhat incidental creation, which, compared to the cosmic works of Kimsooja hitherto, comes full circle. For in the year 2003 she created A Mirror Woman: the ground of nowhere. In a room that was open to the sky the artist installed a 19-metre oscillating pillar composed of strips of muslin; on the ground she placed a mirror of the same diameter. Stepping through the wafting muslin, the visitor hence looked downwards to the sky and could watch the clouds and seagulls pass beneath his feet. On the one hand, just as with a glance into a well, there is the surprise effect of the world being upside-down; on the other, however, as so often in her work, Kimsooja broaches the sensitive topic of displacement, the fate of the emigrant who lives the experience that there is no ground any more under his feet, his only anchorage being within himself and in the sky. Yet in terms of the moon and the sun orbits, another dimension becomes apparent, namely that of the wholeness of the world, the idea of oneness that is found in the Egyptian writings of Hermes Trismegistos: "That which is above is the same as that which is below and that which is below is the same as that which is above". [5] This train of thought, which in its substance said that all is derived from The One and can be returned to The One, maintained its validity from the times of classical antiquity in the writings of Plato, of the Renaissance at the Medici court, through to the era of the Enlightenment and its philosophers, such as Leibniz. Again today, these thoughts are topical in the search for a systemic image of man and universe. In the eastern world of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, the idea of Oneness has always been at the heart of spiritual imagery. Emphasis is made of this philosophy here because in the series The Sun - Unfolded it would seem to find its icon. Peculiar as it is, these circles are identical to the drawings of Leibniz when setting down his own philosophy of The One.

• The concentric waves of light from the work The Sun - Unfolded also come full circle in To Breathe - A Mirror Woman, which Kimsooja installed at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid. From glass wall to glass wall, a mirror covered the flooring so that the construction of the high glass vault repeated itself beneath the feet of the visitor and swung in the bottomless space of doubled dimension. The entire cupola of the palace was covered with a transparent refractile coating, so that inside the endless space, a coloured light, such as found in church windows, set about its dancing twirls and doused the visitor in a thousand-fold splatter of spectral colours. Here too, the room was replete with the sound of the artist's breathing, the rhythm of which varied according to differing states of emotion, from joy, calm, doubt and anxiety through to a confidence reclaimed. The sound of breathing throws the visitor involuntarily back onto himself and his own rhythm of breathing. This is what is so unparalleled in the work of Kimsooja. The viewer is included in the pictorial space and an intimate dialogue is threaded between the viewer and the work of art; the artist knows how to render herself invisible and to transpose her own experience to the viewer. And this is precisely what happens in the oeuvre A Mirror Woman: The Sun & The Moon: her position at the zero point between the orbits of the moon and the sun becomes a place in the splice of space, at the dividing wall of the mirror that generates consciousness; from here, she can view the impossible, open her range of vision into the cosmos, intensify her own sense of consciousness towards transcendence. At this moment of absolute presence, an ethical dimension reveals itself; this absolute liberty demands the relinquishment of territory, the relinquishment of an identity that is defined by belonging; it calls for an awareness that concentrates utterly and absolutely on the Self.

• Translated from the German by Pauline Elsenheimer.

• Identifying nomadism as a condition that is inevitably linked to contemporary existence, Kimsooja draws on her own continual displacements as material that is indispensable for the creation of her work. Repeating an experience connected to her nomadic childhood, she positions herself in new contexts, in which she renegotiates the uniqueness of her identity.

• Although directly tied to her biography, Kimsooja’s art does not indulge in narrative details, but instead strives to transform the subjective into the universal. Thus, whether she finds herself amid the crowd in Shanghai, New York, Tokyo, or Mexico City, or at the edge of a river or sea in any part of the world, whenever the artist appears in her work, she portrays herself from the back. Transforming presence into absence, her figure becomes a means, a door thrown open to the world’s infinite mutability.

• Taking the form of videos, installations, or performances, many of Kimsooja’s works recognize the act of sewing as a powerful metaphor. Like a needle, which is capable of disappearing after having connected otherwise separate fragments, Kimsooja sees the value of her art in its possibilities for uniting individuality and multiplicity, body and spirit, East and West.

• Sometimes the artist uses bottari, bundles of bedcover fabric traditionally employed in Korea, her native country. Usually employed for transporting objects connected to daily life, they embody the very idea of wandering and the multiple facets of elation and sorrow.

• The word bottari also appears in a series of videos to which the work in the collection, Bottari: Alfa Beach, 2001, belongs. The video was filmed in Africa, on a Nigerian beach whose name is linked to the slave trade. The work features the inversion of the horizon line, exchanging the position of the sky with that of the sea. Seemingly simple, the reversal suggests the sudden impossibility of establishing one’s own position in the world, evoking the drama of the slaves who were kidnapped from their own land and forced to face voyages to destinations utterly unknown to them. The sense of dislocation is heightened by the lack of sound.

• David Claerbout's work Shadow Piece opens the view from the inside to the outside, from the house to the street. Streets and houses shape the city. The city is a space. Michel de Certeau describes space as "a web of movable elements. It is to a certain extent filled by the totality of the movements that unfold within it. It is therefore a result of activities that give it a direction, that temporalize it." [1] This result doesn't yet define identity and unity; the city manifests itself as "a single mass of pedestrians..., a web of slapdash, out‑of‑the‑way accommodations, a traversing of your assumed own places and a universe of rented places, which are beset by a non‑place or dreamed‑up places." [2] Our concepts are not clear. Do place and space stand in relation to each other like house and place to the street, like standing‑still to going on, like the closed to the open? Does the place at first seem to us to be something stable and motionless, only a point at which we come to a halt and where we linger? But as soon as something happens at the location and with the location, i.e., a movement, it expands, becomes a space that leads to other spaces. Places have the most diverse functions. They divide up the protected area I can retreat to. They are also public zones that I share with others, places where I meet confidants just as much as places that are transitory and anonymous. Places can be places of passage, transit rooms, railway stations, ticket offices, where people pass each other, where they disperse to other parts of the city via a network of streets. The city is not merely a sequence of places and not a static geometry of streets. It is, repeatedly, a newly created movement in time and space, in which the different processes of walking come together: the goal‑oriented, or meandering and strolling walk, walking around, passing‑by, lingering. The city happens. In a fancy‑free stroll through Paris, the French situationists à la Guy Debord created another, open structure of experience, i.e., their own changing topography of the city beyond any fixed plan. The activity of pedestrians who take over the city space generates an urban network, provides the city with energy and determines its velocity. The reality of growing cities encompasses both the sedentary and the nomadic. It's a reality that can bear me up or isolate me. A café, a street, a quarter are familiar to me, but at the next corner I am already a stranger. The city is like an organism, which is held together in some way or other that I cannot really make out. In order to move around in the city, I have to constantly tear up my roots; in walking, I disengage myself from a place and fail to reach it. Some live in the city; they remain, they wait, have in fact not arrived, remain underway.

• In her four‑channel video installation A Needle Woman from 2000‑2001 (Fig. p. 110/111), Kimsooja stands with her back to the viewer as a stationary, vertical axis in the heart of four metropolises: Mexico City, Cairo, Lagos and London, in a stream of people who meet her and go past her. At first the viewer takes in the waves of intermingling passersby, the continuum of urban life, into which the artist has plunged. In the midst of the mass movement, the artist appears, in her own words, to be a "barometer", a "witness", a "compass", a "surveying pin" that records the different cultures. [3] Like a pin, she pricks into the colorful social tissue of the cities, sews different societies together. [4] Kimsooja sees the pin as an extension of her body; she overcomes in‑between spaces and disappears again. The thread remains as a binding and mediating trace of the ghost in the tissue's weave. [5]

• The fact that people always move in the same way seems to blend cities into a global unconcern in which the artist surfaces at random, alternating locations, but a closer look also shows peoples' social identities in differing hierarchies, classes, relations to each other, different reactions to the artist that are noted or avoided and ignored. In London's cosmopolitan bustle, people walk around self‑engrossed, unreceptive, single‑minded. In Lagos they react with curiosity, laughter, irritation. In one city, Kimsooja becomes transparent, almost vanishes; in the other she appears as a counterpart. She is both present and absent, part of the cities' space and time and outside of that space and that time. She obviously stands in the way as a physical impediment and yet her physical existence is ignored. She meets the others and is isolated; she is divided from the life of the others and in the same way integrated in the passage of that Iife. The viewer looks at the back of the artist, takes up her position and also that of the people who go past her, tries to imagine Kimsooja's face that radiates self‑confidence and the safety in staying within the flow of passing life. Even when she is a perceived object, her inner nature remains closed to the others. She is the observer as such, not only of what happens around her, but also of the processes that go on inside her.

• The speed of the video has been reduced by 50 percent. By means of this prolongation, time, the artist's encounters, the flow of people, stationary and fleeting time -all are more intensely experienced. The artist is the indicator of time and space; both make up a unit, both are physical. "Although, when I place my motionless body in space as a vertical axis, I create a form of timelessness, I simultaneously open up another movement: it is a vertical movement directed inwards; time in the form of consolidation. We cannot separate the coexistence of time and corporeality and therefore of spatiality; they will always belong together." [6] A Needle Woman thus transmits three perceptions of time, standing still in the body of the artist in which past, present and future meet, which, in comparison and despite the slowdown, incorporates the visible speed of the other passing figures plus the perspective of the viewers, who stand respectively for real‑time.

• Kimsooja, on the one hand, opposes the acceleration of life; her motionlessness highlights the floundering, empty movement and temporal mechanism of the human stream around her. But it is also possible to see this the other way around. In this case the unceasing, endless wave of people is the stationary and enduring part and the artist is the existence that is in motion, will go on, pass away, decompose and disappear. Kimsooja speaks of the finitude and infinity of being. We are in time and timeless; we are transient and without any durable substance and thus also have access to and an experience of delimitation, of transcendence or going beyond time.

• Although the nomadic lifestyle is a characteristic phenomena of this era, it could also be one's choice; we can still live without moving around much and be rooted in one's own place. Human curiosity and the desire for communication expands its physical dimension and happens to control human relationships and the desire for possessions, and pursuing the establishment of a global community, which includes the virtual world. But a true nomadic life wouldn't need many possessions, or control and it doesn't need to conquer any territory; it's rather an opposite way of living from a contemporary lifestyle, with the least amount of possessions, no fear of disconnection, and being free from the desire of establishment. It is a lifestyle that is a witness of nature and life, as a kind of process of a pilgrim. Nomadism in contemporary society seems to be motivated from the restless desire of human beings and its follies, rather than pursuing true meaning from nomadic life.

• A prominent subtheme resonates throughout the works in "Listening Awry" — the contrast between the modalities of sound and vision. In Kimsooja's Mandala: Zone of Zero (2004), this contrast assumes transcultural, historical, and metaphysical dimensions. Unlike the other works in the exhibition, one first experiences Mandala indirectly, as a faint light softly diffusing around the edges of a pair of partitions. Visitors follow the glimmer through a dim transitional space to then enter a cloistered, alternative realm. The main feature is a radiant, vividly‑hued jukebox, outfitted with mirrored tesserae and flashy ornamentation, and positioned squarely to face the beholder. Carpeting hushes one's footsteps, and the overall calming effect is enhanced by serene, twilight blue walls engulfing the space, lit solely by the jukebox's incandescence. Incongruously, a soundtrack of Tibetan Buddhist, Gregorian and Islamic chants resonates in the room, providing a sacred vocal counterpoint to the visual flamboyance of the jukebox. The disparity between sound and vision could hardly be more extreme or more succinctly composed. Eastern vs. Western cultures, traditional vs. postmodern sensibilities, spiritual vs. materialistic pursuits — these and other polarities suffuse Kimsooja's installation and create a form of listening awry based on paradoxical juxtaposition.

• In many ways, the jukebox epitomizes the materialism of American culture. Recalling the postwar optimism and economic surge of the 1950s, the jukebox serves as an icon for youthful, leisurely distraction and ephemeral popular culture. A conspicuous fixture of bars, diners, bowling alleys and other socializing venues for the past century, it still maintains a cultural relevance in the digital era in the figure of the "celestial jukebox" — the utopian repository of personal choice and universal variety. Either as a nostalgic cultural artifact or futuristic ideal for the music industry, the jukebox functions as both the object and enabler of desire. With its flickering reflections, gaudy colours, streaming bubbles, and roulette‑wheel appearance, Kimsooja's jukebox, however, would seem to be one of the last items to be associated with spirituality. Even as the readymade stands alone, disconnected from its complementary cabinet of records or CDs, hovering transcendently, its link to the superficialities of consumer culture and the escapist pleasures of mass entertainment renders it seemingly antithetical to introspection.

• Yet, for the artist, the jukebox hears an uncanny resemblance to the geometric schema present in a number of religious traditions, specifically Tibetan Buddhism and Hindu Tantrism. Mandala, the Sanskrit term for "circle," is a sacred diagram that facilitates concentration for spiritual initiates. Symbolically, it can depict the figure of one or several deities, represent the stages of consciousness that adepts pass through on the way to enlightenment, as well as delineate an outline of the cosmos. The formal correspondences between the jukebox and mandalas are striking: both employ hands of concentric circles, a central focal point, and four equidistant markings or "gates" at the cardinal points. For Kimsooja, who moved to New York from Korea in 1998, the similarities were remarkable, if not also painfully ironic. Contrary to the discipline and profundity embodied by the mandala, the jukebox's visual cacophony is designed to amuse. Its entrancing spectacle may inspire stillness to some degree, though probably due more to hypnosis than meditation. Nevertheless, the overall effect of the lights, carpet and enveloping blue walls (blue being one of the conventional signifiers of divinity) conveys a palpable sense of tranquility and sanctuary.

• The chanting of monks from three major world religions resound through the space and counteract the jukebox's glitzy presence. At times sonorous, at other times discordant, the chants go in and out of phase as each becomes dominant at various points in the mix. The deep, rumbling bass of Tibetan monks forms a near‑continuous drone upon which the mid‑range polyphonic melodies of a Gregorian choir glide over. At a higher register, the ecstatic vocalizations of a muezzin calling the faithful, along with the ringing of bells, pierce through to intensify the devotional collage. The outpouring of these traditional, centuries‑old chants from a commercial jukebox — instead of the expected pop, rock, hip‑hop, or country & western tunes — not only reconceives the mechanism but also the character of the museum space and those within it. No longer a neutral site for aesthetic contemplation, Mandala charges its surroundings with the mystical energies said to be evoked by the recitation of mantras, prayers and holy texts.

• Which side prevails in this "zone of zero," as the subtitle of the piece indicates? Does the simultaneous presence of different belief systems bring forth a greater unity or effect a canceling out? Are the chants reduced to the level of commercial top ten hits, in essence nullifying their esoteric meaning, or is Mandala an object cleverly adapted for surreptitiously inserting spiritual content into a materialistic culture? In the general context of the relationship between the East and West, the artist considers their two opposing sensibilities to be engaged in a dialectic, one that brings together "all basic phenomena of art and life":

• Eastern thought often functions as passive and reserved expression: invisible, non‑verbal, indirect, disguised and immaterial. Western thought functions more with issues of identity, controversy, gravity, construction and materiality. The process is finally the awareness and necessity of the presence of both in contemporary art and life. It is the Yin and Yang, a co‑existence that endlessly transforms and enriches.

• But more than just a confrontation between consumerism and devotion, Mandala's creation after the invasion of Iraq informs its significance. Like her audio piece Letter from New York (2001), which collages together the chanting of Tibetan monks along with police sirens and jet engines that allude to the World Trade Center attacks, Mandala emerges out of a climate of crisis. The invasion of Iraq has been questioned by many for its dubious rationale and disastrous consequences for the Iraqi population and security around the world. The artist, disturbed by the U.S.'s unprincipled foreign policy and subsequent catastrophes, sought to identify its root causes, which she located in the materialism at the heart of the American ethos. Given this social and political context, Mandala provides both a critique and an antidote. In Kimsooja's meditative space, conflicting sonic and visual experiences combine, antithetical cultural practices interpenetrate, and polarized spiritual and secular sensibilities co‑exist to offer visitors the chance to contemplate the possibility of an improbable, but all‑too necessary, harmony within difference.

• A striking aspect of the works discussed above is the degree to which the body is implicated. As Richard Leppert notes, a central paradox of sound lies in its contradictory semiotic status — while the product of (sometimes intense) physical activity, it nevertheless serves as a paradigm of abstraction and ephemerality. Such foregrounding of the physicality of sound's production, as well as its reception, becomes another subtheme in the practices associated with listening awry. Tse, for example, plays the cello and inserts her own body into the dialogic relationship with the natural landscape. Sierra, meanwhile, enlists buglers to stand and perform a twenty‑four‑hour aural fusillade. The simple fact of their bodily presence aggravates the metropolitan security apparatus and confirms the piece's provocational significance. For Marclay, the body is the endpoint for a series of translations that originate in music. However mute, the body conveys a version of musicality twice‑removed via gestural performance. And in the case of Kimsooja's enveloping installation, the bodies of viewers themselves become sound resonators within the sanctuary‑like space. An emphasis on corporeality in these works complements the notion of embeddedness informing "Listening Awry": The embodiment of sound correlates with the embeddedness of sound in social practice, thus completing an overall circuit between listening and being, self and other, the individual and society. Through the din of trumpets, chants, echoes, and noisome gestures can be heard the knocking of the embedded against the embodied as history, affect and politics are brought forward for artistic reflection and critique.

Gesture of Memory and Communication of Usual Culture

• Kimsooja, the female artist now in her fifties, first drew attention from her performance in 1999 where she traveled around Korea on her truck loaded with hundreds of bottaries (bundles), soon rising to international fame by taking performances with themes of bottari and needles to Italy, the Seine River and the Liberation Square in France. Her main subject-matter, the bottari and the needle, reminiscent of the life of the modern people, their joys and sorrows, is apt to express issues such as the refugees, starvation, and cultural conflicts. Through the mediation of her body, Kim's performances are intended to show by reconstructing and actualizing our memories of cultural difference and the dogma of religion rising from troubling factors in any region in the world. Here, the body is functioning not as disconnection from the past but as a form of observation that connects herself to a group. The process of reconstruction of the past is proceeded in an unique frame of world interpretation not applied an individual – though one is the agent of the process – but to a group to which one belongs. Herein lies the reason why her performances become the content of communication.

• Memory is generally produced in the process of socialization. In this sense, Kimsooja's work is fundamentally to invent a new model for 'social memory'. Social memory, or group memory, consistently influences society in the context of tradition, but it is forgotten or eradicated when the group is dissolved through political or social upheaval. Substituting this phenomena which happen when existing social conditions changes for 'cultural memory (kulturelles Gedaechtnis)', Kim also alters the process that recalls the cultural archetype universal to mankind into the process of thinking of 'timeness.' These are expressed in her works such as , a performance in which she both stays in and moves through crowds of people, and in which she is wandering to search for her archetype which has been thrown into the world. 'Cultural memory' expressed by Kimsooja, though, is quite at a distance from memory that is concocted by political power.

• When a social group remembers a recent past they experienced, they actualize it through daily communication, acquiring a concrete identity. However the time span and social effectiveness of this 'vivid memory' is inevitably limited. A group that secures political hegemony in a give society tries to conceal the exclusiveness of their limited memory by means of casting back its origin to a far and remote past, subsequently attempting to acquire universal validity of its group that owns that memory. However, because 'origin' is separate from actual experiences and thus inevitably mythical, it is necessary to mobilize media such as, documents, texts, architecture, icon, gravestones, temples, monuments, rituals, festivals, and so on.

• Like this, 'cultural memory' means a social memory which institutionalizes and systematically transmits the significance of culture, constituting group identity. In the sense that it is closely connected to group identity, cultural memory is differentiated from history which seeks abstract and universal knowledge. Here, culture is communication via material basis or medium where cultural memory is takes root, and the development and changes of the medium plays a role in changing the mode of culture and cultural memory. The role of text as a leading medium for memory is replaced by that of photographs, video images, and computers as a consequence of the revolutionary development of multimedia in the twentieth century.

• The cultural memory which Kimsooja wanted to recognize, can be understood as a reinterpretation of the act of memorializing the deceased (returning to the cultural archetype). As Aleida Assmann noted, "the most essential and pervasive form of memory that connects the live and the deceased, is the respect towards the deceased"[1], also mentioning that while this tradition was maintained until the eighteenth century, it perished on the threshold of the modern period. Because the idea that the deceased occupies a legal and social status in the memory of the living has come to an end, the relation among cultural archetype, tradition and custom calls for an even closer examination.

• Here Assmann distinguishes two forms of memory: one is 'functional memory (Funktionsgedaechtnis)', structured to function directly according to immediate needs, and the other is 'storing memory(Speichergedaechtnis)', where experiences of the past and knowledges are stored via media and accessed as necessary. History corresponds to the latter. If storing memory plays a role of basis on which functional memory is verified and corrected, then functional memory is the steerman of storing memory. With regard to this, Kimsooja's work can be defined as a kind of 'meta-memory' which performs 'the working of memory.' If history ― constructed in the form of universal or abstract discourse, which is nation-centered and elite-centered ― is an ideology which speaks for the power of authority in current society, Kim interprets the working of memory in the aspect of dissolving oppressed and forgotten truth. Instead of reflecting the experience of the past as it were, she reorganizes it in a way to appeal to the cultural identity; that is, she artificially organizes it to have the marks of the minority be understood more vividly in ordinary life. By freeing herself from the grand discourse of social or political issues and looking back on herself, she pursues diversity instead of unity and attempts a shift in the perceiving of conflict.

• Kimsooja refuses a voluntary submission to authoritarianism and exclusivism ― self-rationalizing within collectivism ― and attempts at a social consent that takes its form in an act of rational distancing from the group to which one belongs. This is an effort to understand that the cause of contradiction and conflict as analysed in history, or remembered culture coexist within and without herself. This is not an attempt to avoid social conflicts and contradictions, but a way to resolve the problems while constantly and actively confronting(Umgang) them. This way, Kimsooja pursues the return to the 'cultural archetype.' That is, works which remind us of the archetype of mythology, primitive or universal, or works which replaces contents ― harmonized through our body-as-nature ― with sound (in Weaving factory) or with natural scenary (in Earth, Water, Fire, Air), are manifestations of her effort to approach cultural archetype in an attempt to fill the gap of social, and historical differences. For proper understanding, the keyword, 'cultural archetype' calls for a detailed examination through the process of reflecting on history.

Private Possession of Cultural Archetype and Reflection on History

• Cultural archetype is a more confusing concept than that of culture, which itself is no less difficult to define. However we can gain some form of consensus at least in the area of art in that we are conscious of cultural propagation, cultural transmission and cultural change. Although there is conceptual vagueness, tradition, in a cultural memory that reconstructs the past, still holds an important position with regard to communicating with the past. When we cast back limited memory to a remote past, it is estranged from reality, then requiring a mythical symbol, and when the cultural archetype aspires towards traditional culture as a subject-matter of creation, it is frequently connected to mythical imagination.

• Of course, the concept of time used in cultural memory occupies a rather peculiar position. Time contemporaneously used within a specific group is their own time, but the timeness of cultural memory as transmitted memory is operating in a 'distended situation (die zerdehnte Situation)', a situation where it is disconnected and then reconnected. Cultural memory has a cultural meaning, in which the past and present are arranged and transmitted along the same line. Myth is the memory of origins, a memory which "is directed and experienced through the monumental field of communication, such as symbols, rituals or festivals. It is thus a memory which refers to what stands in contrast with the quotidian, or rather, to the root of being(dasein) that is excluded from the quotidian; it creates the meaning of the quotidian by making known the order towards which the quotidian should aim. It is a memory that, according to Assman, cures the lack in the quotidian."[2]

• We seek a kind of psychological comfort in the parallels of time. The discourse of memory vascillates between two contrasting axes of criticizing and enjoying the past. On the one hand, it dissolves the myth of the past, and on the other hand, it remythicizes it. Culture and cultural archetypes, and 'root-searching,' or re-mythicizing connected with tradition can eventually be reduced to the problem of modernization contained in culture. For a better understanding, here I quote a passage from the preface of The Invention of Tradition, written by Eric Hobsbawm.

• "However, insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of 'invented' traditions is that the continuity with it is largely factitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that makes the 'invention of tradition' so interesting for historians of the past two centuries."[3]

• If custom is the living past, tradition is a mental image that is 'invented' to hide the fact that it is actually disconnected from the past. In world history, it was in the nineteenth century that nationalism suddenly surfaced and European countries advocated their own culture by setting up the virtual other; now, Korea follows in their footsteps. From the late the twentieth century, Korea has been searching from within the virtual others which was invented in Europe. It is the so-called Re-Orientalism phenomenon. Paradoxically, when we remember our culture, we are either consciously or unconsciously approaching it from the viewpoint of Orientalism, a perspective invented in the West. Culture has basically been developed in the process of searching for identity, but as is the process of modernization in Korea, the identity of science is always the object of question, and the ordinary people's pursuit of self-identity has distortedly developed under the influence of the West, Japan and U. S. A. This trend once began to be replaced with independent viewpoints triggered by the Gwangju democratization movement in 1980, but now, thirty years later, it is being reversed again. The main slogan of this period is now back to the logic of the powerful, emphasizing only warped ends rather than the reasonability of means and processes. Here we need to understand the meaning of history which is molded through the process of modernization. Starting from the late nineteenth century, modernization in the Korean peninsula intersected with westernization, and at the same time awareness of our cultural identity began to emerge in earnest. This was, however, not a situation particular to East-Asian countries such as Korea or China, but a shared historical experience among late capitalism societies.

• Let us take Germany as an example, a late capitalist country in Europe. "The contrast between civilization and culture which was suggested by the German bourgeoisie may be considered pre-historical to the discourses of 'Chinese Substance and Western Function(中體西用, Zhongti Xiyong)' or 'Eastern Ways and Western Machines(東道西器, Tongtosoki)', both propagated by East-Asian countries when western European countries came in with imperialistic spoliation."[4] As is generally known, early modern Germany was under the influence of the spirit of the times(Zeitgeist) of the bourgeoisie, which justified their desire to compensate for their political-economical inferiority to western Europe (i.e. England and France) with spiritualism, that is, the belief that their values have intrinsic intellectual and artistic superiority[5]. 'Culture' and 'civilization' can be used interchangeably in English, but this was not possible in Germany. Kant's statement ― "We are cultivated(kultiviert) on a very high level by art and science...The ideology of morality belongs to culture(Kultur), but if we search for it only in something like the desire for fame, manners, or superficial courtesy, it would result in civilization(Zivilisierung)."[6] ― is speaking for the superiority of German culture which emphasizes inner morality in contrast to material and ostentatious civilization of Western Europe. German intellectuals since Kant in the eighteenth century understood culture in two different concepts: spiritual culture(Kultur) and material civilization(Zivilisation). Based on this understanding of the relationship between culture and civilization, Germany comprehended the First World War as bursting out from an intensified conflict between nations, as a cultural struggle of Germany, Central Europe, against the material civilization of Western Europe.

• Originating from the Latin word 'cultura(cultivation, education)', which is derived from the verb 'colere(to take care, to enlighten)', the concept of culture accentuates human intervention and has an especially close relation to education. The usage of 'culture' in modern Germany reflects the process of self-education of the individual and society. The dichotomous reasoning which divides higher spiritual culture and lower material culture and the concept of culture related to the concept of education are usually discovered in late modern society. The ancient concept of culture in the East has also been developed in the context of education and cultivation; 文化(culture) is derived from 以文敎化(education with literature), and this stems from a Confucian spirit of the humanities along with 文治敎化(educating people without punishment) and 德治敎化(educating people with virtue). In other words, it was a device invented to inspire active human intervention in the period of social change. The reason that late developing countries, taking top-down reformation strategies, seek for people's motivation ― urgently required in the process of economic development ― particularly in spiritual or moral aspects is that it is easy to obtain social consent from in those areas to the extent that they have deep affinity with cultural memory of pre-modern society. In this context, we can say that the concept of culture is directly connected to the problem of modernization still effective today.

• High culture formed in the German conception of culture is certainly different from folk culture, and its influence reached to Adorno, who criticized the culture industry in the middle of the twentieth century. Though Contemporary Korean society does show capitalist traits that are distinguishable from those of Western societies at that time, it is also possible to analyze Korean society in another way, according to which Korean society is relatively less classified than Western societies where culture is consumed discriminatively according to class. Instead of discriminatively accommodating or practicing culture according to class or hierarchical identity, contemporary Korean society shows a mixture of aspects that makes it difficult to discriminate cultural classes. However, when social change is analyzed in a broader perspective, considering the tendency to pursue dominant culture without forming resistant culture in the mixed state, we can find similar contrasts within the cultural traditions of East Asia, between the higher and the lower, and it has been influential until now on the process of modernization. A spirit-centered dichotomy and retrospective ways of thinking ― which are revealed in the logic of modernization, such as Chinese Substance and Western Function(中體西用, Zhongti Xiyong), Japanese Spirit and Western Techniques(和魂洋才, Wakon Yosai), Eastern Ways and Western Machines(東道西器, Tongtosoki) ― are still dominant, and in this continuous trend, the worries of returning to the spirit of the literary in this pursuit of the spirit of humanities sounds persuasive. In this tradition it is not easy for cultural memory to be free. It is necessary to examine this trend to find the root of culture. Theories of modernization in China or the later period of Chosun ― accepting social and economic modernization but refusing cultural modernization, that is, the coexistence with others ― approached contrasting relation between the old and new, the East and West from a compromising perspective. The cultural conservatism that is intrinsic in this compromise, such as Chinese Substance and Western Function, is not a phenomenon particular to the late nineteenth century. Nowadays, we heavily rely on Huntingtonian cultural essentialism when it comes to the interpretation of culture. Refusing the modern in the name of tradition on the one hand, criticizing tradition in the name of the modern on the other, the contrasting dichotomous discourse of modernism ― an all-out rejection and an all-out affirmation at the same time ― reveals our very reality.

Weaving the gap of difference with the language of the body

• Kimsooja, becoming a needle herself, has laboriously made the effort to weave with the weft and warp the gap between the world and people, suggesting the necessity to historically and structurally approach problems such as anti-democracy, authoritarianism, exclusivism and elitism. Now, the viewpoint that defines culture as antagonistic sectors, such as 'Asian value vs. Western value' or 'Confucianism vs. Buddhism, Western Christianity, Hinduism, or Islam' and so on, should be deemed outdated, and now, culture should be understood as that which has concrete forms, as a relation of harmony and communication in which diversity is respected [7]. If an interpretation of culture starts from the supposition that each culture has an extremely different world view on a deep spiritual level, this interpretation does not veer far from cultural essentialism [8]. Dieter Senghaas put, "If, however, the difference between the value profiles of a highly modernized and a less modernized society within one civilization is far greater than between the value profiles of societies at similar stages of development in different civilizations ― certainly a verifiable, sociologically plausible situation ― then the more recent international cultural debate would appear to be unrealistic."[9] The conflict between different cultural sectors is important, but the conflict between different groups within one cultural sector may be more serious. Consequently, Kimsooja's works are actions that show the activities of accepting the diversity of values into the language of the body, by contrasting actual elements of ritual with the difference of space between different cultures, or difference of time between the pre-modern and the modern coexisting within a given cultural sector. If the awareness of otherness is the product of the modern and the pursuit of cultural archetype a means to resolve present conflicts, what meaning does Kimsooja's work confer today? The cultural archetype plays a role as a medium which properly connects the role of the individual and the role of society. At this juncture, the artist requests that, through further active gestures, society respect diverse opinions and develop otherwise disagreeable ideas into a field of communication where they are no longer mutually exclusive.

• Kimsooja (Taegu, Korea in 1957) is one of the most acclaimed Korean artists in the international artistic panorama. Currently, she lives and works in New York. Her works have been exhibited at biennials such as Venice, Whitney (New York), Lyon, Kwangju (Korea), as well as in the most relevant museums around the world. In our country, she has participated in important exhibitions such as Mujeres que hablan de mujeres included in the program of Fotonoviembre (Tenerife, 2001), PhotoEspaña, Valencia Biennial in 2002, MUSAC (2005), among others. She makes installations, photographs, performances, videos and site specific projects, the most recent of which was presented in Madrid's Palacio de Cristal: To Breathe: A Mirror Woman. Not long before, she had presented another site-specific project at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Since 1993, one of the most distinguishable elements in her work are the bottari, a kind of bundle made of traditional Korean lively colored bedcovers, which is often used for packing old clothes. Nomadism is a key subject for her, but she also tackles issues such as the relation with the other and the feminine roles, revealing not only the importance of the human being in the chaotic world we are living in but also her loneliness and fugacity.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Studying your work over time, we can say that it is a very singular work. Nevertheless, you are always dealing with present issues, such as nomadism or the relationship with the others. What are the sources of your work?

• Kimsooja
  I guess the reason why my work has been engaged to present issues, regardless of a continuous singular context, is because I've been questioning old and fundamental issues on art and life. All human activities and problems come from the same root, which are old questions that have no answer, and endlessly repeat in history in one form or another. When we are planted in our own root, one can grow naturally from one's own source without trying to search another resources branches of temporary issues come out of this root in the end.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Has this singularity anything to do with an education such as yours, where Asian ways of thinking are mixed with the Western philosophy Christianity, Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism and Taoism?

• Kimsooja
  In general, the complicated religious background in Korean society might confuse one's identity rather than keeping it in singular mind. It seems to be more connected with one's personality and individual history rather than social tendency. I can say that I wanted to be firmly rooted in my own culture and my own perspectives. I noticed many Korean artists in my generation were imitating and easily adopting Western practices and philosophies without question, just by reading magazines and books. At that time, in the late 80's, I decided to stop reading for almost a decade. This allowed me to question, by myself, issues on art, and to pull out ideas from my own self, rather than exterior resources. Another reason I stopped reading books was that there were so many things to read in the world besides books and magazines life and nature. My mind was always active reading all of the visible and invisible world.

• Oliva María Rubio
  The bottari and the Korean traditional bedspreads with lively colours are characteristic elements of your work and have a strong presence in your installations. What do these elements represent for you?

• Kimsooja
  There are two different dimensions in my use of traditional Korean bedcovers: one is the formalistic aspect as a tableau and as a potential sculpture. The other is as a dimension of body and it's destiny that embraces my personal questions as well as social, cultural and political issues. The bright colourful bedcovers that celebrate newly married couples for happiness, love, fortune, many sons and long life are contradictory symbols for life in Korean society, for a country that is going through such a transitional period: from a traditional way of life to a modern one.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Despite the fact that you say you are not political matters, you have created several installations or pictures that are clearly related to political or social events, such as "Bottari Truck in Exile" (1999), presented in the 48th Biennial exhibition of Venice, or "Epitaph" (2002), a photograph taken after the September 11th attack against the World Trade Center in New York. What are the reasons for you tackle these subjects?

• Kimsooja
  My practices were started solely on my personal issues and structural questions on tableau, which can be seen in the beginning of my earlier 'sewing' work and my 'wrapping' series of Bottari. However, my artwork has gradually embraced basic human problems, which have recently become a bigger part of my questions and concerns. My own vulnerability and agony on life had a presence in my earlier work, which was an important part of the healing process for me to survive. It then transformed naturally into 'compassion' for others, and turned to the healing process for others. All of my works that relate to political issues and problems originate from 'compassion for the human being', people who suffer by violence, poverty, war and injustice, which often stem from individual problems and conflicts. I would say one can categorize some of my work as a political reaction, but it is more from concern on humanity, rather than as a direct political statement as an activist.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Between 1999 and 2001 you created one of your most relevant video installations, "A Needle Woman". A product of performances where you are the protagonist, always in the middle of a crowd in Tokyo, Shanghai, New Deli, New York, Mexico, Cairo, Lagos and London. For the 51st Biennial exhibition of Venice (2005) you did a new version traveling to another six cities: Patan (Nepal), Havana, Rio de Janeiro, N'Djamena (Chad), Sana'a (Yemen) and Jerusalem. Taking into account that many of these countries undergo serious problems, have you ever felt that something could happen to you? Which has been the strongest experience you have lived through while you were doing these performances?

• Kimsooja
  In terms of the performance itself, the A Needle Woman performance I did in Tokyo (1999) was the strongest experience I had. It was the first performance of the series. I was walking around the city with a camera crew to find the right moment and place where I could find the energy of my own body in it. When I arrived in the Shibuya area there were hundreds of thousand of people sweeping towards me, and I was totally overwhelmed and charged by the strong energy of the crowd. I couldn't help but to stop in the middle of the street amongst the heavy traffic of pedestrians. Being overwhelmed by the energy of the crowd, I focused on my body and stood still, and felt a strong connection to my own center. At the same time, I was aware of a distinguishable separation between the crowd and my body. It was a moment of 'Zen' when a thunderbolt hit my head, as I continued to stand still there, and I decided to film the performance with my back facing the camera. During the performance there were moments I was conscious of my presence, but with the passage of time, I was able to liberate myself from the tension between the crowd and my body. Furthermore, I felt such a peaceful, fulfilling, and enlightened moment, growing with white light, brightening over the waves of people walking towards me.

• Oliva María Rubio
  The first series of "A Needle Woman" was focused on encountering people in eight Metropolises around the world. The second version, made in 2005 with the same title, was focused on cities in trouble, from poverty, political injustice, colonialism, religious and political conflict in between countries and within a country, civil war, and violence.

• Kimsooja
  I chose the most difficult cities in the world, although I couldn't make it to a few of the cities I wished to visit, such as 'Darfur' in Sudan, and 'Kabul' in Afghanistan. It was one of the most difficult trips I've ever experienced in my life. The difficulties with this series of performances were more about the conditions of traveling, rather than during performance time.

• When I first visited Nepal, the country was in a state of emergency, and there was no phone service in between the cities and even countries, with no internet connection during most of my stay. Foreign ambassadors were being called back to their own countries, gunshots were heard from different parts of the country while traveling, and armed soldiers were occupying every corner of the streets in Kathmandu. Even in my video, there's a scene with armed soldiers passing by. To be able to travel to Havana in Cuba, I had to travel through Jamaica, as there was no direct airline service, and no collaboration whatsoever between the US and Cuba. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I went to a huge favela area called Rocinha, where I heard a series of gun shots from one mountain side to another, as if they were shooting directly from the back of me. I was standing on the roof of the central part of the area surrounded by mountains of poverty although local people considered it to be signals between the drug dealers. I also saw a number of young men carrying guns in the middle of narrow alleys to control the people in that neighbourhood. I also witnessed more poverty in N'Djamena in Chad, which is known as one of the poorest countries in the world. I witnessed conflicts between Yemen and Israel. I could only travel from Sana'a in Yemen to Jerusalem via Jordan, as there's no direct airline service in between these two countries, and the Yemeni people wouldn't allow me to enter their country if I was traveling from Israel.

• Oliva María Rubio
  When you are in these types of situations, there is no room for fear.

• Kimsooja
  People believe we live in an era of globalism, which allows us to travel freely and that we are connected to anywhere in the world, but in fact, it is not true, and the world is still full of discrimination, hatred, and conflict.

• When I finished these pieces, in slow motion, they turned out to be quite similar from one city to another, regardless of the problems within. We have a very shallow perception of ourselves in terms of our notion of time, and how we perceive an extreme situation in our own time frame, but in fact, all of these cities could be seen as a similar situation in a larger perception of time.

• Oliva María Rubio
  According to works such as "A Needle Woman" or even according to the symbolism of using the bottari, travel and changing places is very present in your career, both personal and professional. Could we say that the contemporary man is a nomadic being that is forced to go from one place to another without a rest?

• Kimsooja
  Although the nomadic lifestyle is a characteristic phenomena of this era, it could also be one's choice. We can still live without moving around much and be rooted in one's own place. Human curiosity and the desire for communication expands its physical dimension and happen to control human relationships and the desire of possessions, and pursuing the establishment of a global community, which includes the virtual world. But a true nomadic life wouldn't need many possessions, or control, and it doesn't need to conquer any territory; it's rather an opposite way of living from a contemporary lifestyle, with the least amount of possessions, no fear of disconnection, and being free from the desire of establishment. It is a lifestyle that is a witness of nature and life, as a kind of a process of a pilgrim. Nomadism in contemporary society seems to be motivated from the restless desire of human beings and it's follies, rather than pursuing true meaning from nomadic life.

• Oliva María Rubio
  During these past years you are going for site-specific projects. You have just finished one at La Fenice Theatre in Venice, and now this one in Madrid. What is the most attractive thing about this kind of projects?

• Kimsooja
  I wouldn't say site specific installation projects are more intriguing for me than other projects such as video, performance, and photos, as these were also site specific projects from my point of view. The difference is, for this type of site-specific installation, there's a solid question already existing, which I am interested in pondering. But the answer may raise another question to the audience. Other projects, such as video, performance or photos, are those I am questioning from myself, my own problems either in art practice or life, and the questioning goes both ways, to myself and to the audiences. I am interested in problems, questioning, and responding to the conditions of the site.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Once having seen the results of your project for the Palacio de Cristal (Crystal Palace) in the Retiro Park in Madrid, "To Breathe: A Mirror Woman", a work that consists of an intervention in the palace [a diffraction grating film that covers all the crystal part of the building and a mirror on the ground that works as the unifier and multiplier of the space and an audio with your own breathing from the performance "The Weaving Factory" (2004)], have your expectations been met? Is the result very different from your initial idea?

• Kimsooja
  Not totally, but only in terms of some technical issues. I've never used the diffraction grating film in my work before, and I'd been experimenting with its effects on a small scale model. The effect coming from the Crystal Palace, with actual sunlight, and its degree and direction, created a much more spectacular environment than from the model. I could envision the effect of the mirror floor and the effect of the sound within the Palacio de Cristal, as I had already experimented with both mirror and sound in other installations.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Considering that this new project for Crystal Palace is both a logical continuation and a new step in the development of your artistic career, what does it mean for you?

• Kimsooja
  From this project, I discovered 'Breathing', not only as a means of 'sewing' the moment of 'Life' and 'Death', but 'Mirroring' as a 'Breathing self' that bounces and questions in and out of our reality. Evolving the concept from my earlier 'sewing practice' into another perspective, 'Breathing' and 'Mirroring' as a continuous dialogue to my work was the most interesting achievement of a new possibility in experimenting with waves of light, sound, and mirror as a result of the space of emptiness.

• Oliva María Rubio
  What is the relationship between this installation and other previous needle and sewing works?

• Kimsooja
  To Breathe: A Mirror Woman is related to my earlier practices such as 'sewing', 'wrapping', and the question of 'surface', as well as the notion of 'reflection', that was always a part of my work in the metaphysical sense. Interestingly, a mirror can be another tool of 'sewing' as an 'unfolded needle' to me, as a medium that connects the self and the other self. If 'mirroring' can be a form of 'sewing the self', which means questioning the self, and connecting the self, 'breathing' is, in its dimension of action, a similar activity of 'sewing' that questions our moment of 'Life' and 'Death'. In mirroring, our gaze serves as a sewing thread that bounces back and forth, going deeply into oneself and to the other self, re connecting ourselves to its reality and fantasy. A mirror is a fabric that is sewn by our gaze, breathing in and out.

• Oliva María Rubio
  What is the relationship between "A Needle Woman" and "A Mirror Woman"?

• Kimsooja
  Again this goes back to the idea of surface, a continual question. A needle / body, which questions and defines the depth of fabric / surface, and a mirror that embodies the depth of body and mind, defining our existence, through a needle. I am standing as a needle to show A Needle Woman video as a mirror of the world, to question my own identity amongst others. At the same time, I am standing as a mirror that reflects the world, gazing myself from the reflected reaction the audience bounces back to me. A needle is a hermaphroditic tool that can be a subject and an object, and this theory can be applied similarly to a mirror. In that sense, I can consider a 'needle' as a 'mirror', by definition and a psychological healing tool, and a 'mirror' as a multiple and unfolded needle woven with the gaze, as a field of questions.

• Oliva María Rubio
  This intervention in the Palacio de Cristal is visually very beautiful but one may even feel some kind of anguish or have the feeling that he or she is in prison. How would you explain this effect?

• Kimsooja
  People may feel as if they are in my body, as the Palacio de Cristal seems to breathe, or in a cathedral bathed with stained glass, or in a space of fantasy, while walking on a mirror floor that feels like a liquid surface. Hearing my breathing and humming within the space might cause the audience to hold its breath, and they may become conscious of their own body and breathing. Maybe this feeling of being imprisoned comes from the prison of ones' own body?

• Oliva María Rubio
  Inside and outside, life and death, disruption and joy, anguish and delight, uncertainty and acknowledgement, these are aspects of feelings we feel when we are inside the Palace. Why are you interested in this idea of opposites, and duality?

• Kimsooja
  From the beginning of my career, back in the late 70's when I was at college, I was already intrigued by the dualities existing in the structure of the world, that are the combination of 'Yin' and 'Yang' elements. I've been looking at all existing things and the structure of the world from this perspective. An example from my earliest sewn piece Portrait of Yourself, 1983, and also The Heaven and The Earth, 1994, have vertical and horizontal elements, or a cross shape. I've been establishing my structure of perception and creation through this perspective. There was a series of assemblage based on random shapes in my work from 1990, such as Toward the Mother Earth, 1990-91, and Mind and the World, 1991, where 'duality' as 'yin' and 'yang functioned as a hidden structure. On another level of the surface, there comes another layer of yin and yang relationships, and this phenomenon goes on and on in each dimension of structure.

• But this doesn't mean that I was doing art mathematically or logically most of my works were created by the most irrational decisions and a sudden intuition rather than building up theories or logic itself, and I have always believed in the logic of sensibility within the process of creation. Duality can be one way to start understanding existences of the world, although there are so many different factors that surround and define the structure of the world. When the creation process starts, this duality theory doesn't work anymore, and it goes beyond the logic, and leads it's own life and process.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Your works aspire to capture the whole of the human experience: the body and the soul, the mind and the body are appealed to in the same extent in your creations. Why is it so important for you to make art a nothingness that experience of the body and the senses, as well as of the mind and the imagination?

• Kimsooja
  Ever since I was aware of the totality of the world, I had to work on it, and it naturally involved different aspects of ways of existences, structure of metaphysics, and that of frustration and fantasy. That's what I know, what we live, and what I can express.

• Oliva María Rubio
  Throughout your career, we can see that your new pieces refer to other previous works. Each of your new installations has a trace, an element, something that relates it with previous works. Do you conceive the whole of your artistic career as a kind of 'work in progress'?

• Kimsooja
  For me, there is no concept of a completion. I am just moving towards a future where I find a better answer than the previous answer. This is totally against commercialism, as the art market requires a finished object to be sold and to collect. My work is still evolving and unfinished, and is just a process.

• Oliva María Rubio
  And in this sense, where are you heading to? What is your ambition as an artist?

• Kimsooja
  If I have an ambition as an artist, it is to consume myself to the limit where I will be extinguished. From that moment, I won't need to be an artist anymore, but to be just a self-sufficient human being, or a nothingness that is free from desire.

• Kimsooja (b. Taegu, Korea, 1957) is a world-renowned artist, who has been living in New York since 1999. She has been included in many important contemporary art publications throughout the world, and has been exhibiting her works in Asia, America and Europe. Her work includes installation, performance, video and photography. Nomadism has been a constant in her life since childhood, and has also become a strategy that she has been using continuously to articulate her artistic work — the imperatives of the ego, passion and desire; detachment from material, and relationships with other people, are a continuous search throughout her artistic creations. The main themes she deals with are movement, totality, time and space, life, death, and the ephemeral aspect of the material world. Different interpretations of her work offer a wide spectrum of readings and several contexts — from minimalism, feminism, nomadism, buddhism, to aesthetic and political ideologies. Nevertheless, the main purpose of her work is a mode of artistic creation, her belief in intuition, and reaching balance. Compassion is an element of Kimsooja's work that manifests also as a response, not in terms of direct political activism, but as conscience and conscious presence; as witness. Kimsooja's work was presented to Slovenia at the last year's exhibition The Fifth Gospel in Celje.

• The following text is from a conversation with the artist Kimsooja, and the intense personal experience and subsequent reflection provoked by seeing her video works. The questions that followed the primary impulse was how did the artist, with seemingly minimalistic means, succeed in opening up a new perspective for the viewer, and at the same time awaken human consciousness in a remarkably simple and fascinating way. When we are standing in front of Kimsooja's artwork, we are actually confronting ourselves.

• Petra Kapš
  A One-Word Name Is An Anarchist's Name is the first statement on your website project. At first sight, the notion of anarchism seems to be in complete contrast with your work. On the other hand, your activities in the Western art world and society in terms of minimalism, detachment, reduction of the ego, your respect to nature and all living beings and unmindfulness of self-image, they all work subversively to that first impression.

• Kimsooja
  What I made in this comment on my website, 'A One-Word Name Is An Anarchist's Name' was a symbolic cultural statement in respect to naming an individual who lives as an outsider from one's own society, as a spectator rather than as an activist who practices anarchism in an actual political context.

• Petra Kapš
  In public you appear with the name Kimsooja, the identity of which is explained on your website with the following words: "A one word name refuses gender identity, marital status, socio-political or cultural and geographical identity by not separating the family name and the first name." Can your intentions in the art world also be indicated with these words?

• Kimsooja
  I was actually more interested in the possibilities the art world has, which allows universal language and diversity. This is in contrast to my own limited socio-cultural daily life context from Korea — to be more independent as a human being out of hierarchy, to question and open up a new relationship to the society.

• The symbolic meaning of the different ways a married women's name appears in different societies is quite interesting — married women's names in Western society follow after their husband's name, and that of Asian women's follow after their own father's name, both of which eventually keep the male dominant family name. This gives an interesting contrast and level of perception of what degree and hierarchy those two societies are similar as male dominant societies, and different in terms of women's status. This idea of putting my first name and last name together suddenly stimulated my desire to be free from any of social structures, and expanded my imagination to obtain an absolute independency as a human being, within the art world at least. Different from a person's name in daily life, the name presented in the art world usually represents no personality or emphasis of their gender, but functions more as a symbol of a specific art practice as a character. However, it was a symbolic gesture for me to explain my social, cultural burden from Korean society, from which I wished so much to be liberated.

• Petra Kapš
  Upon entering your website, the user reads your words: "I was hoping for an ideal society and relationship among people in the art world in which we could share real opinions with honesty, sincerity, dignity and love of art and life. I hope that my website project will not just introduce my activities but can bring more articulated discussions and criticism on art and the world." The site was published on 14 July 2003 — what are your experiences with this appeal now? Also, what do the individual responses to your 'Action Two: It Is Not Fair' mean to you?

• Kimsooja
  It is quite a delicate issue. Around the time when I decided to start my website, I was very disappointed by the dominate big international biennale scenes. Although I've been in many of these international events, and have had both positive and negative experiences, in general these international biennale scenes show very little respect for art and the artists. They seem to focus more and more on the power structure of the art world, and their specific political alliances with the artists and institutions, rather than the quality of the work or it's meaning. The peak of this phenomenon has past, and there seems to be an effort to make some balance between the role of artists and that of curators. There must be a balance between the creator and the organizer, and neither should empower the other, but instead communicate and encourage each other in equal amounts. Although both artists and curators have different attitudes and perspectives, in the end we always learn from each other. This is just one example of the varied relationships between people that I wished to address.

• The 'Action Two: It Is Not Fair' project was started to give an opportunity to question the notion of 'fairness' as it is related to this phenomenon in the art world, but rather than narrowing it only to the art world, I opened up a broader discussion. My position in this project functions as a 'witness' and as a 'questioner' rather than an answerer. All of the responses I've gotten gave me positive and negative questions and perceptions on the human relationship towards other humans, society, and to themselves. From the diverse and specific perspectives I've received, I have arrived at a fine balance of fairness on a broader level beyond the individual statements.

• The fundamental creative principles, processes and concepts of Kimsooja's artistic articulation are continuously present since the beginning of her career. At first, she was mainly focusing on painting, specifically on questions about the surface. She created paintings out of pieces of fabric, combining sewing, painting and drawing. Her paintings were made of used fabric, rags, and clothing. The first clothing that she incorporated into her paintings were owned by her grandmother. She later started to collect used clothing from anonymous people, and to explore the their invisible presence in the fabric. From the early 1980's, sewing became the essential principle of her artistic process — sewing as a monotonous repetition of movement ... the possibility of a meditative gaze into the human interior (self) ... a fluid journey of mind and spirit. The processes of sewing, covering, and wrapping are tightly connected to everyday activities (mostly female activities in Korean, as well as in Western, tradition). Putting them into an artistic context creates a balance between the artistic procedures and the creative elements of everyday activities. The meditative process hidden beneath a common marginal act of sewing exposes the performative process of the reduction of the ego, already in these early works. With meditative means, the artist is reaching a certain state of consciousness, where she focuses and eradicates herself, and she simultaneously creates space for the viewers to enter. It can be present in the imprint of the body left on the used fabrics, the smell of anonymous people on clothing, and on bedcovers. This space is also 'the void' through which the viewer enters. By focusing on herself, she reaches towards the point where the ego slowly disappears. Kimsooja is creating the void, an empty space through which the viewer can reach the balance between human relationships and life.

• With her residency in New York at the beginning of the 1990's, her experience based on living and working in Korea intermingled with that of a different view over her own artistic practice and cultural context in New York. Her artistic point of view was radically changing towards re-questioning cultural, social and political Korean traditions.

• Petra Kapš
  In talking about your work, we can use a few key words: journey (nomadism), detachment from matter or attachment to human being, existing beings, time, life, death, mobility as a necessary condition of life, totality. What is your relationship to these words?

• Kimsooja
  I guess all these words are related to the destiny of our existence.I am questioning my own destiny in this world in various paths, but reaching to the totality of it.

• Petra Kapš
  Your works express the relationship of life and art in a very special way. Is this the prime notion for your artistic engagement - art as a tool for understanding the mobility of life? In Martin Heidegger's conversation with Shinji Hisamatsu we find a very interesting word, geido — a 'path (journey) of art', this word comprises of a deeper relation to life, to our own being. It is a word for art that has substantial importance for existence.

• Kimsooja
  I must say, the result of art making which we call 'art work' is a secondary thing for me. The most important part in making art for me is, "questioning life, self, the other, and the world", and finding my own path for answers, which leads to another question, as always. In that sense, I find geido, as mentioned by Shinji Hisamatsu, to be a very coherent interpretation.

• In the Korean tradition, it is quite common that bedcovers are received by newlyweds as a gift. The richly embroidered fabrics with symbolic patterns are filled with familial and social desires, expectations and demands. The bedcover is wrapped around the body in various life circumstances (among others, during birth, rest, sex, illness, death). In the eyes of a Western observer, this piece of fabric is an aesthetic object of provocative, intensely radiant colours. Colour is one of the most important constants in Kimsooja's work, contextually related to Korean tradition and Western modernism. The bedcovers that the artist includes in her work are discarded bedcovers, that have all served their time. The echos of a once present body remain as traces of smell and form.

• By the beginning of the 1990's, Kimsooja used bedcovers as bottari (which means bundle), in which people wrap their belongings for travelling. She wrapped the clothes of anonymous people and daily objects within them. Bottari is a metaphor for the artist's life credo — a nomadism that is the basis of her creative practice. It implies the idea of a constant readiness to leave, detachment from the physical world, and is a universal metaphor for mobility. In the photo of the performance entitled Encounter, Looking Into Sewing, a figure is completely covered, with bedcovers draped over their head. This image brings several associations to the mind of the viewer — the image of a bride, a metaphor of torture. In this work, the artist has exposed strong feelings of intimate denial, abstinence (especially in the life of a woman from Korean society), and explored the relationship between the visible, and the hidden yet present. Bedcovers that imply an intimate environment are embraced in public spaces. The artist put them on café tables as table cloths in one of her projects entitled Deductive Object, presented at Manifesta 1 in 1996. By doing so she confronted an aesthetic exterior and functionality with the Korean prohibition of eating in bed.

• In her project Sewing Into Walking - Dedicated To The Victims of Kwangju, 1995, Kimsooja piled up loose clothing, and clothing wrapped in bedcovers, and put them in a 2.5 ton heap. In the Korean tradition, clothing preserves the spirit of their owners, and are therefore burned after a person dies. In this installation, they represent the reincarnation of people, the memory and the guilt, over the massacre in Kwangju in 1980.

• In the 11 day performance Cities On The Move - 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck, 1997, she travelled through her childhood hometowns on a heap of bundles, bottaris loaded on a truck. In this way, her initial introspective sewing gaze manifested itself in a real journey. By later placing this truck in a gallery space (Bottari Truck In Exile, d'APERTutto, Venice, 1999) she transformed her personal experience into a universal issue of cycle and passing of life, and cohabitation of time and space. At the same time, by dedicating this installation to the victims of war in Kosovo, she took the position of a quiet yet indelible witness.

• Petra Kapš
  I am interested in your experience of suppression and endurance that you talk about in connection with the traditional Korean bedcovers. Bedcovers have a strong intimate seal for every individual. A bedcover can (un)cover the most intimate parts of an individual and the shape of life as well that is re-established by the cohabitation of two individuals.

• Kimsooja
  It is interesting that you point out the word 'cohabitation' within the bedcover's hidden structure. Most people don't see that dimension, which involves another big issue in my life and work. People's gaze often ends up with the beauty of the fabrics or the cultural aspect of it, and imagining the couple's memory and intimacy, but there is another big issue in dealing with the 'reality of relationship' and 'self' and 'other' within this frame. Things become a question when they are problematic - it is good material to live and to question. Again this problematic 'co-habitation of duality' raises all sorts of questions on human existence.

• Petra Kapš
  Time is connected with memory and reminiscence. One of the main topics you deal with is death. We can also understand your works as 'preservers of memory' of the dead, of the sufferers who are present in clothes, ashes, bedcovers, bottari, carpets, in cessation of breathing ... They are interventions against concealment and oblivion. Where does this continuous emphasis on life and death come from?

• Kimsooja
  I am also curious about this continuity of my own concern: my obsession on body, death, and its memory to try to reveal the truth of victimized and disappeared beings, among other dimensions of my work. I think I have a strong compassion for all ephemeral beings, including myself.

• Aside from exploring various contexts of found objects and used fabrics, their meanings and physical presence, performance and video represent another area of Kimsooja's artistic activity. The series of video works A Needle Woman, 1999-2001 is a video record of performances carried out in eight world metropolises (London, Lagos, New York, Tokyo, Mexico City, Cairo, Delhi, Shanghai). The artist uses a consistent structure of visual imagery (a static camera frames the view, and the artist is turned away from the viewer, and is situated on the street with an extraordinarily large number of people). The artist's body is in a state of a seemingly static and deeply contemplative posture. The viewer meets the mass of moving people. The artist's body can be interpreted as the entrance door, a point of identification or watching (observing the relation of the passersby to the artist, we can only make conclusions about her responses to the people from their faces). If we focus on the pieces from Lagos and Tokyo, two extremely different realities, we can follow the whole spectrum of social, political and cultural contexts that we find in the response of people's bodies and faces. In the installation of these video works, we begin to observe particular specificities of people, small daily events recorded by the camera — unobtrusive presentation, emphasising the particularities of every individual. With her minimal intervention that is actually merely presence, the artist is documenting people in a simple way, positioning herself as observer, not an arbiter. The element of time modification causes variation in the recorded natural mobility of people and their surroundings. The minimal slowing down enables the viewer to observe details and characteristics in th continuous 'flow' of people, the image passing by remains conscious for a moment. The interpretative field of this series is extensive and applies to all Kimsooja's work. From the analogy of a sewing needle and the artist's body forming a relationship to the passersby with its immobility, exploring the responses on its presence for mental and physical personal space, to the social context of the heterogeneity of social phenomena and the role of human being in contemporary world.

• One of the defining parameters of Kimsooja's work in this context is her research of movement, mobility. Her body seems to be immobile, completely static compared to the mass of moving people. This seemingly motionless body is also analogous with a statue, a static object.

• Petra Kapš
  The image of your body in video performances, being turned away from the viewer, addresses people in a special way. This body-image cannot be interpreted as a symbol, but as an emptiness that, on one side opens up the space for the viewer, and on the other represents mobility towards human life, to his essence. How do you comprehend your body at this particular point?

• Kimsooja
  I find your perception of my body as a 'void' one of the most accurate and relevant descriptions of the presence of my body in my videos. The emptiness is created by turning my back towards the audiences, by not showing my personal identity, and also by allowing my body to function as a passageway for the audience to go through or enter into - this enables the audience to experience what I see and experience in situ. It is a similar function to a needle point, which has a decisive form of function, but works only through the empty hole of a needle eye, which is on the opposite side of the needle point. They can never meet each other, and they have this Yin and Yang relationship serving itself as a medium between fabrics. I weave the social and cultural fabrics with my presence and void as a medium. But I also believe that there's ego, which was not there while performing- I must say, standing there in the middle of the crowds was also a process of emptying my own ego, while receiving all of the people and their energy in my body and mind. This process of emptying the ego allows people to enter your body and create a void of your own self.

• Petra Kapš
  Your artwork A Laundry Woman - Yamuna River, India, 2000 was shown at the exhibition The Fifth Gospel in Celje. The video projection was placed inside the Catholic Church of Saint Mary. The strong context in which the work was placed added an interesting analogy. Through the body of the artist - place/point of identification/entrance - the viewer entered into the artwork in the same way as Western civilization entered the body of Christ in history. How the viewer experienced it from this point onwards was dependent upon himself. The body functioned as a mediator. What are your thoughts about this different context that has a strong 'point of possibility' to influence the work?

• Kimsooja
  Locating my body in the midst of crowds or in nature is to question my existence and that of others on what I see, where I am, and where we are going. It is the question raised from the experiences of these performances that leads me to go forward and question further. Relating my work within the context of the Catholic Church and its history can be controversial in the sense of my way of thinking and that of Catholicism. I am interested in this kind of contradiction, as it can sometimes create an unexpected innovation, as if two different ways of mathematics can solve the same question from a different method. When those two different approaches and energies crash and merge together, they can break through the existing way of thinking. This is a fascinating side of fusion in art making and art reading.

• When the function of one sense is prevented, for whatever reason, other senses sharpen to compensate for the missing information. The artist uses this effect for achieving special (meditative) states in the viewer, and to sharpen the human senses that are necessary in perceiving reality. Her video works mostly exclude sound. The intensity of the video image overwhelms us in the beginning, and only gradually do we become conscious of the fact that individual sounds — the flowing of a river, the dripping of water, a gust of wind, birds singing, human speech, street noise — are all missing. With this absence (and consequently, the orientation of human consciousness toward a sole level of perception) the artist directs our attention to the field of the visible and further to the field of spirit. The sharpened act of seeing centers our perception exclusively on the image. There is an obvious intertwining of artistic and meditative strategies that mostly omit sound, and focus on directing the (inner) gaze. In her work The Weaving Factory, 5.1, sound is the only element of the installation. Simple and minimal expressive means are the logical choice for achieving the goal — to direct, to sharpen the sight, and hearing. This year, the artist joined light, colour and sound in her work To Breath / Respirare, presented in La Fenice theater in Venice. The video installation was a combination of the projection of intensive monochromatic colours alternating in regular rhythm and the recorded sound of the artist's breathing. The sound element transitioned from a relaxed tempo that aroused pleasant, relaxed feelings, to an unbearably quick tempo, awakening anxious feelings verging on physical pain.

• Petra Kapš
  I have experienced your art works as a visual world, and a world of silence, where different phenomena are shown that lead the viewe into (self) consciousness. Furthermore, this consciousness of things that are outside of us aims at harmonizing and balancing the individual in life.

• Kimsooja
  A sense of consciousness, equilibrium and harmony has played an important role in my work, but at the same time, this is nothing but my own personality. I used to raise questions from the point where the consciousness of an unbalanced and un-harmonized situation stays — that which has a lack of care or lack of fulfillment as a whole and as a oneness. The whole process of making art is about balancing the situation through a Yin and Yang perspective, like an acupuncturist. I often see the situation in the complexity of duality and try to find the necessary remedy for it.

• Petra Kapš
  On watching your video works (in Celje and Venice) I had a very interesting experience of time; with each work I had a feeling of being thrown out of the common concepts of time. Time extended, or it was as though it did not exist anymore. How do you define time?

• Kimsooja
  I often feel that I am in a state where I am out of a specific time frame, either in the midst of concentration or in a meditative state. When I see my videos, I feel similar states of my own experiences I have in daily life. Time is not there when I am there, and when there is time I am not there anymore. Time exists when one has consciousness of the other or one's other self - when one can see the other, even oneself as the other. Time is the body that you see with your eyes of consciousness. Time exists when a separation of your body and consciousness occurs. Time is space, and space is time.

• Petra Kapš
  What are your feelings about your past projects?

• Kimsooja
  All of my past work functions as just one 'station' towards another, as a process to reach to the final destination towards 'void', or the 'extinguishment' of my artistic and existential self.

• Petra Kapš
  What role does beauty play in your life and aesthetics? What is your relationship to this phenomenon?

• Kimsooja
  I believe in beauty as a reflection of truthfulness, harmony, and purity — but also as a reflection of decadence, as well as in its inevitable complexity within its own contradiction. Beauty is discovered when the viewer has eyes for it, and everything in this world has its own connection to beauty.

• Petra Kapš
  Ethics, which has played an important role in the history of Western art, was not discussed in connection with art in the time of modernism. This situation is changing at the moment. Your works express strong ethical messages. What is your attitude towards these two spheres of ethics and contemporary art?

• Kimsooja
  Ethical attitude generally comes from the pursuit of harmony and concern of others. I think art can be ethical in the pursuit of beauty and reality, although there's some contradiction between art and ethics in aesthetic methodology. Art often didn't respond much to the reality of our life and present time in modernism, and the creative process of art making often involved a de-constructive element. There are also so many different levels of ethics - ethics for ethics, ethics to prove truth and fairness, ethics that revenges the negative phenomena of society. These two aspects of being destructive in their own process and being ethical to idealism can be coherent at some level and it is inevitable to respond to present conditions of life in any form.

• Petra Kapš
  It seems that nowadays we consume art only through filters of digital technology, images in a digital camera or a movie camera. Watching through digital media is like consumption, I watch with my eyes like I use things; a commodity. But at the same time, it seems that these media membranes do not mutilate your work. The viewer doesn't need any knowledge of contemporary art for experiencing your work. Are such effects important for you?

• Kimsooja
  I don't think much about the viewer's point of view, or have interest in guiding them to a particular way of looking at my work. What leads the viewer to access my work is probably because I am not dealing with only specific issues and questions in contemporary art, but also with essential questions on life from mundane daily life.

• Petra Kapš
  How do you develop your works from the first impulse to the final realization?

• Kimsooja
  In most cases, the first impulse leads to another reflection that creates a concept, and the concept leads to another impulse and they fuse ... But sometimes just one intuition or concept is enough.

• Petra Kapš
  It seems as though Korean tradition is getting more and more hidden, covered in your work.

• Kimsooja
  I left Korea at the end of 1998 after participating in the Sao Paulo Biennale, and I've been living in New York since then. As the years go by, my living and working conditions are more based in New York daily life and my travels throughout the world. I live in a somewhat different social and cultural life than in Korea, although I still question Korean culture and my own identity and relationships. I've started working with daily objects I discover in New York, communicating and thinking more in English, and being aware of the political and socio-cultural status of my present living conditions within the world.

• I consider myself to be a cosmopolitan, which might be the reason why the Korean cultural elements I used to deal with have been disappearing little by little from my work. But I am sure, at some point, there will be another moment when I re-discover my own culture from a different perspective than when I was in Korea.

• Petra Kapš
  You have been working in the Western world for almost a decade now. What is your relationship to the Korean period today? What did the last decade give to you?

• Kimsooja
  It gave me personal independence, financial support, social freedom, and detachment from my society and relationships.

• Petra Kapš
  What would you say about the notion that your art works are not questioning particularity of subjectivity that is so relevant today but are addressing fundamental questions of being, basic questions of life such as the balance of inside and outside, spirit and body, mind and soul, human as a natural and cultural being, being that exists in time and space of 'now'?

• Kimsooja
  I have always been dealing with present issues around me and the society that I was in. People sometimes see it that way because I used traditional materials, but it was my and my society's reality, although diminishing, and it had symbolic cultural connotations that are part of contemporary global society's issues as well. I just didn't use Western fabrics or images as it wasn't my reality and they created strong present questions for me. If I used Western fabrics, I wouldn't have been able to create my own conceptual context as a relationship to the bedcover, body and cohabitation — that has to do with my reality within Korean culture.

• Petra Kapš
  Are there any new horizons in your art?

• Kimsooja
  I know my work goes further and further away from the materialistic world but I am still interested in materiality itself as a strong presence of existence and a body of time. I also know that the whole process is just an endless circulation of comprehension of the world and self, and I wish one day I could be just a simple being freed from desire of making art and see as it is and live as I am within the world as it is.

• Kimsooja came to international fame in the 1990's following a P.S.1 residency in New York, which paved the way for one of her most famous pieces to date, Bottari Truck, a video that was subsequently shown in numerous exhibitions and biennales. Bottari Truck consisted of a truck loaded with bottari, the Korean word for bundle, and traveled throughout Korea for 11 days. The bundles were actually made of bed covers, an item accompanying the key moments of our existence from birth, marriage, sickness, to death. A Needle Woman, a video performance showing the artist from the back standing in the middle of a mainstream avenue in various cities throughout the world, further developed the concept of sewing towards abstraction bringing together people, cultures and civilizations. In a subtle way Kimsooja (b. 1957 in Korea), who works primarily in video, performance, installation, and photography has advanced to a premier artist in her discipline taking up sensitive issues like migration, integration or poverty. Besides taking us on her journey, Kimsooja's work is an invitation to question our existence, and the major challenges we are facing. In the interview below, she looks back at the past decade, and discusses her latest projects and undertakings. Olivia Sand reports.

• Olivia Sand
  Certain pieces you completed are seminal pieces (see above), and have toured numerous biennales and museums over past years. What mikes these pieces so important and why do you think people feel attracted to them?

• Kimsooja
  The formal and the aesthetic aspects may draw people to these pieces, but I believe their success is also based on their content and the topics they address. Today, it seems that we are witnessing a 'cultural war' with many, issues arising in a global context bringing together different races and beliefs with an increasing discrepancy between rich and poor, economically powerful and less powerful countries. Needless to say, the present power structure causes many problems and disasters around the world. The issues that I address in Bottari Truck and A Needle Woman are very much related to current topics, such as migration, refugees, war, cultural conflict, and different identities. I think people are interested in considering these topics through the reality of the work; this may be one reason for their success. In addition, the aesthetics and some elements of the form in A Needle Woman, for example, are things with which people can identify. The piece demonstrates a different approach towards performance compared to what has been done in performance so far. It is a different format and a different perspective from a 'classical' performance, where the artist is 'doing' an action. I believe that you can connect people and bring them together to question our condition without aggressive actions.

• Olivia Sand
  You learnt to sew with your family. Is sewing actually the element that led you to pursue an artistic career, ultimately serving as a means of expression, which remains to this day in your work?

• Kimsooja
  Definitely. The practice and my concept of sewing represent the constant basis of all of my work, from the beginning until today. The concept of sewing is always redefined, redeveloped and regenerated in different forms. After sewing pieces on the wall, or the Bottari pieces, which represent another way of three-dimensional sewing, I began to connect the relationship between people, my body, and another way — actually an invisible way — of sewing, like weaving the fabric of society and culture for example. My practice of sewing is always evolving, generating new ideas to redefine concepts.

• Olivia Sand
  You recently started a website, www.kimsooja.com. While presenting the site, you come to the conclusion that 'a one word name is an anarchist's name'. What do you mean by that?

• Kimsooja
  I do not think of myself as an anarchist with any critical political meaning. I see myself as a completely independent person, independent from any belief, country, or religious background. I want to stand as a free individual, who is open to the world.

• I had thought about starting a website for some time, but I was reluctant to do so because of the commercial aspect linked to such an undertaking. One day, however, I decided to move forward, and I began to carefully think about a website address. With the rapid growth of the internet, an email address is the key to getting access to the world to a universe without boundaries. I wanted to present myself as a free individual from any connotations (which exist around a name — the affiliation through marriage, for example), but not as an aggressive anarchist activist trying to change the world.

• Olivia Sand
  On your website you talk about 'twisted information', and your desire to promote ideas that have not been given the importance they deserve. To what are you referring?

• Kimsooja
  I realize that the media cannot be objective towards all the topics they cover, and personal points of view and experiences are also of great importance in the way the news is presented. However, I frequently witnessed how the media failed to acknowledge the relevance of an artist, which also resulted in ignoring or misunderstanding some of their existing art works. Through the website, which I launched in 2003, my goal was to open a forum for people to communicate openly and honestly about the art world, and the world in general. I am aware that it is a very modest undertaking, but I nevertheless wanted to offer a place where people could share their thoughts. All too often, people find themselves in a situation where they have no power, where they are manipulated, and they have no means to access or reveal the truth. So far, there have not been many people from the curatorial side, but there are many ordinary people, and a few artists, who use the site.

• Olivia Sand
  It seems that people are used to getting distorted information...

• Kimsooja
  In a certain way, yes. I think this can mainly be attributed to the fact that whatever is written becomes true, and people tend to believe whatever is written. I just want to provide a forum for people who want to speak up.

• Olivia Sand
  It seems that we are living in a strange time: never has the access to information been so great and the sources so diverse, but a lot of people just seem to be getting and relying in 'distorted' information. Do you agree?

• Kimsooja
  We just need to consider our domestic television networks (in the US), which provide very little information on foreign countries, on their view and response regarding the status of America in the world today. One needs to rely on the European and Asian channels to get a better awareness of what is going on in the world. As an artist, there is always a dilemma: should an artist take action following certain political decisions or should an artist stay away from politics? In my case, I want to open the floor for people to discuss and exchange ideas. In a way, I am a witness and I am not making any direct comments or statements. I do not see my role as to judge people, but rather as to raise awareness about certain topics. The response will be in the hands of each individual.

• Olivia Sand
  Do you feel that today artist have the power to set things in motion?

• Kimsooja
  Yes and no. Yes, artists could set things in motion, and can be very 'loud', but artists do not have enough power to persuade people to change the world. However, we are responsible for our own example and how we perform them. It is not necessary to make political statements, for example, but we can make a statement in a beautiful, peaceful, and spiritual way. In my opinion, artists can do something to resolve certain problems, but it is not easy, and it tends to remain a modest attempt of a very different scale than the head of a political section. Within a few seconds, they can give instructions to empower certain people, yet take it away from others. As modest as our attempt may he, I think it is important to bring attention to the suffering and death caused by unconditional unfairness. We cannot just neglect that.

• Olivia Sand
  Nam June Paik passed away at the beginning of this year. Do you feel that in terms of contemporary art, he has left a legacy behind in Korea?

• Kimsooja
  Absolutely. Before the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, he had no presence in Korea, nobody knew him except for some art insiders, and none of his works were shown. Although since 1988 things have changed dramatically, and Nam June Paik has been widely seen in Korea, still I do not think he received enough recognition or support from the Korean government. Throughout his career, he did a lot for Korea, and for the Korean people. He was very influential on Korean artists, and he contributed to creating a good image of Korea. He should have been more appreciated and supported by Korea, the Korean people, and by Korean museums. However, I am glad that ultimately the county where Nam June Paik was born has decided to build a museum dedicated to his work. The county has been acquiring hundreds of his pieces, and I consider it a great gesture — all the more so as it is based on the initiative of a provincial political officer and not a museum. This is very encouraging, as the museum will permanently be dedicated to Nam June Paik.

• Olivia Sand
  Has Nam June Paik changed the attitude of museums in Korea, encouraging them to collect the work of contemporary Korean artist like you, who are mainly working in video and performance?

• Kimsooja
  Presently, only one of my pieces is in a Korean museum: A Needle Woman, which belongs to the Samsung Museum. This specific piece caused many difficulties when the museum decided to acquire it, as my video piece was purchased by the museum, the Korean government charged considerable tax on it because it was considered a commercial movie. Consequently, the Samsung Museum and the Korean tax customs were in a lawsuit for many years. Korean law makes no differentiation between contemporary art works like my video pieces and a mass production commercial movie. Ironically, the tax authorities believed my video work was similar to Nam June Paik's work, which is considered the father of video art. The museum finally won the lawsuit last year, but it took over five years to settle the dispute. My case set a precedent, and today, artists can sell their video pieces without paying these enormous taxes. So far, A Needle Woman remains the only piece from my work in a museum collection in Korea.

• Olivia Sand
  What is the reason for your 'under representation' in museum collections in Korea?

• Kimsooja
  It is difficult to say. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the way the system (the galleries, the museums etc.) work, or perhaps they simply do not like my work.

• Olivia Sand
  Is your work widely represented in American museums?

• Kimsooja
  My work is represented in some American museums (P.S.1, some West Coast museums, etc.), but most of my projects are actually taking place in Europe.

• Olivia Sand
  Do you think your work is 'too different' for an American audience?

• Kimsooja
  I think the perception on art is very different in America and in Europe. If we take a closer look at the gallery scene in New York, most of the shows taking place in Chelsea are based on 'products' and people buy these 'products' rather than artworks that inspire them. I think the materialistic perception and the environment in the US clearly influence the collectors and their taste. There are always some exceptions, but I personally tend to find European audiences more sensitive, often more knowledgeable, and perceptive.

• Olivia Sand
  You presently have a show in Madrid that runs until July. Can you describe the piece?

• Kimsooja
  The exhibition is at the Crystal Palace, which is run by Reina Sofía. It is a beautiful glass pavilion, and I decided to create one large single installation. I covered the whole glass pavilion with a diffraction grid film, which creates a rainbow like effect all over the surface. The effect varies quite dramatically over the glass depending on the light source, the direction of the light, and its sharpness. In addition, there is a mirror structure over the floor, which reflects the entire structure of the building below the feet of the audience. I also installed the Weaving Factory, which I previously showed in Venice.

• Olivia Sand
  How would you say your work has evolved since your residency at P.S.1 in New York?

• Kimsooja
  For me, P.S.1 was one of the most influential experiences: it opened my career to the international art world. It led me to create my Bottari piece, and I started to do more installations based on my work from P.S.1. When I went back after a stay abroad, I became aware of the cultural conflicts within Korean society because by that time, I had the experience that things could be different. I had even more difficulties after coming back following a one year and a half stay in New York. I had to struggle because I had different perspectives, while the society was still very closed, stressful, and not supportive. I decided to leave the country to settle in New York, which was difficult, but at the same time very challenging. Putting myself on the edge of my life was a great challenge, and in retrospect, I think it made my professional practice even more focused, and more in depth. Since then, everything has been positive with museum shows around the world, participation in the most prestigious international shows and biennales, and good reviews.

• Olivia Sand
  Has religion, Buddhism, had an impact on your projects?

• Kimsooja
  I am not a practicing Buddhist, but I am very interested in Buddhism. It is very similar to the way I am thinking and to the way I perceive life, death, and daily life. I believe it carries great truth, but I do not want to represent any specific religious belief. I want to go beyond that, and embrace everyone's beliefs.

• Olivia Sand
  Which projects are closest to your heart?

• Kimsooja
  The sewing piece, the Bottari piece, and, of course, A Needle Woman. The Lighthouse Woman was also one of my favorite projects, in part because it was temporary and site specific with a very special environment and collaboration. I am strongly drawn to the idea of completing additional site specific and temporary installations, especially in Europe, where there are numerous very interesting sites.

• Kimsooja (Taegu. Korea, 1957) has dedicated her long, intense artistic career to developing her own personal vision of the world through the use of installations, performances, photography, videos and site-specific projects. Her obvious singularity has tempted some to seek out links with certain Eastern philosophical and artistic traditions, but her core material is reality itself. The ideas that inform her work follow from questions she asks about life and art, about individuality and our relationship to others, about emptiness and the ephemerality of our existence. Her upbringing and life experience have helped shape her thinking into a unique blend where Christianity and Western philosophy is intimately entwined with Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism and Tao. In the history of Western art, we can find several referents to her work in performance and body-art circles, where artists such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay or Valie Export parallel her concerns. But rather than allowing herself to be swayed by theoretical issues and philosophies, whether Eastern or Western, Kimsooja has followed a trajectory marked mainly by a social and political commitment ensuing from her own life story, memory and sensitivity. Her work has deep universal roots and aspires to capture the totality of human experience: her creations appeal equally to mind, body and soul.

• From the beginning of the Nineties, after having worked with abstract collage compositions combining sewn objects with drawing and painting, Kimsooja began to create installations and spatial objects that she dubbed Deductive Objects, where sewing was both a metaphor and an activity in itself. Needles, cloths, threads, quilts and such like formed part of her creative universe. Sewing, wrapping, stretching, folding, unfolding, covering are activities to which she repeatedly returns. The materials she chooses and the way she employs them derive from the traditional use of cloths in Korea. She began to show her bottariat two exhibitions she held in New York in 1993: the first in PS.1, where she had arrived the previous year on an international residence grant, and the other at the ISE Foundation. The bottari are bundles stuffed with cloths, clothes, etc, wrapped up in well-worn traditional Korean bedcovers. As the artist explained, second-hand bed clothes "bring with them smell, memories, desires, holding the spirit and life of former owners". From then on, these commonplace objects in Korean culture became a constant in her work. In Korea they are associated with mobility (voluntary or obligatory), as they are used to carry around unbreakable domestic chattels such as clothes, books, food and gifts. Kimsooja's work presented them in all possible combinations: individually; alongside bedding laid out on the floor; against the backdrop of a landscape evoking their core function as a way of transporting necessary goods, symbolizing nomadic values; in dialog with video installation, etc.

• The artist went on to use the term bottari as the recurrent title for a series of videos she made in several different countries during 2000 and 2001. One such was Bottari-Zócalo, where we see a huge crowd of people - tiny multicolored bundles- swarming around the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City. Another was Bottari - Alfa Beach, shot in one of the slave-trading ports of Nigeria. On a screen split in two with sea and sky inverted, the constant to-and-fro of the waves in a green-grey sea, occasionally splashed by the white foam of breaking waves, contrasts with the quiet sky of fluffy clouds underneath. It transmits the same hope and uncertainty that the slaves must have felt in the face of an unknown future that loomed before them. Then there is Bottari - drawing the snow, where dark snowflakes fall across the white screen like birds scattering from their flock in all directions. And Bottari - waiting for the sunrise, filmed in Real de Catorce, Mexico, where a fixed camera focuses on a stony road that disappears into the horizon. The day is breaking but we cannot yet see the sun. For nearly five minutes, during which nothing moves, we try to discern the landscape, feeling the slow passage of time. Suddenly, we notice white light moving at the back from the right to the left of the screen. As the light coincides with the center of the road it seems that time and space have merged; but before it can begin to dazzle us, the video ends.

• These three videos were first presented, alongside another four, at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation exhibition in Venice, January 2006, and foreshadowed Kimsooja's most recent works. They emit no sound. It seems as if the artist wants us to concentrate on the space, on what the screen is showing, placing unique importance on vision. Everything else is left to our imagination. The sense of movement, traveling, transition, disorientation, uncertainty and hope — all aspects that play a vital role in our lives — is ever-present in the author's videographic output and connects them to both her earlier and her later work. Kimsooja reflects on various aspects of life in which analogy and metaphor assume special relevance.

• Apart from the bottari, another characteristic element in her work is the employment of brightly colored, well-used traditional Korean bedclothes. For Kimsooja, they symbolize women, sex, love, the body, rest, sleep, privacy, fertility, longevity and health. Elements brimming with significance and present in human life from cradle to grave. Like the bottari, the bedclothes appear in various works, assembled in different manners: spread out on the floor in Sewing into Walking (1995); in combination with bottari in Deductive Object (1996); covering a mannequin in the photograph entitled Encounter - looking into sewing (1998-2002), which speaks to us both of loss of identity and of its weight; hanging from pegs as if hung out to dry in, for example, A Laundry Woman (2000) and A Mirror Woman (2002), another metaphor for female roles. These last two were presented in several places, including the Contemporary Art Museum in Lyon and the Peter Blum Gallery in New York, respectively.

• As of the mid-Nineties, Kimsooja began to use video fundamentally as a way to document and record performances in which she herself played a leading role. Between 1997 and 2001 she filmed a series of videos from performances she held in various towns and places the world over. Both the process and the pictures that these generated link into her attempt to reconcile the tensions inherent in the relationship between our ego and others'. The first video she entitled Cities on the Move - 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck. It was made in November 1997, on an eleven-day journey through Korea on a truck loaded with colorful bottari. The 7:03 minutes of footage record the trip in space and time. A metaphor for her own life — constantly crossing frontiers — but also for one of the characteristics of contemporary artists and our society as a whole: nomadism is one of the mainstays of Kimsooja's art. We find it in many works of hers: in the installations with the bottari as symbolic elements and in other video pieces.

• The common denominator to this series of videos is the female form, a motionless woman with her back to the camera. It is presented in a myriad of settings: standing amongst passers-by in Tokyo, Shanghai, New Delhi, New York, Mexico, Cairo, Lagos and London or reclining on a rock in Kitakyushu, Japan — A Needle Woman (1999-2001); sitting on the pavement asking for alms in Cairo, Mexico and Lagos — A Beggar Woman (2000-2001); lying in the streets of New Delhi and Cairo — A Homeless Woman (2001); or standing next to a river in New Delhi — A Laundry Woman (2000). But wherever she may be, the figure of the artist is always inaccessible, her face hidden from the viewer. The viewer is thus refused what the crowds are permitted. The woman who will not let us see her face, who obliges us to ask uncomfortable questions of ourselves, becomes an abstraction. Her image, immobile before the river Yamuna, ends up merging into the current and flowing away with the debris that it carries. In these works, immobility envelops everything. However firmly the author places herself in the centre of the picture, she still manages to distance herself from it. Her simple yet oddly energizing appearance there is a kind of self-affirmation. She manages to be herself and the 'other' at one and the same time: both presence and absence. Kimsooja is simultaneously subject and object of our gaze; an individual and an abstraction; a specific woman and all women; instrument and actress; immobile and resolute. This seamless duality is something that Bernhard Fibicher described in "Obvious but Problematic", his article for the exhibition catalogue for Kimsooja, A Needle Woman, held in Kunsthalle Berne, in 2001.

• There is no sound in the bustling streets and in the landscapes where we see the artist, so reception is reduced to pure vision. Nor do we know who is filming her, what she is like, or with what expression she might face the crowds. The passers-by, inhabitants of enormous cities, become involuntary actors. In the Needle Woman video, the artist is standing stock still in the middle of streets overflowing with people. Her absolute immobility contrasts with the hurly-burly of the metropolis and with the noise that -although we do not actually hear it — we cannot help but divine must be there. The camera films the mass of passers-by treading the streets of these cities. It shows the faces of this anonymous throng while hiding that of the artist. Thousands of people walk towards her, enter the camera's field of vision and then disappear. Like a sociologist, the camera records the reactions of this multitude in a confrontation with the 'other'. In London, New York and Mexico, people almost ignore the artist as they pass her by. In Shanghai, New Delhi and Cairo, she sparks more interest. Some people even turn round or stop a moment to look at her. But it is in Lagos that she elicits greatest curiosity. Here, the video footage shows individual faces, feelings, reactions... However, in Tokyo, a smile on the face of a woman is the only element of emotion amidst the anonymous crowd. In A Homeless Woman, it is in Cairo that people pay most attention to her. A group of men cannot resist approaching her, moving in close and staring directly into the camera.

• For the 51st Venice Biennial in 2005, Kimsooja made a new version of A Needle Woman for which she visited a further six cities: Patan (Nepal), Havana, Rio de Janeiro, N'Djamena (Chad), Sana'a (Yemen) and Jerusalem. In six contiguous screens, presented as a video-installation in the midst of absolute silence, we can only intuit the teeming sounds of the passers-by and the noise of traffic in the distance. Once again, the artist brings us face to face with people's varied reactions to the ineffable figure she cuts. In this new set of videos, it is in Rio de Janeiro where people are most inquisitive about the artist's presence. In Jerusalem, only a small minority observe her with curiosity, although a policeman comes up to her smiling, looks at her, makes a hand-gesture to onlookers and leaves her alone. In general, however, passers-by seem more drawn to something that must be happening to her right, which is where they fix their eyes. In Patan, where flocks of birds swarm across the screen in stark contrast to the placid tranquility displayed by the inhabitants, it is mainly children who are attracted by her unmoving form. In Havana, a man pulls a face at her; many smile at her and a few can be seen making comments as their paths cross. In Sana'a, the men, especially the young men (there are hardly any women out on the street and where there are, they are fully covered by their black tunic and scarf with just a tiny slit at eye level) surround her and stop to stare at her attentively. In N'Djamena, the artist's figure merges into the mass of colorful garments and the rhythmic swarm of the passers-by — many of them carrying packages and bowls on their heads — as they surround her, then stop and gaze at her fixedly, greeting her with hand-movements, even speaking to her and apparently asking her questions. The curiosity on their faces is unmistakable. We, mere observers of their actions, look on expectantly. We cannot help but be slightly nervous of the reactions that people might have to the artist's presence. We fear the unexpected, always aware that there could be a sudden outbreak of violence at any moment. But as we watch the action unfolding, we wonder about the artist's reaction to the stares, smiles and comments to which she is subjected. We begin to feel intrigued about what the surprised passers-by could be saying, the words we cannot hear but deduce her unforeseen presence must elicit. We want to know more. We would like to be in the middle of this mass of people so that we could gather our own conclusions, evince their opinions, discover whether they are attracted by this sudden encounter with an unmoving figure in their path, or whether it has unsettled or upset them. It is true that we can observe their reactions, which in general appear to be respectful, since the camera shows their faces as they enter its field of vision, as they become unwary protagonists. But at the same time, we have an innate desire to hear their comments as they pass by. The artist exposes herself and exposes us. Observing her, we are also opened up to the crowd; with her, we merge into the surrounding mass, registering people's reactions. But we always want to know more, to have a hint of their singularity, a spark of their being in this world.

• Through their actions, capturing their expressions and reactions as they come across her, the artist also forces us to experience the shortcomings to our understanding of the real situation in other countries as lived by other peoples. The author is investigating, seeking out the minimal differences between each country and each person, trying to put her finger on what sets one apart from the rest. She shows human beings as individual beings and as experiences. Her choice of cities and countries for the performances is not random. Kimsooja's selection reflects her awareness of the conflicts that assail them, problems stemming from post-colonialism, civil wars, border skirmishes and violence triggered by the extreme poverty of their inhabitants. However, it is in these countries, ridden by conflict, far from jaded, ageing Europe, in stark confrontation with the unknown, that her creativity seems to find moaning and inspiration.

• In all these videos, Kimsooja makes her presence felt in this world through the continuity of reiterated situations and shots of her own unaltering image. People's physical, material being intrudes into her work in the same way as Nature. They are all a manifestation of different ways of being in this world, a statement of our alone-ness, but also a reminder that the world is ever present and that we are surrounded by others. Her work goes far beyond the gender issues, an area where she can be too simplistically pigeon-holed. She is demonstrating the manifest importance of being human in the chaotic world we inhabit, with all its solitude and its ephemerality. Directly or indirectly, through the traces that it leaves behind, people's 'footprint', humankind is always present in her work.

• Although the artist is not interested in tackling political issues as such in her creative output, her interest in the human condition and human reality has, on occasions, led her to create installations that are clearly related to political or social events. Sometimes these are a response to what has happened, other times they constitute a memory of them or render homage to their victims: Sewing into Walking (1995), presented at the first Kwangju Biennial, consists of a set of used cloths and bundles scattered over the ground in a park. They look like bodies abandoned on the battlefield. The piece is dedicated to the victims of the massacre at Kwangju, which took place in May 1980 when hundreds died in their struggle for democracy. Deductive Object - Dedicated to my Neighbors (1996), shown at the City Art Museum of Nagoya, Japan, uses a mixture of Korean and Japanese cloths; it is dedicated to the victims of the collapse of the Sampoong department store in her neighborhood in Seoul that same year. D'APERTutto or Bottari Truck in Exile (1999), presented at the 48th Venice Biennial, shows a truck reflected from a mirror structure installed in front of it, loaded up with brightly colored bottari. The mirror creates an endless opening, but the truck is blocking its own way ahead. It is dedicated to the refugees from Kosovo, a reminder of the dreadful consequences of war: displacement, death and destruction that were occurring at that time only a few kilometers from Venice. Responding to the events of the 11th of September 2001, Kimsooja created her Epitaph (2002), a powerful, emotional and beautiful photographic image in which the artist unrolls a colorful quilt on the ground in the Greenlawn cemetery in Brooklyn. In the background we can see the gaping absence of the emblematic Twin Towers on the Manhattan skyline.

• Throughout her career, and especially in recent years, along with her installations, photographs, performances and videos, Kimsooja has also been involved in setting up site-specific projects. Cloths, especially the eye-catching Korean bedclothes; sequences of light and color; mirrors; the chanting of Tibetan, Gregorian and Islamic monks, and the sound of her own breathing are resources that she uses for these and have become identifying characteristics. Planted Names and A Lighthouse Woman (2002), were two such projects, installed under the umbrella of the Spoleto Festival USA 2002 in Charleston, South Carolina. The artist was responding to an invitation to join in an exhibition entitled Memory of the Water, evoking the cosmopolitan character of this colonial capital and its maritime legacy. Planted Names commemorated the slaves who served in the Drayton Hall plantation. It also echoes the artist's own story as daughter of an army officer, growing up in the demilitarized zone in South Korea and continuously on the move from one town to another with her family. Four black carpets with the names of the African-origin slaves who worked in that plantation until their emancipation standing out in white lettering, transformed each of the rooms around the great hall on the first floor of Drayton Hall — the oldest plantation mansion still standing in America, conserved as a jewel of Georgian Palladian architecture. They are acts of meditation on the past and strategically placed in surroundings where the memory of these people who were deprived of freedom has special resonance. In A Lighthouse Woman, the artist uses light, color and sound to transform the abandoned lighthouse in Morris Island (Charleston, South Carolina) into a memorial. Made to commemorate the victims of the civil war fought out on Morris Island where the lighthouse is located, this work is also a tribute to the eternal relationship between light and water, symbolized in the lighthouse itself.

• Exhibited in the Vienna Kunsthalle, A Laundry Woman (2002) comprises colorful bedclothes and the sound of Tibetan monks chanting. The bedclothes can be seen from outside through the enormous windows of the Kunsthalle: they are pegged onto ropes, as if hanging on a clothesline. They operate as a metaphor for female roles, establishing a dialogue between the interior space of the Kunsthalle and the urban landscape, between life and art, intimacy and universality.

• The organizers of the 2nd Valencia Biennial invited the artist to set up something on an empty site in the city. The resulting Solarscope is a sequence of light with a range of changing colors projected onto a building, conferring life on what had been an abandoned plot of land. In the Rameau palace in Lille (France) her Lotus: Zone of Zero (2003) was an installation of three-hundred and seven lights with music. The red bulbs hang in a lotus-flower arrangement in the circular hall of the building. The space is flooded with the sound of Tibetan, Gregorian and Islamic chant. Over and above the eye-catching beauty of the installation, it is a call to peace, love and understanding amongst human beings.

• A Mirror Woman - the ground of nowhere (2003) was installed on a roundabout at the Honolulu city-hall in Hawaii. The piece formed part of Crossings 2003: Korea / Hawaii, a series of activities organized to celebrate one century of Korean immigration to the United States. A fine gauze curtain hangs eighteen meters from the ground, rolled up at the base to form a huge cylindrical tube, six meters in diameter. The sky is reflected in the mirrored flooring. Walking or lying on this mirror/floor, visitors can only see the cobalt-blue sky with its white clouds and their own reflection. The piece tries to capture the atmosphere of hope, excitement and homesickness that the Korean immigrants must have felt on arriving in the United States, the sense of nothingness that must have overwhelmed this first wave of newcomers arriving on the island of Hawaii one hundred years earlier.

• Four sound-channels broadcast Tibetan, Islamic and Gregorian chants, which inundated one of the rooms at The Project in New York, for which Kimsooja conceived Mandala: Zone of Zero, in 2003. Creating a space for isolation, meditation and daydreams, she placed a brightly colored juke-box speakers on each of the four walls of the room, exploiting their formal similarity to traditional Buddhist mandalas to imbue an object of Western pop culture with Eastern religious connotations. The mixture of chants issuing from the record-players surround and envelope the spectator with their beams of sound. Reflecting their assimilation of different cultures, social contexts and aesthetics, this installation explores the notion of unity and totality according to which mind and body are spiritually united.

• In 2003, following up the idea of playing with light and color already used in some of her site-specific projects, such as A Lighthouse Woman and Solarscope, the artist made a set of videos experimenting with sequences of light and the color palette, employing its beauty and energy to play with different frequencies and rhythms. Invisible Mirror, Invisible Needle and A Wind Woman belong to this series. In the first, the colors change their range and intensity slowly, almost imperceptibly, until they have exhausted the entire color spectrum. In the second, the speed of sequencing increases until it becomes so frenetic that the eye can barely perceive the tonality of the colors whizzing across the screen. The third, A Wind Woman is a work on Nature. It was first shown in the United States at the Henry Art Gallery and then presented for the first time in Europe at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa exhibition in Venice. The artist created an abstract painting in the style of Gerhard Richter, using her video camera to record high-speed Nature. All three are silent videos where the only sound is in our imagination. The first two have been put together in a single video-installation into which The Weaving Factory 5.1 has been synchronized. This latter piece was made in 2004 with the sound of the artist breathing. The ensemble, entitled To Breathe / Respirare (Invisible Mirror, Invisible Needle), was presented at the Fenice Theatre in Venice on 27th January 2006 and projected during February and March before the opera performances of the Die Walkure and / Quatro Rusteghi by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, scheduled in the theatre for this time. Visitors are confronted by a large screen on which all the tonalities of the color range gradually succeed one another. They are surprised by the sound of slow breathing, whose source is intriguingly difficult to identify on entering. The colors, with their different intensities, are shown on a screen which seems to be mirroring the colors thrown back at it from the theatre. Meanwhile, the breathing becomes more intense, deeper, and seems to pervade the entire space. In the first part, the rhythm of the artist's breath speeds up and deepens until it reaches moments of real anguish. In the second, the tone, modulation and rhythm of breathing change as they reach a harmonious crescendo that turns into an anthem, a prayer, a choir, the sound of wind instruments. Visitors are impelled into this experience. Feeling that we form part of the piece, we follow the cadenza and the different rates of air-intake and expulsion. We accompany the breathing with our own feelings of anxiety or relief. As if it were a metaphor for life, we oscillate through the most diverse mood states: from uncertainty to calm, from anguish to respite, from the twinge of danger to real enjoyment. We feel health and sickness, chaos and harmony. The respiration seems to absorb us so deeply that it enters inside our very body. It is a piece that, on its own, acts through contrasts. But placed where it is placed, the simplicity of the breathing and the purity of the light emanating from the colors, harmoniously bathing the space, contrast exquisitely with the baroque style of the theatre.

• With a minimum number of simple elements, Kimsooja achieves maximum effects, sensations, emotions and a rich onslaught of ideas and concepts. Her art appeals both to the senses and to the imagination. Its enormous beauty in no way distracts us from the disquieting questions it poses about concepts and situations in our life experience. As an artist who participates in her times and their problems, her work avoids introspection and embraces the world by subjecting it to the wordless scrutiny of her gaze.

• Her pieces seem to be enveloped in silence. An aspiration to isolation and withdrawal seeps through videos of her performances, in the installations made with cloths and even in her video-installations with sound. They are an invitation to escape momentarily from the chaos and noise of the world around us, in order to re­encounter our selves and question our relationship with others; to reflect on our place in this world and stare the essential problems of existence in the face. Exhibition space made sanctuary.

• For the Palace de Cristal in Madrid, Kimsooja has made To Breathe - A Mirror Woman, comprising an intervention in space and her earlier sound piece, The Weaving Factory, 2004. The project is a logical continuation of her previous works. The artist has exploited the structure of the building, leaving it intact so that it forms a whole with the installation of a mirror on the floor. This acts as a multiplier and a unifier of the original architectural space. Here, Kimsooja submerges us in a transfiguring experience that uses minimal elements: a translucent diffraction grating film covering the glazed dome and wall of the crystal palace, a mirror covering its floor and the sound of her own breathing. We are invited into an experiment with our minds and our senses, to give free rein to our sensorial perception and our imagination.

• The title itself not only refers back to other projects in which the artist used mirrors and the sound of her breathing, but also to her work with needles and sewing. As in her video-installations, such as A Needle Woman, where she herself is the needle piercing the crowd, in A Mirror Woman the artist is the mirror; the mirror that reflects and creates reality. Like a surface returning what comes to it, the artist sucks up one reality but reflects another, creating another reality. She is the reflector and also the creator of the reality that the mirror reflects.

• The project as a whole also takes us back to her bottari since there too she was enveloping and wrapping. In this case, the author has enveloped the Palacio de Cristal with translucent film. However, whereas the bottari wrapped and transported clothes and belongings over distance, here the building is wrapping us and transporting us through an experience of our bodies, imaginations and senses.

• The light shining in from outside enters through the glass of the pavilion and the translucent film disseminates it into rainbow spectra. This not just transforms the view of the exterior we see from inside the palace but also the look and feel of the interior, where the entire structure and the multi-colored rays of light are reflected and re-reflected in the mirrored floor. Seen from outside, the interior of the palace is transformed by the reflection of light and trees. This effect is especially powerful on sunny days. But even when it is overcast, any break in the clouds or in stormy skies, any sunbeam that slips through, increases the contrast levels of the light, thereby creating a multiplicity of rainbows. Similarly, the direct sunlight on the diffraction film produces an additional effect of projecting its spectra onto the interior surface of the palace, where the mirror bounces back the colored light onto the visitors and throughout the interior of the building. We get the impression of being drawn into the rainbows, of forming part of them and becoming one with them. The ad infinitum reproduction of the spectrum varies throughout the day, acquiring different shapes: rays, gusts, aureolae, zigzags, etc. It not only brings to mind the colorful traditional Korean bedding so often used by the artist, but also her work with Nature in A Wind Woman. At certain times of day, depending on the intensity of the light, the glazed structure of the building becomes an abstract painting configured together with the trees in the surrounding gardens.

• Natural light, color and sound, all such very ethereal elements, almost tangibly fill the space. There are no objects to distract our gaze. Just light and color. The artist's breathing from her The Weaving Factory performance pours into the space, bouncing back again and again from the mirroring, expanding throughout the interior of the building, becoming one with it and breaking down the barriers between time and space. As the artist explains: "The waves of light and sound, and those of the mirror, breathe and interweave together with our body within the space. I find mirroring to be another way of sewing."

• Her slow, soft, scarcely perceptible respiration in the first part of the performance gradually becomes deeper and faster, until its pace becomes unbearable, producing a sensation of anguished discomfort. We experience rapidly changing mood states through the artist's breath pattern, which merges into ours. In the second part, we can hardly make out her breathing, except as background sound. The tone, modulation and rhythm have changed. We would think that it is an external sound, but it is still her own respiration that is creating this rhythmic crescendo, this sensation of harmony, obtaining by superimposing different notes one on top of the other. In both the first and the second part of the performance, the inspiration and expiration is exclusively nasal. She never opens her mouth. However, in the second she not just breathes but actually hums through her nose. The artist considers reflecting to be like breathing, since the structure of both operations is the same; both share the directionality from out to in and in to out so that both extract one reality and create another.

• She uses a minimal part of her body to achieve a myriad of sounds, similar to the myriad of light beams produced by the diffraction film. The onslaught of sound and color runs visitors through an entire spectrum of emotions. During the eleven minutes, thirty-eight seconds of the audio performance, we are rocketed from puzzlement to delight, from anxiety to joy, from uncertainty to recognition. Kimsooja is inviting us to take an inward-bound trip: to the inside of the space, the inside of the rainbow, the inside of the mirror, the inside of our breathing. The final destination is inside ourselves. And on this inward trip we come face to face with the other, that other so ever-present in her work. The mirror connects the ego and the alter-ego and reflects the otherness that we always carry within. The mirror attracts and reflects. Reflecting is another way of exteriorizing the ego. Kimsooja is talking to us about the relationship between our body and space. She makes art into an experience of body and mind, of our sensory perception and of our imagination.

• Francesca Pasini
  Space, light and the body are the elements with which you give form to the world. In all your works the purity of the images might seem to situate the vision in metaphysical space, but you accomplish this in the physical dimension.

• Kimsooja
  Physical and metaphysical states coexist simultaneously as one, rather than as separate or parallel entities. Physicality represents the metaphysical, in the similar state of space as time, and time as space, I believe.

• Francesca Pasini
  How important is the idea of the "void" in your process of "making space"?

• Kimsooja
  For me, making space means creating a different space, rather than "making" a new one. The space is always there in a certain form and fluidity, which can be transformed into a completely different substance. For example, our brain cells or mental space construct a physical and visual tableau, sculpture, or environment, which are transformed spaces. My interest in "void" is as a negative space in relationship to "Yin" and "Yang," as a way of inhaling and exhaling, which is the natural process of "breathing" as a rule of living. This idea of duality can be found in all of my working methods from the beginning of my practice.

• Francesca Pasini
  In the audio work The Weaving Factory, which accompanies the projection presented on the screen at the Theater La Fenice in Venice, what is the link between the "breathing" that comes from the color spectrum, versus the one that is created by your breathing?

• Kimsooja
  The breathing element in my video projection To Breathe: Invisible Mirror / Invisible Needle is based on the abstract of the phenomena of nature, which was generated by a digital color spectrum. This creates a clear distinction from the video pieces I've shown at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, which are captured from the existing phenomena within nature, as part of my study on nature. The sound for the vocal performance for The Weaving Factory was made from my own breathing at different speeds and depth, and humming different notes through my nose and, in the end, by opening and closing my mouth. Both audio and visual breathing is performed within the body of La Fenice Theater, which I took as my own body, which breathes in and out, connecting the bodies of the audience to that of the theater. It was also interesting to relate the nature of the lyrical theater, which is all about singing, which in turn, is breathing.

• Francesca Pasini
  In your current project at Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, you also use the same combination of color and breathing "to make space."

• Kimsooja
  The glass pavilion is covered with translucent diffraction film, that diffuses the light coming through the structure into rainbow spectrums, which is then reflected by the mirrored floor, while the breathing from the audio piece The Weaving Factory fills the space, bouncing back and forth onto the mirror. The waves of light and sound, and that of the mirror, breathe and interweave together with the viewers' bodies within the space.

• Francesca Pasini
  What kind of relationship is there with the project in Venice?

• Kimsooja
  Both To Breathe: Invisible Mirror / Invisible Needle and To Breathe: A Mirror Woman are related in terms of the notion of "surface", "sewing", and "wrapping". Interestingly, a mirror is another tool for sewing, as an "unfolded needle," that connects the self and the other self. Mirroring is sewing and to sew is, in the end, to breathe.

• Francesca Pasini
  I see a progression with respect to your previous works. To an increasing extent, the visible loses its perspective limits: in Bottari - Throwing the globe, as well as in A Wind Woman, we have the perception of colors' movement without any distinct image; meanwhile, in To Breathe: Invisible Mirror / Invisible Needle we have only a color spectrum.

• Kimsooja
  Most of the videos I showed at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa are entitled "Bottari...". The word "Bottari" means "bundle" in Korean. A Bottari is wrapped fabric that contains daily objects, for carrying one's belongings and moving households. It is the easiest and simplest way to locate and dislocate one's belongings. When Koreans say, "Wrap the bundle," and Westerners say "Wrap it up," it means, finish the relationship or move on. But when it is used by women in a specific way in Korea, it means she is "leaving her own husband and family to pursue her own life." In the series of those videos with subtitles, I applied the general meaning of Bottari as a wrapped image rather than focusing on the feminist connotation. The works at Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa in Venice are studies on nature where the boundaries are ambiguous and continuous, except for the frame of the video. Especially in To Breathe: Invisible Mirror / Invisible Needle, there seems to be no surface that remains in our gaze as the color spectrum light from the projection is constantly changing and transforming from one color into another, so there is no definition of surface in this "painting." My motivation for creating this piece was to question the depth of the surface, as well as questioning its definition, and this has been one of my constant themes since the sewing pieces earlier in my career. Where is the surface? What in the world is there between things?

• Francesca Pasini
  And the distance between what we see, and what we perceive, is it important? You mentioned your sewing pieces, could you explain the development in relation to the videos?

• Kimsooja
  My work is based in part on questions of perception — it can be found continually in my practice. In making art, I am particularly interested in getting close to the most accurate answer to the questions on the relationship and reality of things and life. I started working in video in 1994 from my interest in its "frame" as a means of "wrapping," rather than focusing on the image-making quality of the video. In the context that "wrapping" is, in fact, three dimensional sewing, it is all connected and influenced by the notion of "sewing" and "wrapping", in which the camera lens plays the part of the needle's eye.

• Francesca Pasini
  In other videos at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, such as Bottari -Waiting for the Sunrise, as well as in Bottari - Chasing the fog, or in Bottari - Drawing the Snow, the viewer must wait in front of an image that changes very slowly, and in doing so, captures the perception of time itself, inside a sort of immobility. Does the concept of time take on the function of an emotional state?

• Kimsooja
  The immobility of the audience's body occurs while watching what is taking place in the video, and its relationship to the passage of time. The body of the video camera and the body of the audience take on the same barometric role, to measure and capture the passage of time. Our waves of emotion and perception of the video move along with the transition of time and the changing landscape within the video.

• Time exists in our minds only when we are conscious of what we think, feel or act. To percieve what we see, we need to focus on moments that extend the duration of time with our own consciousness.

• In her 2006 New Year's wishes to her friends, Kimsooja included a short and true story about a pair of twin girls who were born prematurely. One of the twins was not expected to live. A nurse from the hospital decided to break the rules and placed the two infants in the same incubator. Once the newborns were placed together, side by side, they embraced each other. The stronger of the two helped to regulate the body temperature and heartbeat of the weaker one, thus enabling the weaker one to survive against all expectations. Nothing could introduce this book, the second collaborative effort between La Fenice Theatre and the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, more poetically than the story of this metaphoric event. For the duration of one month, and preceding each opera performance at the Teatro La Fenice, the public will have the opportunity to view Kimsooja's latest video work projected on the theater's screen. The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation is proud to be the first Italian art center to have established an agreement of this kind with an opera house. Upon viewing Kimsooja's videos, both at La Fenice and at the gallery space of the Foundation, but in particular the one selected for the theater, it seems only fitting to ask ourselves what the contents and significance of such videos are. Indeed, here is one of those rare occasions that demonstrate how the methods of interpreting contemporary art are not so dissimilar from those used for interpreting opera: the initial and instinctive pleasure one receives is deepened and made more complete only upon having learned something about the musical score and the operatic libretto. It is only after a first reading that one is then ready for a second, more competent and knowledgeable understanding.

• The title of the video chosen for the occasion is To Breathe / Respirar. It is a succession of colors that anticipate the rhythm of breathing‑at times hurried, at times calm and composed. The video does not portray any images, rather only colors, and speaks of the need for air, emptiness, and space for filling our lungs. Breathing is an act of survival as well as a therapeutic response to the small and large troubles that life imposes on us. Breathing as an essential act explains why the video is an image reduced to its basic essence, that is, to light.

• Although indebted to Mondrian from an artistic and theoretical point of view, as Kimsooja confirms herself, the artist does not betray her first and foremost tradition which stems from a deep relationship to Korean life and aesthetics. In this way To Breathe / Respirar leads us to look for its origins in the artist's previous works. In the 1980s Kimsooja used the fabrics and clothes that had belonged to her grandmother as a source for her geometric patchworks, which were often made in the form of a cross as in The Earth and the Heaven (1984). To the detriment of its geometry, the fortuitousness of the composition as then intensified in such later works as Toward the Mother Earth (1990‑91) and The Mind and the World (1991): pieces of material arranged like rapid brush strokes, but also like fragments of life, collected from the street and somehow brought back to life. Also the series 'Deductive Objects', created in the early 1990s, included strips of material compiled in this same way, even if scattered on the floor in a multi‑colored trail or hung like tablecloths over tiny bar tables.

• Many of the artist's subsequent works show concepts similar to the one presented in the video at La Fenice, where the idea of pieces of fabric, or rags, has been substituted by the valuable cloth that in Korea is given to newly wed couples as a nuptial bed covering. We are speaking of Bottari, which Kimsooja has used in numerous and varied ways. On different occasions they have been displayed like ordinary clothes, or as extremely decorative and interrelated layers of colors (e.g., Bottari, 2000; A Laundry Woman, 2000; A Mirror Woman, 2002). In the early 1990s Kimsooja presented the Bottari in another form, that of a traveling bundle: a swollen fruit containing just a few of one's possessions. In the performance presented at the exhibition "Cities on the Move", Kimsooja traveled by truck for eleven days in November of 1997 through all the Korean towns and cities that had been fundamental to the formation of her own identity. She was aware that she would soon be leaving behind Korea — and her fond attachment to it — to live and work in Europe and the United States. The images produced in this performance show her standing upright, with her back against the truck cab, and supported by the mound of Bottari that also served as a psychological reminder of her burden.

• The Bottari as a sign of bound identity, as a way to be seen but also as a way to not see, became a cascade of color that draped and spilled forth from the body of the artist in the performance Encounter: Looking into SewingA Needle Woman (1999‑2005). Here her body is presented as a needle which, although immobile and harnessing the flow of people around her, penetrates the crowd and knits the people together. In metaphorical terms, the combining of colors and pieces of cloth is no different than the "gathering" or "garnering" of people.

• Breathing is a symmetrical act, and thus it is akin to a given aesthetic found in the majority of Kimsooja's works — both those where her own body is at play and those where objects are the central focus. Take for example the installation Lotus: Zone of Zero (2003) erected in the center of the nearly monumental greenhouse of Lille. The installation consisted of 307 lanterns in the form of lotuses, from which issued the sounds of three cultural sources: an interweaving of Tibetan, Gregorian, and Islamic chants, presented always in the spirit of sewing and binding. The symmetry also becomes a way for emphasizing the relationships therein: right / left, above / below, inner / outer. It is no coincidence that in the version of A Mirror Woman presented at the Honolulu City Hall (A Mirror Woman - the ground of nowhere, 2003), hands, emotions and friendships were sewn together in a completely symmetrical tower of gauze. Here visitors were invited to lie down on a circular mirror placed on the floor, one that reflected a portion of open sky exposed by another circle located above the tall cone of gauze. The position that Kimsooja assumes in almost all of her performances is one of symmetry, including her solitary meditation along the sacred Yamuna River, as well as her immersion in the chaos of Times Square on March 11, 2005 (A Beggar Woman). The emotional shock produced which in the first case can be seen simply by the artist's exposure to nature and to her own intimate and internal thoughts — is also felt in A Beggar Woman by all those people who notice her sitting on the ground, immobile as a lotus, like some unexpected flower that has suddenly sprung forth. Even in those images where symmetry is absent, such as in the portion of A Needle Woman in which the artist leans against a rock, or in the disjointed movements of A Wind Woman (2005), the lack of harmony is reasserted along with a desire to regain it. This also happens in the repetitive and circular passage of day into night, a cycle characterized by a conciliatory symmetry that the artist has marked out in more than one of her videos.

• The video To Breathe / Respirar is an extreme and mature synthesis of all the themes presented in Kimsooja's works. Nothing is more symmetrical than the monochrome. These monochromes are sewn together by that electronic needle called post‑production. The color and form are similar to a kind of Asian silk, but also to Western modernism: in this way, one inhales and exhales, duality harmonizes, distant cultural traditions unite and connect like mirrored images, or like two twins helping each other to live.

• Needles and mirrors are associated with femininity. They represent things done for others, or things done for oneself. But in the hands of Kimsooja, these simple objects become cosmic metaphors. Transcending the quiet confines of the domestic world, they point to new ways of thinking about our place in the universe.

• Take the needle, for instance. When Kimsooja assumes the role of A Needle Woman, she draws on early memories of sewing with her mother and using bed clothes lovingly sewed by her grandmother. A Needle Woman makes reference to the simple actions that bind things together to sustain daily life. But this persona also reflects the fact that the first time Kim held a needle, she felt an incredible surge of energy, as if cosmic forces were converging on the needle's point. This experience has lead her to the post-Einsteinian notion that space, time and energy are interconnected. Their existence is relative rather than absolute — an insight which lies behind a work like A Needle Woman 1999-2001, in which the artist becomes a still point within a series of cityscapes marked by the swirl and chaos of urban life. In this series of videos, we see the motionless back of the standing artist, as residents of such diverse cities as Delhi, Lagos, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, Cairo and Shanghai pass before and around her like actors on a giant stage. Her long black hair, tied at her neck and dropping straight down her back, becomes a vertical force line anchoring her to the earth. This work offers three experiences of time — that of the artist, who becomes our reference point, that of the surrounding urbanites, rushing about their daily business, and that of the viewer who experiences these two very different modes simultaneously.

• Kimsooja has extended this idea in a number of other works. For A Beggar Woman, filmed in Lagos, Nigeria in 2001, she sits on a street with her hands open like a beggar. In Homeless Woman (2001), she lies motionless and vulnerable on the bustling streets of Delhi. In this works, her transcendence of ordinary time takes on a political cast, as she identifies herself with the outcasts of society.

• Describing her mental state as Needle Woman, Kimsooja has remarked: "it is the point of the needle which penetrates the fabric, and we can connect two different parts of the fabrics with threads, through the eye of the needle. A needle is an extension of the body, and a thread is an extension of the mind... The needle is medium, mystery, reality, hermaphrodite, barometer, a moment and a Zen." As a needle, she gathers power into herself so as to refocus it out into the world.

• The mirror has similar complexity. In the popular mind, it symbolizes female vanity. However, a mirror is also a reflective surface in which we hope to glimpse deeper realities. The idea of painting as a mirror of the world is a mainstay of western art tradition. In the modern era, the mirror has turned inward, reflecting an interior world rather than external one.

• But mirrors are unreliable tools. They can be misleading and even deceitful, which is why artists have so frequently employed them to play tricks on viewers. One famous example is Velazquez' Las Meninas in which a mirror in the background of a royal family portrait reflects back the image, not of present day viewer who seems positioned to be its subject, but the patrons for whom it was originally created. Something similar happens in Manet's A Bar at the Folies Bergere, in which the a frontal view of the barmaid directly confronting the viewer is transformed in the reflection of the mirror behind into an image of the woman serving a male customer.

• More recently, artists have incorporated real mirrors into works in order to multiply or expand space, to dissolve the distance between viewer and surroundings or to destabilize the space which the viewer inhabits. Two notable practitioners of mirror art are Michelangelo Pistoletto and Yayoi Kusama. By silkscreening photographic images of men and women onto sheets of highly polished steel, Pistoletto literally brings the viewer into the image, collapsing the realms of "reality" and representation. Kusama, meanwhile, has created several completely mirrored rooms filled with hundreds of tiny lights which so multiply and distort the viewer's reflection that one begins to loose any sense of self.

• Kim's Mirror Woman partakes of a similar disorientation. In her work mirrors dissolve distinctions between interior and exterior realities so as to allow individual consciousness to meld with the larger cosmos. In an 2002 installation titled A Mirror Woman, Kimsooja strung pairs of colorful fabrics, traditional Korean coverlets, in a room with completely mirrored walls. They created a maze through which the viewer could wend, creating a kaleidoscopic sense of fracture, as body and fabric seemed to merge into each other.

• Needle Woman and Mirror Woman are thus two aspects of Kim's quest for cosmic integration. Needle Woman cuts through landscapes in order to stitch them up again. Mirror Woman dissolves differences between inside and out. These personas are most fully embodied in a pair of public installations which serve as precursors to Kim's installation at the Teatro La Fenice. A Lighthouse Woman was created as part of the 2002 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. In this work, Kim created a computer synchronized nighttime display ( KS: "This was a lighting installation using actual light source and the pieces I show in La Fenice is video piece which was computer generated color spectrum rather than lighting installation." ) which bathed the exterior of a disused lighthouse with an ever changing sequence of colored light. The work was mesmerizingly beautiful as saturated veils of gold, crimson, aquamarine and purple washed slowly over the elegant nineteenth century lighthouse shaft. For Kim, the lighthouse served as a surrogate of her own body. She projected herself into the structure, which became the embodiment of all the women over the years who waited for the safe return of those who had gone to sea. This work harked back to the idea of the needle, here symbolized by the lighthouse shaft, as the collector of energy. It also echoed Kimsooja earlier works in which bottari served as both paint and canvas to transform space, and knit together memory, history and consciousness. Here, a similar effect was created by light as a tapestry of color merged past and present, sky and water, mind and matter.

• Mirror Woman, meanwhile, reaches her fullest embodiment to date in A Mirror Woman: The Ground of Nowhere, a work created for the exhibition Crossings 2003 Korea/Hawaii. Installed in the lobby of Honolulu's colonial era City Hall, this installation consisted of a sixty foot high vertical cylinder of white fabric set in the center of an uncovered atrium. In order to create this work, Kim orchestrated the reopening of a long closed aperture in the atrium roof. She sealed off all but the area directly above her fabric column, which she left open to the elements. Inside the fabric column, Kim laid down a mirror floor, so that visitors who stepped inside the muslin walls found themselves standing on a piece of sky. Meanwhile the fabric swayed gently in the breeze, giving a sense that one was inside a living, breathing space.

• Clouds drifting above and reflected below gave one the feeling, paradoxically, of rolling on an open sea. At night the stars flickered above and below. As part of an arts festival celebrating Korean emigration to Korea, A Mirror Woman made reference to the immigrant's sense of destabilized identity. But this hypnotic installation also provided visitors a more general experience of becoming one with earth and sky.

• These works provide underpinnings for Kim's new installation. TO BREATHE - Invisible Mirror / Invisible Needle - 2003-2005 which has been installed in the Teatro La Fenice. This work is also a light installation. It consists of a slowly changing overlay of colored light which washes across the auditorium and audience. Accompanying this display is a chorus woven together from the sounds of human breath ( KS: "my own voice and performance" ). Here, as in Mirror Woman in Hawaii and Needle Woman in Charleston, space is infused with a sense of life. As ear and eye are taken over by the symphony of light and sound, time loses its schematic quality and distinctions between space, self and other disappear.

• Kim's work is often discussed in relationship to her status as an immigrant, a nomad, or an Asian woman displaced into western culture. These ideas were reinforced by her use of Korean materials like the bottari, which she has often presented bound up in bundles (Bottaris in Korean), suggesting a lifestyle in which all one's worldly goods are easily gathered for easy departure. A sense of displacement permeates works like 2727 Bottari Truck (1997), a video depicting her journey through rural Korea on the back of a truck filled with bundles composed of bound bottari. Here again, the camera presents her from the back, a still center in the midst of a changing landscape. But if works like these touch on traditional concepts of home and roots and celebrate the traditional female activities which give us a sense of place, it is dangerous to oversimplify Kim's intentions.

• On one hand, her work clearly involves a rejection of western dualisms which make distinct and irreconcilable entities of such pairs as mind/matter, space/time, or self/other. Instead, she is more attuned to Buddhist inspired ideas about the circular nature of time and the transcendence of desire and physical limitations. But she refuses the easy division of East and West. Instead, she reminds us that even in the West, there are more wholistic traditions which bear kinship to her thinking.

• For instance, there is the notion of duration as explored by French philosopher Henri Bergson in the late 19th century. Bergson described duration as lived time, the experience in which time and space and past and future are fused with the continual present. He likens duration to the perception of dance, where prior and future movements are implied at every moment in the sweep of the performer's continuous gesture. Thus, instead of making the present disappear, as happens when the linear experience of time rushes us along a prescribed path from past to future, duration creates a consciousness of our unity with the dynamic nature of the world. This seems a satisfying description of the experience evoked by TO BREATHE.

• A few decades after Bergson published his speculations, Albert Einstein turned to physics to propose a similar revolution in our thinking about time. His theory of relativity also rejected the notion of space and time as self sufficient and independent entities. Instead, he fused them into a single interactive entity called spacetime. More recently advances in electronic communication make it possible to experience what video artist Bill Viola calls "parallel time", the sensation of existing simultaneously in one's own body and in some far flung locale. Viola notes that it is possible to be as aware of what is happening in a loft in New York as in a street in Paris or a war zone in the middle east. This idea certainly resonates with the multiple experiences of time and space expressed by the Needle Woman.

• Thus, in referencing ancient Asian traditions and philosophies, Sooja Kim (Kimsooja) is also presenting us with tools for thinking about the complexities of life today. Needle Woman and Mirror Woman face backward and forward, tying together history and the future, while reminding us that in the end, it is the infinite present in which we live our lives.

• One of the influencial topics in Western art since the late eighties is — in different facets — the issue of absence. Service art, art as curating, the nomadic existence, the anonymization of individual authorship due to collective creativity — this and more are indicators for the fact that artists have increasingly tried in the past few years to break out of the system of self-reference which has been a major influence on Western art since the Sixties. Absence is used here mainly as a strategy, in order to undermine the increasing personalization in the arts and to access fields once again, which open up a stronger connectivity between art and its social dimension. Nevertheless, these strategies always inhere the matrix of self-reflexiveness. The opening of Western art to cultural influences from other continents — due to globalization — is of special importance in this situation, because from here, beyond the discourse-safe products for the western art market, also originate important impulses for a renewed debate about how art can dedicate itself again to the general questions of the human life in a way that it fulfills contemporary aesthetic standards at the same time.

• Kimsooja was born in 1957 in Korea, and now lives in New York. She is one of those artists who have, over the past fifteen years, contributed significantly to this re-orientation of contemporary art. She has grown up in a culture shaped by Confucianism, yet her immediate environment was dominated by Catholicism. The fact that the family had to move repeatedly, due to her fathers occupation in the military, led to the early experience of uprooting, a sentiment that has also influenced Western culture throughout the 20th century. In an interview with Gerald Matt, Kimsooja characterized herself in these words: "Travelling is not always voluntary for me. I was often forced to travel. Travelling belongs to my life, since I was a small girl (...) Settling down and being shuffled around, meeting and separation - these topics were always present for me. I have the mentality of a person living on a border line, and the materials, with which I work, correspond to that. Since my childhood I had a lot to do with 'longing' and ' homesickness' with 'memory gaps' and 'adjustment to the new environment'." [1]

• This personal background influenced the development of Kimsooja's art and her body of consistent work has grown since the 80s. The materials refered to above were first those which belonged to the artist's grandmother. After her death, Kimsooja used the fabrics in order to create large sized murals, which are in the spirit of the painting she had initially studied in Korea. But already the use of these materials tainted with memories - with all colouredness of the individual materials, which were formed to abstract compositions focuses on absence, i.e. the loss of her grandmother. At the same time, the use of these fabrics in itself breaks a taboo, as cloths are regarded to belong to the people who wore them during their lifetimes. This double "absence" (the mental-physical of the grandmother on the one hand, the disrespect of tradition on the other hand), this ambivalence is characteristic of Kimsooja's artistic procedure altogether.

• It cannot be the place here, to discuss in detail the development of Kimsooja's œuvre, for this I would like to point briefly to the recently published overview of her work. [2]

• Yet, it is crucial for me, that the motif of absence can be found in the entire body of work that Kimsooja has realized so far. It is to be observed that the artist understands absence not as a motif of deficiency, but as a constructive, dialectic strategy. After her scholarship at P.S.1 in New York, Kimsooja's first new work concentrated above all on the traces of usage on objects, Deductive Objects. With this group of works the artist succeeded in detaching herself from the painting as the focus of her visual production, and consequently extended her vocabulary in rapid steps by installation, video, photo and performance.

• Fabrics play a particular role in the group of works, Sewing Into Walking, the Bottaris, and partly also in the series, A Laundry Woman. Finally, they also form the basis for the 2004 graphic edition, Seven Wishes, featuring different motifs of Korean cloths which were used also for the Bottaris and different installations in the series of A Laundry Woman. Furthermore, works like the photo/video/performance work Encounter and the photowork Epitaph, demonstrate Kimsooja's 'souverain' handling of this topic.

• In another group of work, absence is connected with spatiotemporal questions. In these works, the allegorical function of the above mentioned works with a stronger pictorial character step back in favor of a dialectic relationship between work and viewer. I am refering specifically to the performance series A Needle Woman, developed for the video camera (a second set of performances in this series is pending) as well as the related series A Homeless Woman and A Beggar Woman and several works from the series A Laundry Woman. In these works, Kimsooja is always located in the center of the picture, her back towards the viewer, immobile, sitting or lying. All that happens takes place around her. Either she is surrounded by streams of people in metropolises of different continents, or the slow stream of a river flows, passing before her. The dialectic of immobility and mobility in these works, already discussed by different authors, rotates around the center of absence, as it is featured in Kimsooja's work. The artist herself has highlighted it in the following statement: "Everything moves, and movement is a fundamental condition of being. The oscillation of each moment has its own rhythm. Nevertheless the difference between mobility and immobility for me is comparatively small. I have aligned my body to a certain extent to the threshold of a sensitive barometer, which differentiates between the fine borders of mobility and immobility. It is somewhat logical therefore that the mobility of my body located in certain roads, in certain cities, in different continents represents an example of immobility, while my decision to move is on the contrary completely sudden and takes place unconsciously. The decision falls within an energetic conflict between two different elements, my body and the external world. I always wanted to show reality by presenting to people things the way they really are, without doing something, making or creating something further, while most artists and actors strive to create or show something new." [3]

• Absence is thus for the artist an important means in her art to communicate to the public an experience corresponding to her own experience and her own reflections. Therefore Kimsooja's artistic approach has not unjustifiably been called "existential minimalism", a term, she emphatically embraces for her uvre. Under this label a contemporary western current meets the timeless practices of Zen Buddhism. For Buddhists the void, i.e. absence, means abundance, inasmuch as the emptiness gives space for meditation on life. We can therefore define Kimsooja's work as a rare case of intercultural fertilization, which highlights the particular importance of her art.

The Exhibition

• For the Kewenig Galerie in Cologne, Kimsooja conceived an exhibition which is to be understood as an installation. The center point is an old truck, loaded with Bottari bundles, further individual Bottaris, the graphic edition Seven Wishes, likewise related to the Bottari materials and 4 video projections. The exhibition title refers unmistakably to the transitory nature of the manifestation. Already three linguistic elements refer to it: The term of the Bottari itself, the date and finally the combination with the place. Bottaris are bundles, in which Korean people, in particular women, are traditionally tying together their belongings in cloths, to take with them when moving out of necessity or voluntarily - to another place. The cloths are usually bed cloths or bedspreads, given as the traditional Korean wedding gift. Thus they are closely bound to their owners, often accompany them until the end of their life, also because the motifs, inserted into the cloths, represent the well wishes of the giver, which are hoped to be fulfilled during the course of life. In Seven Wishes, Kimsooja features five of these motifs, complemented by two large size abstract motifs, i.e. by wish-motifs, which are waiting to be filled with life.

• Directly in the entrance area of the gallery, the visitors are greeted by a Bottari bundle, but mainly in the basement of the gallery, in the areas with compact and simple vaults, individual Bottaris are to be found. The mood of these installations always inheres a tendency of loneliness, which here becomes particularly effective, not alone through the aesthetics of the space, though. Even if the Bottari bundles can always be understood as a testimony of an individual life charged by that person's personality, Kimsooja has succeeded here in creating an extraordinarily impressive reference to the special history of this place. In the neighbouring part of the building, next to the Kewenig Galerie, the secret state police maintained prison cells during the Nazi-era where systematic torture took place. The destruction of the individual sought by the Nazi regime is counteracted by Kimsooja's quiet, but indeterminable note highlighting the indestructibility of the human soul.

• An age-old three-wheel truck Tempo, from 1938, is located in the center of the upstairs gallery, its cargo area loaded with Bottari bundles that reach over the roof of the driver's cabin. Entering the space, the visitor approaches towards the protruding and pointy bonnet, giving a morphic twist to the car. This Bottari Truck is a newer version of the original truck, in which the artist drove in 1997 for eleven days, a performance crisscrossing through Korea. If the original was later being seen "in exile" in different exhibitions, Kimsooja realised a new truck for the Cologne exhibition, a somewhat smaller version. The original performance took place in the context of the project, Cities On the Move, and illustrated the special state of mind of people who are forced due to their life circumstances to move their homes again and again. The resulting special relationship to space and time, typical for migrants, which is usually hard to comprehend for non-migrants, becomes especially apparent in the Bottari Truck. The artist described it as follows: "Bottari Truck is a processing object throughout space and time / locating and dislocating / ourselves to the place / where we came from / and where we are going to." [4] There are few works, which focus on the topic of migration and how it seizes people again and again in the same way, with such precision, yet, without falling into any kind of the ideology.

• The artist has placed four video projections in the same gallery, which transpose the emotional motif of the Bottari Truck onto a more abstract, philosophical level. All video work originates from the years 2000 and 2001 and has so far only been shown rarely. Only one work features a crowd, immediately drawing an association to the performance series A Needle Woman. There is however no connection between the work Bottari - Zocalo and the performance series. Here the artist herself cannot be recognized, she is not surrounded by the flow of people as in A Needle Woman, the crowd is nearly static, it does not move in a superordinate direction. The spectator only recognizes single, individual movements, which go into different directions. The majority of people remain unrecognizable on the spot, similarly as in large concerts in football arenas. Because the image is projected somewhat accelerated and is at the same time also blurred, strangely abstract effects arise. The optical proximity to other abstract cyclographic pictures, in which the origin of the elements' movement is not evident, transposes the perception of the concrete situation, in which people are in the recording, on a general level, and which the emphasis is placed on the dialectic between static of the crowd and the movement of its individual components.

• Something similar takes place in the work Bottari - drawing the snow, which shows the falling snow on a winter night. The camera looks up into the falling snow, and like before, the image contains no orientation coordinates. What remains is the apparently coincidental direction of motion of each individual snow flake in contrast to the seemingly immovable flakes disappearing into the darkness of the space behind. This image has such a high degree of abstraction that it already reaches the dimension of the concrete, into which the viewer immerses. Is it an image of meditation?

• The work Bottari - wrapping the thunderstorm takes up the Bottari - drawing the snow motif again, breaking however from any kind of natural image. The viewer only sees the electronic "snow" that develops on-screen if the screen does not receive a proper signal. The term for the title of this work, taken out of nature, supplies the starting point for an interpretation in this case. Because the "storm" here is on a more micrological level, reaching such high speed, it appears nearly motionless again for the human perception. Also the depth of the area which can still be suspected in " Bottari - drawing the snow " is here left exclusively to the imagination of the viewer.

• The fourth video projection, Bottari - Alfa Beach, however, features 'natural space'. The image of the barely moving sea and a piece of sky is projected upsidedown. The horizon lies in the center of the picture, and watching it, the question emerges regarding the coordinates having led to this picture. Upwards downwards, surface and depth — all these terms become questionable in view of this simple gesture of a reversal and are begging for reassurance.

• With one exception (Seven Wishes) all works in this exhibition carry the first title Bottari, including the video projections. If one accepts the ambivalent representational character of the bound "bundles" — to be on the one hand a metaphor of migrating, concomitantly the internal state of migrants, on the other hand a concrete, nearly magic component of a lived life — as meaningful basis, then once more this installation refers to absence as endowied with meaning, emptiness as abundance, because it becomes apparent, "that Kimsooja's art is directed towards another kind of void — neither the void of art history nor the void of today's split in human consciousness, but the void of the self, the concept of 'no mind'." [5]

• Robert Morgan's words turn into a nearly soothsaying dimension given Kimsooja's exhibition at the Kewenig Galerie in Cologne. The Bottari gains thereby a further level of meaning, which has not been recognized in Kimsooja's œuvre so far. It becomes a time capsule, which, in contrast to the linear temporality of Andy Warhol's Time Capsules, connects time with those dimensions, which extract themselves from our conscious and controlled access. Kimsooja already expressed this in 1997 with the following words: "Time is mental space whose physical presence can never be grasped, space from which we can never escape. Whenever we want to, we can always recall a particular time, but we can never relocate our body with respect to that moment." [6]

• Vaduz, June 2005

• 'The space is nowhere. The space is within itself like honey in a comb.' [1] The enigmatic quality of this image lies in the special powers of honey — first to accrue and then to spread out, and, resistant to being sealed off, to transform and expand space with its light and scent. This observation can assume broader implications as an analogy for a universal outlook that from the Renaissance through to the present has been formulated by philosophers and poets alike. Namely, that the way we experience exterior space, its boundlessness and its limits depends on the inner space of the subject experiencing it. It is this inner space alone that determines the extent and expansion of space and things, an insight Rilke couched in the words 'the one space stretches through all beings, an inner cosmos', and, elsewhere, 'Space spreads transposingly from us to things: / to properly feel how a tree upsprings, cast around it space from that which inwardly / abides within in you. Surround it with retention. / It has no bounds. Not until its reascension / in your renouncing is it truly tree.' [2]

• To examine experience and objects in terms of their dynamic power to seize and occupy space, to think through time and space in terms of their capacity to expand, in other words to give visual form to the potent equivalence between substance and 'extance' [3] is probably the most important creative principle propelling Kimsooja's work.

• Born in Taegu in 1957 and a resident of New York since 1999, the Korean artist has no need to impress through heroic gestures. The barest means — needle and thread, and a few pieces of used cloth — are quite enough for her. These can, for example, end up as The Heaven and the Earth, one of her first works from 1984. Kimsooja was 27 years old when she stitched together the scraps of material left over from those of her deceased grandmother's old silk dresses that were not fully worn-out and faded. Here, echoing the title, the entire universe is laid out before us — the earth's four quadrants designated by the four points of the compass and at their centre, as described in many ancient cultures, the fifth realm where the 'world mountain' or the site of the 'column of heaven' [4] is located. That this can indeed be understood to represent a universe is confirmed if one closely examines and elucidates the full body of Kimsooja's art and its underlying coherence.

• Having studied painting in Seoul and lithography in Paris, the artist was concerned from the outset with finding means of abandoning the frame encompassing the canvas and the image. In the early nineties she stitched together patches of coloured fabric into relief-like, freely proliferating forms, mounting onto walls a rich spectrum of semi-circular shapes or tondi. Cloth, needle and thread in lieu of canvas, paints and brushes. But these are fabrics that once 'had a life': worn garments or traditional Korean bedspreads. Kimsooja seeks out these pieces of cloth because they 'retain the smells of others' lives, memories and histories, though their bodies are no longer there — embracing and protecting people, celebrating their lives and creating a network of existences.' [5] These works also have titles that allude to something far beyond the borders of the object and fill it with interior space, such as Toward the Mother Earth.

Stepping beyond

• For Kimsooja the act of sewing quickly became far more than a mere departure from painting, as this shift gave her the means to evolve a cognitive approach and a world view, spawning a central idea that was soon to animate her entire work. All the works she has produced since then can be considered part of an exploratory quest to fathom this mythical universe spun around needle and thread. Indeed, unlike any other instrument the needle is able to hold 'the thread, drawing it through the surface into the lower layers, into an underworld of downward motion. There is the needle that moves along the boundary, between the panels it is about to join together. It overcomes intermediary space. But the needle has no existence of its own. It is an instrument, a means; once the work is done, the needle disappears.' [6] When Kimsooja — who even sewed her own name together from her forename Sooja and her family name Kim — describes the needle's attributes one clearly sees how closely she identifies with this instrument of artistic labour. At the time she was making her large and increasingly expansive relief-like textile collages, she also began working on objects which she modified by covering their surfaces with fabrics. There are, for instance, the large runged wheels some 185 cm high, steel structures made by the artist and assembled together with discarded farming tools; these interest her less as ready-mades than as objects which once had a purpose and are thus imbued with their own time and history. The fabric cover softens the sharp edges and points, transforming the work tool into a feminine and visual object. [7] While these experimental pieces are perhaps less striking than Kimsooja's other work they nonetheless assume a pivotal function within her artistic development in the sense that they mark the point of transfer of her textile surfaces into the third dimension.

• This is the basis on which Kimsooja then founded a wholly new understanding of her role as an artist. In her subsequent works she no longer treated the needle as an extension of her hand but increasingly regarded herself and her own body as the needle, using it as a sewing tool to move between layers of textile. It was this new awareness that led her to make her first bottari, the Korean word for the cloth bundles that are so deeply part of Korean tradition. Even today the large, richly coloured and decorative bedcovers woven in silk or cotton are still used in Korea to transport clothes, books and household articles on journeys or as storage around the home. But these bundles are also the expression of a culture exposed to colonialist threat and repression, one whose constant preparedness for departure and escape has become fully ingrained in the habits of everyday life. A large cover of this kind still represents a typical wedding gift for young couples. Its functions mark the poles of human existence: as a bedspread it is equated with tranquillity, tenderness and birth; as a suspended stretcher it is used as a cradle for carrying the sick and the dead. But besides its place in Korean tradition a further significant aspect becomes evident if one considers the position textiles have held in age-old African-Arab culture. When a woven fabric is removed from the loom and the threads are cut the women pronounce the same ritual blessing as they would at the severance of a baby's umbilical cord. Thus in terms not only of its function but also of its manufacture a cloth could be likened to a bridge spanning the entire breadth of human existence, with the four sides of the loom signifying the four ends of the world.

Being alien

• The idea of or awareness for the bottari arose during the period of Kimsooja's artistic residency at P.S. 1 in New York in 1992—93. In her studio she caught sight of the bundle in which she kept her clothes, as she had commonly done in Korea. Living in alien surroundings had changed her perception: 'Suddenly the bundle meant something entirely new to me. It was a sculpture and a painting in one and I realized that by the simple act of tying it together I could shift from two to three dimensions', she noted. [8] At the P.S. 1 open studio in 1992 and the New Museum in New York a year later Kimsooja created her first installation made of bottari. On her return to Korea she exhibited them for the first time in her home country. In the village Yangdong in the Kyungju region she came across a deserted house which she chose as the site to install this work — brilliantly coloured cloth bundles spread out over the floor. Not only did this manifest an alien view of her own culture but it also instantly set the course for her adoption of alienness as a way of life. Within Kimsooja's oeuvre the bottari evolved into a kind of module that would recur in ever-changing variations in altogether different contexts during her travels over the following years.

• At the same time, however, in 1995, she used fabrics to construct an ephemeral monument commemorating the two thousand Koreans who were shot dead in Kwangju. In May 1988 students and others who demonstrated against the imposition of martial law were brutally murdered by the government. For this work Kimsooja covered the ground of a wooded terrain with two and a half tons of cotton clothes, some bundled up into bottari, others piled in loose heaps. Visitors were able to walk over the laid-out clothing. As the installation ran its two-month course and the seasons progressed the items of clothing became increasingly intermingled with the earth of the forest floor. Called Sewing into Walking, a piece in which first she and then each of the visitors acted as needles gradually stitching together not only the past and the present but also the man-made and the naturally grown, the dead and the living.

• This new dimension, whereby 'sewing' is extended to the outside world, gave rise to a spectacular image in her 1997 performance titled Cities on the Move — 2727 Kilometer Bottari Truck. For this work Kimsooja heaped piles of bottari onto the uncovered loading area of a lorry, fastening them with a crisscrossed web of strong elastic rope and then, seated on top of this bundle of bundles, travelled for eleven days though Korea visiting all the places she had ever lived in and which for her were thus loaded with memory. To reach these towns and villages the truck climbed sinuous roads over mountains and through valleys, boarded ferries to cross from seashore to seashore. Kimsooja explains why it was so important for her to sit on top of these itinerant bundles of belongings: 'my body — which is just another bottari on the move — is in the present, is tracing the past and, at the same time, is heading for the future, non-stop movement by sitting still on the truck. And though I used myself in this work, I tried to locate a more universal point where time and space coincide.' [9]

Universe

• This journey encompassed two extremes at once: the more or less conscious act of bidding farewell to her home country before moving completely to the US and the starting-point of a life that was to be increasingly shaped by the rhythm and her personal awareness of being on the move. But the 'universal point' Kimsooja was seeking might, arguably, reside in the perception of these folded clothes and tightly tied bundles as metaphors for the universe. The bundles could be seen as an altogether concrete expression of Leibniz's notion of the universe as a vast cloth that, however many new folds it acquires, always remains one and the same piece of cloth. 'The entire universe is a continuous body that is not divided but like wax can assume various forms and like a tunic can be folded in a variety of ways.' [10] Even if Kimsooja herself, who is familiar in like degrees with eastern and western culture, would not draw such a reference to Leibniz, her work nonetheless offers evidence of a sensibility which grasps cloth as a phenomenon and takes account of its pronounced cultural-historical and philosophical connotations. Indeed, her work seems almost to have been woven from all the different contrasting manifestations of this same phenomenon, whether packed together in round, thick, heavy bundles placed on the ground or as pictorial surfaces fluttering gently and delicately against the wall — in the manner of how she went on to work with cloth. Besides fabric, there is hardly another material so rich in associative potential: it is capable of being one and many at the same time, yet can be returned to being one. But the particular quality of Kimsooja's work lies in how she takes the spiritual-corporeal dual nature of cloth, which for so long has fascinated philosophers and poets alike, and transposes it into a constantly revitalized and ever-evolving exploration of time and space.

• The broad scope of her travel performance Cities on the Move — 2727 Kilometer Bottari Truck came full circle when she parked her lorryload of bottari in the 'd'Apertutto' [11] hall during the Venice Biennale in 1999. The truck was installed in front of a large mirrored wall — as though her notion of living in exile were characterized by this dual vision of things. In this particular setting the installation was indeed titled Exile. The fact of departure is irrevocably sealed by the fact of arrival. In another performance, which felt almost like an inverted echo of her Venice installation, Kimsoojaspread one of these magnificently coloured fabrics over the grass between the gravestones of a cemetery in Brooklyn, where the cloth was billowed out by the wind like a sail. Looming behind her was the silhouette of New York with its towers looking as stone-carved as the tombstones. Performed in 2002, just a year after the terror attack on September 11, the piece she titled Epitaph was nothing further than a fluttering gravestone inscription. The Greek word epitaphion means 'at the grave', and it is precisely this embodiment of nothing more than the prepositional gesture of 'at', of hovering in the intermediate realm, of being suspended on the edge that constitutes the poetry of her work. This single gesture might also evoke Rilke's call to cast one's own immeasurable inward space around things so as to free them from their limits, to grasp them concretely in one's vision. But in this instance it was not just any object that she had taken to expand the space of experience. This too is why the 'ybulbo' — the name for large Korean bedcovers steeped in history and tradition — were able to 'spread open' their own space when long rows of them were suspended on washing lines traversing the room in the work A Mirror Woman (2002). Here, not only was the viewer's gaze immersed in a swirl of colour but his ears were also awash with sound, with the chants of Tibetan monks. But the covers were also hung between two walls of mirrors, incorporating the viewer into a never-ending reflection as he wandered through the floating, wafting walls of fabric, these swaying pictorial panels that in endless repetition constantly unfurled new fata morganas and chimerical spatial realms.

• This installation was one of the works that again centrally featured fabrics, which are capable of filling space and creating space of their own. At the same time this work acted as a seam, a threshold and a turning point for a new stage in Kimsooja's work. Hereafter she began to envisage the entire space of her surroundings, the world she observes and experiences, as an immense piece of cloth through which she herself travels as a needle.

Unity

• A Needle Woman (1999) is the name Kimsooja gave herself in the performance she held in Kitakyushu in Japan when she reclined on top of a cliff with her back to the viewer. She lay on her side, her body nestling against the curves of the rock, one of her arms outstretched, cushioning her head, the other clasped along the length of her body. With her legs closed, her body traced a single line starting at the tip of her outstretched feet. She did not support herself: this reclining horizontal posture is not an expression of passivity but a sign of balance and alertness. The colour of the pale limestone echoed that of her gown, reinforcing the sense of unity between the human body and the geological body. This is probably one of her quietest, most peaceful works. 'Nothing changes in this video except the natural light from the sky and a little bit of breeze, and at the end there is one fly that is just passing by against the slow movement of the clouds. Of course, I had to control my breath, so my shoulders wouldn't move; I taught myself how to breathe with my stomach. I was there a pretty long time. The rock was a little bit cold, but it was just so peaceful. I was completely abandoning my will and desire to nature and I was at such a peace.' [12] Her words may have the ring of Far Eastern meditative culture, but Kimsooja actually expounds a world view that is more a fusion of eastern and western culture and treats meditation as part of everyday life. [13] Hence, as the horizontal Needle Woman lying on the mountainside of Kitakyushu she can equally associate herself with the crucifix. For her body is 'located at the central point of four different elements which are in-between the sky and the earth, nature and human beings. I located myself on the borderline of the earth and the sky, facing nature and away from the viewers'. [14] Here one can sense the vision of the universe alluded to in the cross of cloth called The Earth and the Heaven that was mentioned at the outset which, when set in proper context, increasingly reveals its true dimensions.

• The further one probes the logic woven into Kimsooja's work — following the weave, as it were — the more it appears to be oriented towards forming an image of the world with universal scope. One year later, with a quietness similar to that witnessed in Kitakyushu, but now tipped into a vertical axis, the artist stood on the steep slopes of the Yamuna river in India near Delhi, not far from where the dead are cremated. She can be seen peering across the water, watching the blossom, ornaments and other remains of incinerated ritual objects drifting away towards the horizon. Again Kimsooja is observed from the rear, the viewer's gaze following hers into the space that to her resembled a painting, a space holding 'anonymous people's life and death, including mine.' [15] The fact that she is viewed from behind has been frequently commented upon. Yet how else is such a pictorial space meant to arise, one that allows the viewer to participate in what is seen and experienced? Is it not precisely through this distending glance that space and meaning can be generated? [16]

Axis

• Kimsooja's appearance in her own pictorial spaces is evidence of 'being in the world', a state that absorbs and incorporates its audience, as opposed to the viewer being excluded and treated as 'other'. Moreover, her presence in these spaces is not that of a melancholy dreamer but of an active axis. Whether in a horizontal or a vertical position, she is always the one who, as she says, condenses movement and time. The artist transforms time into corporeality that not only circumscribes space but actually opens it up: 'For me, space is time — time is space. Every single movement and any physicality is time. If we draw a line from a given point, time runs exactly parallel to it. A line is the physical expression of movement in time. And through this movement space is also opened up. When I position my body as a stationary, vertical axis in space I am to some degree creating a form of timelessness, but I am simultaneously opening up another kind of movement — a vertical, inwardly directed movement, time in the form of condensation. We cannot separate the coexistence of time and corporeality, and hence spatiality; they are for ever immutably fused.' [17] This conception of time and space as corporeal entities can be witnessed not only in Kimsooja's living images of devotion to the structures of the cosmos and nature, but also in her performances in the open spaces of collective experience in the world's cities. In A Homeless Woman she can be seen lying on the ground in the same posture as she assumed on the Kitakyushu mountain, but now directly on the streets of cities like Delhi and Cairo. As a needle, barometer, seismograph and compass she seems to be doing more than just personifying time and space, she is also indicating the everyday dramas that usually go undetected in our habit-formed lives. The social fabric has now become her material. Her gown is as grey as the dusty road; her presence evolves into silent, physical testimony.

• This performance also has a vertical equivalent. As in her extensive performance series A Needle Woman (1999-2001), which she resumed in 2005, urban residents become the cloth in which Kimsooja wraps herself when she travels to large cities and implants herself as a perpendicular axis amid teeming passers-by, standing bolt upright and motionless in the very places where the crowds are densest. The videos on which these performances are recorded are silent; the viewer can fully concentrate on the image and its time and space. Here again the artist's gaze is directed at events before her and the people passing by. People in Delhi, Lagos, Tokyo, New York, London, Mexico City, Shanghai and Cairo. Here we see people with time to notice the artist, to smile at her, to turn around and look back; or others who are focused wholly on their own purposes and hurry onward without registering her. Immobile and with steady gaze, the artist stands in the surging floods of people, stems herself against the current, her motionlessness acting as a gauge of passing time. Similar to how she stood as a vertical living axis by the Yamuna river, fully aware that even if she were no longer there the vast horizontal current would outlast the arc of her existence and continue to flow onward, here it seems much the same, that the broad currents of surging humanity will never cease to flow, will outlast this corporeal needle measuring the present.

Horizon

• In her most recent performances series A Needle Woman from 2005 Kimsooja turned to examine an entirely different theme, even though she barely altered her pictorial means. For this she travelled to trouble spots around the world, places with a background of prolonged struggle against colonialism, regions that have been plagued by war, civil strife, economic conflict and dire poverty, that have been decimated by ancient feuds between warring ethnic groups. She visited Havana where the scars of colonial experience are still keenly felt; she went into the favelas in Rio de Janeiro where everyday life is constantly menaced by street warfare; she travelled to N'Djamena in Chad, the poorest country in Africa and to Sana'a in Yemen, a country currently embroiled in conflict with both the US and Israel — not to mention Patan in Nepal and Jerusalem. These journeys were more tokens of physical testimony than of the possibility of physically experiencing time; the purpose and implications of this testimony are made clear by the high degree of risk to which Kimsooja exposed herself in these places and on her travels. While the viewer again witnesses her as a calm and stationary pole standing in the midst of milling crowds, among which are also variously uniformed soldiers, she herself can hear the rattling of machine-guns from all around her and on more than one occasion has feared she might be shot in the back.

• This video installation was shown on six screens at the 2005 Venice Biennale. For the first time the video's speed was not real time but cut by fifty per cent, thereby stretching the duration of the performance, distending the moment of encounter between Kimsooja as an immobile axis and the passing people. Only when time is expanded does the encounter between standstill and flowing time become properly visible. This gives rise to three different time zones within the pictorial space. First there is the form of timelessness embodied by the stationary vertical pole of A Needle Woman. Very similar to her performance Cities on the Move — 2727 Kilometer Bottari Truck where, seated on top of the lorry's fastened load of bundles like a human bottari, she acted as a sign of the present travelling through the past while constantly moving towards the future, here again she is a stationary pole that personifies past, present and future in one. Holding the past within her, Kimsooja encounters the present and looks into the future. Secondly, besides this form of condensed time there is also the motion of the passers-by who are the concrete manifestation of a time composed of countless juxtaposed moments of the present. Finally, a third time zone is introduced into the image by the viewers themselves, for it is they who embody the link to real time. To a greater extent than the physical experience of space, this work manifests the physical experience of time. [18] It offers concrete evidence of the degree to which our relational systems are determined by both space and time. Time, like space, can isolate or connect. By expanding time Kimsooja's video work emphasizes the encounter, but is more than just a phenomenon of simultaneity. What instead transpires is similar to what happens when we observe the expanded space in her Kitakyushu and Yamuna river performances: the viewer is drawn into a state of consciousness comparable to that of experiencing the horizon. Expanded time opens up the experience of one's own boundary. While the viewer is watching the videos of these six spaces of conflict filled with teeming human crowds he is looking in the same direction as the artist, is standing motionless as her and experiences his own time, its limitation and thereby the possibility of imagining how this boundary might be surpassed.

• With the Venice piece the role of A Needle Woman visibly evolved into the political role of a witness, of someone who 'was there', who was in the midst of everything, who also suffered, who partook in need and hardship and is now able to report about it. Here she has become a needle that gauges reality, a clock hand registering the events of our time. But in this role A Needle Woman also embodies our relationship to current events, our unshielded vulnerability towards the moment, an exposure that lacks reflective distance. It is the dislocating filter of imagery that offers the means of overcoming such blind, mute and excessive proximity in our experience of the present. For even if the viewer himself experiences events from the same perspective and, conceivably, with the same inner calm as the artist it is the distance established by the image that provides him with a filter of time and space, thereby engendering insight. Kimsooja has created a profoundly ethical anthropological work. The universe she stretched open when she started out as an artist has evolved into a truly committed condition of 'being in the world', which for the artist herself only makes sense as a political embodiment of our spatial and temporal experience. The full dimensions of her pictorial world are only properly revealed when one perceives it as fostering a sphere of concrete metaphysics — but one which seeks its raison d'être in ethics.

• The artist stands immobile with her back to us, and the river flows slowly by. It's the Yamuna River, in Delhi, and the flowers, ashes and charred remains afloat in it come from a nearby crematory. Since the middle of the 1980s, the Korean artist Kimsooja has been using installations, performances and video for poetic transformations of various elements of the culture from which she comes into metaphors of the human condition. The contrast between fixity and motion, particularly in relation to the human body, is one of the constants of her work. In the performance A Needle Woman, she dresses in a stern, dark suit, erect and motionless in the middle of the street, offering resistance to the surging energy of a crowd of passers-by. In A Homeless Woman, she lies stretched out along the ground. In A Beggar Woman she sits with crossed legs in the midst of urban traffic. In all of these positions and situations she confronts us with the metaphor of a life that withdraws from the hubbub around it.

• The body that faces away from us revises the notion of the artist as protagonist or predominant actor: this is a body on a search for otherness, while nonetheless unable to oppose the order of things, and even less to alter it. In an interview in which Kimsooja describes her state of mind while filming A Laundry Woman, she remarks that there was a moment when she came to understand that movement, here, belonged not to the river, which would always remain, whereas her body would disappear from the world. The contemplation of a landscape situation that evokes the endlessness of nature and the finitude of the human condition refers necessarily to the compositions of C. D. Friedrich where a figure generally seen from behind stands out against sublime landscapes which emphasize and underline the incommensurability of the horizon. The contemporary context has doubtless changed, but the confrontation between the subject and a horizon — cultural no less than environmental — once again brings existential questions to the foreground: questions on permeability and impermeability, on the separateness and intimate inter-relationship of the human being and the world.

• As a writer coming from a Westernized context, I regard the work of Kimsooja with a great deal of specificity, rarefied thought, and emotion. At the same time, I understand her need to relinquish desire — first in herself, and then, in relation to her work. If desire offers a means to grapple with the emotional realities that exist in relation to the external visual and material world, then the sensory cognitive aspect of the human body serves as its refining conduit. In this respect, Kimsooja posits the sensorium of the body, together with the cognitive apparatus of the mind, as a kind of actionist sanctuary. Her persona — "a needle woman" — suggests that our bodies are where we stand — as she stands anonymously facing the momentum of people walking towards her in the crowded streets of Shanghai and London — or where we lie down — as she lies down under the shade tree in a public place in Cairo. In such circumstances, the artist's body acts as a conduit between the interior realm of the spirit and the external world of perennial chaos. A Needle Woman suggests that by focusing on the body without desire, we offer ourselves the potential to make ourselves whole. The body is what nourishes us and gives us substance. The Fakirs in India have known this for centuries. The body is capable of nourishing itself over extended periods of time. And this notion of self-nourishment is far from the narcissistic desires that have come to possess human beings in the storm of illusory wealth, provided by the monarchs and moguls of globalization.

• When I look at the works of Kimsooja — whether her early "deductive objects" as in the wrapping of ordinary household objects, or her brilliant installations of suspended ybulbo, or her magnificent still-body interventions in crowds of people in various major cities, or even in her spinning jukebox wheels overlaid with the mixed sounds of Buddhist chant, Gregorian, and Islamic chants, I begin to see a pattern of recognition. When I observe her video of A Beggar Woman performance in Lagos, I cannot refrain from having an emotional response. I never know exactly how to respond to the kind of aesthetic/anti-aesthetic whirl that spins in my head upon seeing these works by Kimsooja. How do I respond to this feeling of a language that is exorbitant, ineluctable, and mysterious? Yet somehow I discover an unexpected relief from the sensory burden of everyday life, the existential reality that I share with others who feel as I do. I have to admit to a certain beauty in all of this, the kind of beauty that gives strength to carry on. I reflect on Sooja's image of light projected against the lighthouse tower on Morris Island, Charleston (during the Spoleto Festival) in 2002 as a kind of double entendre as symbolizing both doubt and hope. It is here that Sooja becomes "A Lighthouse Woman". I think to myself — Is this not what art is supposed to do? Isn't art supposed to carry the mind and body into a different realm of being, an elevated state of contemplation and understanding of the world in which we inhabit?

• Kimsooja is a woman on a journey. She is an artist and a human being like everyone else. Her hanging polychrome ybulbo (traditional Korean bedcoverings) and her bottari bundles transmit moments of enlightenment and redefinition. They reclaim the space that has been lost to ideology, fashion, mass media, and commerce. They transform the habitation of public space to a place of solace and intimacy that gives substance to everyday life. One may ask upon seeing these works whether the polarities of East and West still mean anything in our postmodern world torn by violent struggles between the rich and poor nations of the world, or even by nations who divide the rich from the poor.

• Sooja's persona is "the needle woman" or "the laundry woman"; — and here is the point where my emotions start to swell. I am filled with a sense that life is, in fact, a journey, with a purpose and that compassion is more important then passion. Sooja's video projections — the needle women poised on a rock in Kitakyushu, and her laundry woman on the edge of the Yamuna River in Delhi where the burnt ashes of deceased human beings float to eternity — were made within two years of one another, in 1999 and 2000 respectively. These works asserted a turning-point in her career where the performance and video became an essential component in her work.

• Earlier, in 1995 — when asked to participate in the first Gwangju Biennial — Sooja did a second version (first performed in 1994) of Sewing into Walking - Dedicated to the Victims of Gwangju. Her ybulbo were scattered in a forest — used cotton cloth in rumpled piles in chaotic bundles strewn to the winds. Here fabric was returned to nature, one given back to the other. Here she commemorates the struggle for democracy in 1980 where six hundred Korean were gunned down for insisting on their human rights.

• The sensory / cognition domain of human beings causes much internal strife and is too often projected outward — violently released into the environment. While this may be part of her message or her mission, she is after all an artist. I express her calling in this way, only to suggest that Kimsooja carries a certain demeanor of gregarious humility. At the same time, I recognize that she is shrewd, sensitive, resilient, brilliant, humble, yet without self-effacement. Art is the focus of her attention. While one may read various phenomenological or minimal dimensions of "being in the world" in her work, there is scarcely a predetermined aspect in her work. I would argue that because she is so clearly in touch with her intuition, a wide breadth ofaesthetic and political speculations may appear as having ideological intentions.

• For example, there are those who want to see her work in terms of Buddhism or feminism or minimalism or nomadism. There are those, particularly in Korea, who want to read her work as an anti-Confucianism statement, as a revolt against the way women have been treated in her culture through the manipulation of a distorted Confucian morality at the outset of the Chosun Dynasty.

• While these arguments may be well-founded as part of the context in which her work may be understand, none of these issues are the central issue. Through her desire to relinquish the burden of the ego when necessary, to understand compassion as a human practice and necessity, and to allow her body to create an absolute stillness in the universe whether on the rock in Kitakyushu or on the banks of the Yamuna River, here we must return to the central issue. As an artist, Kimsooja has taken advantage of the signifier of self-liberation to free herself from unnecessary worldly restraints and encumbrances, while at the same time she is willing to give art an ethical dimension according to the context of her immediate actions, not according to an overarching principle of rightness, The signifier of freedom in her art also requires something of equal importance, and that is where Kimsooja enters into a transglobal history. She understands that freedom is also the ability to take responsibility for one's own life, and to know that — ecologically speaking — every action has a reaction. Call is Buddhism, if you will — but from another angle of vision, her presence as an artist offers a pragmatic vision for those in search of a better world where happiness and justice will be shared by all.

• As the feet of man take up a small space on the earth, it is thanks to the space that they do not occupy that man can walk on the immense earth.
  — Zhuang-zi

• One of the most salient aspects to emerge in the works of certain artists over the last decade regards a return to dialogue with minimalist language. Looking at the works of Mona Hatoum, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Miroslaw Balka,in this perspective, it is quite clear how their work finds a sort of common denominator in this linguistic base. It is not a relationship based on subjection, nor on a form of citation. The significant point - which marks a departure from the past and offers the possibility to return to a strong connection with contemporary urgencies - is the assumption of a tradition, turning its meaning upside down from within. Minimalism lends itself, for its presumed liberated universality, freed from subjective tensions (in reality far from universal, far from neutral, more precisely expression of the very Western sense of the dominant thought in modernity), to be reread, re-interpreted, re-proposed in order to face the desire to recover a close contact with reality in all its aspects. Forms that appear simple, appeasing, in fact bear dramatic, intimate contents, capable of introducing searing themes, aimed at giving form to the shadowy areas of a society that is more interested in celebrating its own potency.

• The frontal methods of protest are substituted with a transversal method which adopts a much subtler strategy, in which the artist's attention is equally divided between the sense of his own discourse and the dialogue with the language of art.

• It is within this context that Kimsooja's work finds a natural collocation. During the first half of the last decade, her work begins to be known and recognized. While this is only one of many perspectives, it is evident in many of her works.

• The return to a comparison with minimalism at the beginning of the '90's marks an important step, as it gives voice to various forms of differences that lived in silence throughout History: the cultural difference of those who come from non-Western contexts, sexual differences, the differences in the way information has treated some difficult themes (death, conflict, illness), the different ways in which aspects related to the body, to sentiments, and to intimacy are treated by mass communication (such as the promises of well-being and earthly paradise upon which advertising is based). The extraordinary pathways outlined in these artists' work consist in suggesting another way, another possibility to deconstruct the rules of a seemingly mastered language , stabilized in art history manuals.

• While other works created during the last decades contained a clear "anti-" statement, such as in the first phase of feminist art in which women artists needed to affirm their right to exist in an art scene that was prevalently masculine, in this case the revolution develops in overcoming the logic of "with me or against me". A third hypothesis is visible, alongside the choice between working within tradition or departing from it: Us and Them, rather than Us or Them.

• Thanks to these artists, the non-Western eye, the sexual difference, the personal history, death, violence, themes which are dear only to minorities, acquire a new centrality, and the works speak to those who come near to them with a language that is able to speak to the soul of the individual and to the collective, in a form of rapport that includes the public as well as the private, which was previously unheard of.

• In Kimsooja's installations, the cold, minimalist floors, created with solid materials that are not ruined when walked upon, become colored surfaces, made up of a patchwork of Korean family bedspreads.

• They bear the memories, the wishes, the stories of those who once owned them and used them daily. At the same time, the monochrome canvases in the artist's installations remind one of the laundry hung out to dry. The canvases are still bedcoverings, elements that belong to the Korean culture, and yet evoke the more intimate dimension, rarely visible, non-official, hardly an object of attention.

• Kimsooja's work takes form based on her experience. Her personal vocabulary is full of objects that come from her culture: not only the bedcoverings, but also bottari — the Korean word for bundles — that the artist creates by filling canvases with used clothes that she arranges randomly about the exhibition space, evoking the nomadic condition, her own, but also that of an entire people.

• These presences give life to a statement aimed not only at those who are able to understand the specific aspects of a culture as they touch themes that are part of everyone's lives.

• The introduction of personal experience, the poetic reflection on birth, death, the intimacy that Kimsooja's work speaks of, all have the ability to create a larger statement that we can all relate to. From the specific one passes to a possible form of universality which is no longer abstract and distant — typical of the project of modernity - but is a contemporary form of universality soaked in the singular stories of the people who once owned the objects, that become part of the piece, ready to take in the world of the observer.

• It is a work that is strongly marked by a subjective point of view with respect to the artist's own condition, cultural, historical, gender, and at the same time able to create a space in order to avoid remaining centered on herself in a narcissistic way. There is no doubt that, in her case, the heredity of minimalism consists in the adoption of an essential language, where there is nothing more than what is necessary to center in on the core of the issue.

• But, as I mentioned earlier, this is only one of the perspectives. In fact, Kimsooja lives with an autonomy that renders this relationship relative and which speaks with references from another provenance.

• It is a work which - as many others have written — maintains an active dialogue with both the Korean culture and with the Zen Buddhist practices, with which it shares the tension of the creation of an empty/dense space where a contradiction is resolved, a contradiction which only appears as such, between the presence and the absence of the artist.

• In one of her most famous pieces — A Needle Woman (1999-2001), eight performances (filmed on video) carried out in eight major cities around the world (Cairo, Lagos, Tokyo...), Kimsooja simply "is", standing in the midst of the crowds of people that pass by and react in different ways to her presence.

• In this, as in all her actions, she is exposed in the first person but, with her back to the camera, immobile, exposed to the external world without protection, doing nothing, her presence loses its subjective connotation and becomes "the other". It is in this passage — in the reduction of the ego, which does not mean disappearing but rather a different way of being present — that the artist creates the conditions for an empty space in which she becomes the instrument and not the ends of the action that she carries out, and element of transmission and not the protagonist, an element which connects but does not center on.

• With this, the title of the work is emblematic. A Needle Woman, which she explains as a needle is "an extension of the body, and a thread is the extension of the mind. The traces of mind stay always in the fabric, but the needle leaves the site which its medialization is complete. The needle is a medium, a mystery, a reality, a hermaphrodite, a barometer, a moment, a Zen." during an interview with Nicolas Bourriaud, published in the catalogue of her exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Lyon in 2003.

• In her doing nothing, each time the surrounding scenario becomes the protagonist with the different reactions of the people passing by, finding themselves before this silent, concentrated presence. The camera view is such that, in watching the video we have the feeling that we are a part of the group of passers-by.

• Standing before each of Kimsooja's works we find ourselves standing before ourselves. It is in these terms that another aspect of the artist's work emerges, which takes on a significant connection with Buddhism. Where "demolishing the reasons that feed the 'I' of the individual conscience means attacking the basis of all the mental constructions that derive from the presumption of this subjective 'I' and thus avoiding the psychic and physical damage that those constructions generate and host: to embrace and practice emptiness of the 'I' means emptying all opposition which is unbearable, each conflict that feels irremediable, each dualism that seems absolute, of its weight. Positively speaking, this means transforming the body and mind into constellations of interacting elements, in structures of interdependent parts, in nets with interconnected knots, where interdependence and connections guarantee the absence of multiple 'I's, the eclipse of absolute identities and fixed identifications." [1] These words seem written to describe the work of Kimsooja. In an historical phase in which individualism prevails, where the dominating declination of the "desire" is "desire to consume", and the growing revendications of belonging and of identity are fed by a dangerous logic of exclusion, the practice of an artist who with her silent presence alone suggests something else, taking existence from these predominating perspectives resounds with a further meaning. On additional meaning.

• Furthermore, in A Beggar Woman, the artist sits in the street with her hand out, in the act of asking money from passers-by, in A Homeless Woman, she puts herself in the shoes of the homeless, again doing nothing in the midst of the crowds... Her rigorous testimony, her intentionally not adding anything to the world, the use she makes of her body, leave space to the world, in all its moving intensity.

• Kimsooja's Bottari Truck has begun its new journey...

• With the baggage of the present bearing silent witness to multicoloured journeys, the artist, immobile and free, crosses time, wanders amongst familiar places and memories, visits histories and fragments of histories, returns to the world of singularity and difference. To her own body.

• Her reconciliation is like the rhythmic fluidity of the Needle-Woman on the curve of the rock, there where earth meets the heavens; it is also like the poetic meditation of the immobile woman before the painting of the River Yamuna.

• Kimsooja's journey is our journey, too.

• Alone, with her back to us, but with her gaze on a level with our own, she invites us to journey into ourselves through her eyes. She becomes the in between space that unites the self with the other. Which is why any similarity with Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer is confined to contrast. She counterposes the sanctity of her anonymity and the unity with the antagonistic gulf between the romantic ego and the Sublime. Female mystery with male conquest. Alterity with identity; the alterity of her self and of her gender. Of her exile and of her nomadic wanderings.

• The same desire for reconciliation brings her and brings us into the world, into the heart of its metropolises. Silent and immobile once more, she penetrates powerfully and resolutely into the body of the crowd, always against the tide. With her difference interrupting and bridging the flow at one and the same time. With her poetic subtlety revealing the counter forces, but neutralizing them, too. Daring to dramatize human conditions and situations she fights. Social and political exclusion, isolation, want, marginalization. Using the persona of the foreigner, the homeless woman, the beggar woman, to break through to the Other side.

• It is Kimsooja's journey into herself and others. Through the others. A journey into the world.

• Kimsooja’s video, A Laundry Woman (2000), places the viewer before a silent screen across which a river passes, its surface carrying refuse and fragments of branches, plants, and flowers swept from unseen banks. At the top of the screen, the river vanishes in a white glare, perhaps from the morning sun that hangs just above the river and greets an anonymous Indian woman who has come to the edge of the Yamuna River at Delhi to wash laundry. We see her only from the back, and she never moves. She is the only thing that does not move. After a few moments, the viewer wonders if she is really there. Perhaps she has been burned into the video tape by some mechanical process, or inserted by digital editing. In the age of Photoshop, is anything actually real? Not a hair flutters on her head, her clothing registers no wind or motion.

• Yet she is human, and the eye returns to her stalwart, central figure again and again. She stands with her immovable back to the viewer, an Asian version of the so-called Rückenfigur, the familiar device of placing a figure seen from the rear in the foreground of a picture, a favorite contrivance of Romantic painters in Europe in the early nineteenth century. It lures viewers into the painting, directing their vision and pulling them to the picture plane, which tends to vanish as they compare themselves to the figure, perhaps even regarding the figure as another version of themselves, or as their fictive counterpart within the work of art. A Laundry Woman recalls this iconographical motif by freezing the figure in the video. The artist used the same motif in another silent video, A Needle Woman (1999-2001), which she has performed by standing motionless in the crowded streets of Tokyo, Shanghai, Delhi, Cairo, Lagos, and London, among others. In doing so, Kimsooja blurs the distinction between painting and video as media, a move bolstered by the absence of sound.

• Why engage in this sort of ambivalence in her medium? Is it one more tired involution of art referring to art? A much better purpose may be at work. The artist pushes her medium to the limits of its ontology, one might say. She extends video to the point where it threatens to turn into something it's not — in this case, painting. She cloaks the imagery in silence in order to deprive the viewer of the effect of sound, which would clearly distinguish video from non-moving visual media. Even though the water never ceases to flow, and the cloudy surface is continually disrupted by flotsam that ambles by, moving from left to right, I found myself repeatedly rediscovering that it was a river. The white glare across the top of the screen strongly tends to flatten the image, which is affirmed by the lack of shadows and depth in the water. The motionless figure might be staring into a snowstorm, or a scrim, but for the lolling gait of lily pads and fragments of vegetation, plastic bags, and the shadows of birds. Even now as I remember the scene, I find myself dubbing in sound — the distant call of the birds, the drop of water, the skitter of water bugs, the hushed lapping of water at the shoreline out of sight. By depriving us of so much, Kimsooja asks us to look hard and to question the very act of looking. By pressing a visual medium to its threshold, an artist tests the nature of seeing, probes especially the elusive seams where a medium stitches itself to the airy fabric of consciousness.

• A medium is never stable, despite what we may wish to think about it. The imagination animates drawings, photographs, and films, supplying what is not there, ignoring what is, and sometime even subverting what one expects or wants to find present. The very same holds true of the mind itself, which is the fundamental medium of consciousness. It is not a stony blank slate on which is etched the secure features and principles of reality. The mind is the very surface of water that the artist envisions in her video. And the mind is anything but stable. The Dhammapada, one of the oldest and most widely revered Buddhist sutras, describes the mind as "wavering and restless, difficult to guard and restrain". "Fickle and flighty, [the mind] flies after fancies wherever it likes." [1] Yet the wisdom of many religions is that our greatest problem can become our most powerful means of salvation. The mind and the body are trainable. Hinduism regards the individual ego or self as something like the larger self, the atman, the being or essence of all things that expresses the ultimate, but ineffable reality called Brahman. Christianity can speak of the individual self as hiding within Christ, who becomes the truer aspect of the self (Colossians 3: 3). The redeemed are those whom another New Testament text describes as "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1: 4).

• To be sure, the world’s religions should not be melted down to a stew with one taste. Yet, because they all grapple with the same material — the human struggle with selfishness, suffering, and mortality — it is not surprising that a number of parallels may be discerned in very different religious traditions. In each of those cited, the human self, embedded in the mortal body, is the place where longing for deliverance begins as well as the locale in which it is realized —l by albeit starkly different means. For many Christians, body and mind become deeply engaged in transforming suffering into an imitation of God’s presence in Christ. For Hindus, body and mind are engaged in mitigating the cause of suffering by training the body in yoga, in dietary practices, and in prayer and ritual offerings. According to The Dhammapada, the person "whose mind in calm self-control is free from the lust of desires, who has risen above good and evil, ... is awake and has no fear". And so begins the rigorous discipline of Buddhist training, to steal the mind against the frailty of the body in order to dismantle the manifold attachments to the fear, lust, anger, and ignorance that propel the illusion of the self-centered self.

• Even this lightly comparative consideration of three religions may help us consider Kimsooja’s video and, by extension, a great deal of art work today, which explores aspects of religion or addresses parallels between art and religion. As with the comparison of different religions to one another, the task is not to reduce art to religion or vice versa, but to ask in what manner the two appear to operate similarly, and what that means for artistic practice today. Is art a replacement for religion? The claim is not a new one. In the early nineteenth century, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described two forms of transcendence that might release human beings from suffering: aesthetic contemplation and the life of asceticism. Both were ways of renouncing what Schopenhauer called the will, the blind force that drives all things in the universe. In delineating the two means, Schopenhauer set the stage for subsequent reflection about the relation of art and religion as two roughly parallel, though not equivalent practices.

• Aesthetic contemplation, he claimed, is the means of saying no to the will, of becoming a "pure, will-less subject of knowledge", an eye surveying a work of art or an object of nature from beyond the grip of the will and seeing only the essence of the thing, the timeless being manifest in the phenomenon. Beauty is the experience of this transcendental reality. Schopenhauer described the operation of aesthetic experience as follows, which merits quotation at length:

• Raised up by the power of the mind, we relinquish the ordinary way of considering things... we do not let abstract thought, the concepts of reason, take possession of our consciousness, but, instead of all this, devote the whole power of our mind to perception, sink ourselves completely therein, and let our whole consciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether it be a landscape, a tree, a rock, a crag, a building, or anything else [such as a river]. We lose ourselves entirely in this object, to use a pregnant expression; in other words, we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as though the object alone existed without anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception. If, therefore, the object has to such an extent passed out of all relation to something outside it, and the subject has passed out of all relation to the will, what is thus known is no longer the individual thing as such, but the Idea, the eternal form, the immediate objectivity of the will at this grade. Thus at the same time, the person who is involved in this perception is no longer an individual, for in such perception the individual has lost himself; he is pure will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge. [2]

• Schopenhauer went on to cite Byron's experience of the oneness of landscape and soul in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and the utterance of Brahman in the Upanishads: "I am all this creation collectively, and besides me there exists no other being." [3] The Upanishads or Vedanta presented the absolute, Brahman, as the imperishable soul (atman) that exists behind all appearances as the ground of everything. It was this reality that Schopenhauer identified with the state of consciousness achieved in aesthetic experience. But art was less permanent than the renunciant’s way of denying the will. Art, in the end, was not equal to religion, but a passing version of it.

• Certain versions of Buddhism have accorded an important place to artistic practice, regarding activities like painting, pottery, calligraphy, flower arrangement, gardening, and the performance of the tea ceremony meditative forms of practice. Making things and doing things can be absorptive activities that release the mind from its attachments and train it to attend singularly to immediate tasks, without the flitting distractions the Dhammapada noted. But it is important not to mistake the purpose of these creative forms of meditation. They are not merely an alternative way of making art. Buddhism is often romanticized by those who wish to see in it no more than a serene aesthetic and amusingly paradoxical witticisms. This fantasized version of Buddhism is never up to the challenge of actual practice. Skimming the mere look of Buddhism (or any religion) from the torso of lived practice is something that art — in tandem with commerce — is all too capable of doing. Artists, curators, and art historians are sometimes happy to indulge in aestheticizing a religion because they operate on the presumption that art is neatly separable from religion, as if art were the flower to be plucked from the otherwise irrelevant plant of pious practice.

• Is that what we encounter in the ten silent moments of Kimsooja’s video? Are we urged to clip from Buddhism or Hinduism or from the daily life of an anonymous laborer some universal essence that can be imported into the marketplace of our lives and appropriated as if it were a commodity in global tourist trade? Does she invite us to peel off the picturesque exterior of a life-world and chuck the irrelevant innards into the passing river — all in the liberal name of Art? These are important questions to ask in the age of hyper-capitalism, when anything may be commoditized to supply the self-construction of inexhaustibly acquisitive consumers. Is nothing sacred? Absolutely not, the marketplace answers.

• An instructive catalogue essay by Elizabeth Brown informs us that the figure at riverside is not a laundry woman, but the artist herself. [4] The artist also appeared as herself in A Needle Woman, having herself spent several years engaged in the practice of needlework. These videos are not, therefore, ethnographic documents. A Laundry Woman is the artist’s portrayal of a laborer who watches fragments of a Hindu funeral rite pass by her on the river’s murky surface, contemplating human fate (as she told Brown). The artist constructs the work of art as a literal projection of herself into the place of another, and invites viewers to follow her lead. In doing so, she acts on the belief that the human situation as diagnosed by Hinduism or by Buddhism is also available to the rigors of artistic practice. She may assume that the boundaries separating the two are blurred. The AWAKE project, in which Kimsooja has participated, asserts in its webpage, that Buddhism need not be construed as a religion, but as a science of the mind, whose principles, it follows, can be productively exported and applied by non-Buddhists in works of art. [5]

• If Buddhism’s analysis of human consciousness produces penetrating insights, particularly insights that are comparable in striking ways to artistic practice, is it an act of cultural skimming for artists to act like Buddhists (or Hindus or Christians or Zoroastrians)? As the brief foray into the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer might suggest, the modern project of establishing the independently revelatory power of art and the autonomy of artistic genius argues resolutely that aesthetic experience is an embodied operation that parallels religious experience because it proceeds from the underlying structure of human consciousness. Religion happens the way it does, like art in its right, because of the nature of the mind-body on which they are built as human activities. But Schopenhauer did not propose a religion of art. He regarded art as a consolation, not an explanation of life or a therapy for curing its ills. Art is no other than the short-lived result of looking at the world disinterestedly, aesthetically. Art, therefore, cannot claim to get things more right than religion, any more than the reverse, but only differently.

• If there is any truth to this, Kimsooja is not acting like a Hindu or Buddhist in her video (she was born in Korea, but is not a practicing Buddhist). By paring itself away to the silent presence of a painting, as suggested above, the video recalls Korean or Chinese ink paintings of poets lost in thought before mist-covered lakes. Yet the video exchanges the aristocrat-poet for a common laborer, perhaps in order to urge that enlightenment is for everyone, not just poets and artists. A Laundry Woman immerses the viewer, any viewer, in a sustained act of looking, an absorbed state in which consciousness fills up with the object of perception such that one no longer thinks about what one sees, but think as it, having overcome the subject-object distinction that Schopenhauer identified as the basic structure of rational knowledge or reason. In this absorbed state of mind, which one finds in all religions as well as in the transfixed stare of the beach comber, the ego and its small sphere of suffering fade blissfully away.

• We have in this slowly moving visual field only a single frame, which is repeatedly penetrated by flotsam and gentle eddies. The mind is directed to the world off-screen, the world we can only infer by the passing objects and shimmering reflections that appear and then vanish. At its undisciplined level, human consciousness is just this single frame, a fragile apparatus imposed on a welter of events. But the discipline of looking that art and meditation pursue brings the viewer to rest, suspends one in silence to find the world taking shape in the small bounds of the human frame. As Buddha put it in a famous sermon, "Within this fathom-long sentient body itself, I postulate the world, the arising of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world." [6] The instrument of suffering is also the instrument to end suffering.

• For the millions of people who worship Buddha as a divine being who assists them in attaining higher rebirth and progressing toward ultimate release, Buddhism is clearly a religion. For others, however, Buddhist meditation is essentially a science of mind, and not a religion. For the latter, art-making and viewing may act as a non-religious form of meditation. Although he may have separated art and life more than many artists today would prefer, Schopenhauer regarded art as a way of looking at life. As such, art is a special form of consciousness, operating like meditation and teaching us to simplify our lives and to loosen the hold that our fears and desires exert over us. Such art does not save us. It is not a religion. But like meditation, it can help us see clearly.

• Art may not last long in its brief epiphanies. As I’ve tried to suggest, that is because its task is different than religion’s. Art is sensuous thinking, what might be called embodied or sensate cognition. It thinks in the sensations that flood the field of perception and it seeks to change and deepen the registers of thought and feeling that we bring to our experience — all experience. Religion also traffics in transcendence, but its final aim is to keep us there — whether it is in this world or the next. Given this similar content, it is not surprising that religion has always made use of art (for this reason and many others) or that artists find fascinating parallels between their creative practices and those of religious believers. But the two are not reducible to one another. Kimsooja is not trying to make believers of us, but better seers.

• The Western rationality of Munoz’s classicism establishes a provocative comparison to the videos of Kimsooja, particularly A Laundry Woman (2000). This beautifully resolved piece originates in a meditation, dependent on the artist’s quiet and mindful presence in time and the world. Each component of the simple composition gradually progresses from minimal form to comprehended detail to immutable: there is a silhouette centered in the frame, which we first realize is an actual person (the artist herself), then see her to be a part of the scene contained within the stable camera frame. Her back to us, she faces a soft field of pale blue, which we soon discern is a river flowing from left to right. With the horizon above the camera’s frame, all detailing, information, and visual incident is contained in the river currents. Occasionally a bird flies overhead or a cloud passes, visible only by their reflections in the water. Material also floats by, including pieces of wood, scraps of fabric, or flowers bobbing in the water. Kim never moves, although wind sometimes ruffles her dress or hair. Nothing changes yet everything changes, as in the Buddhist view of life: it is always the same river, yet it is never the same river twice.

• The image, projected life-size on a wall in a darkened room, places the viewer in the position of both observer and participant, as the artists vantage point becomes the viewer’s own. Stated another way, Kim’s body becomes a middle ground between the viewer and the landscape. She describes it as "actually three different layers of the image: the nature, the body, the viewer, and my body functions as the medium of both nature and the viewer relating my and [the] viewer’s spirituality to eternity." Spend time with this work and you slow down, finding yourself increasingly at ease with its deliberate pace and enjoying its patient unfolding.

• The Yamuna River is even more sacred in Hindu ritual than is the Ganges. The mysterious clumps of material and fragments of flowers are the remains of funeral pyres from Hindu rituals. Kim thus compares "the destiny of our life with the element of cremated body floating on the river."

• Despite its very different rhythm, A Wind Woman engages both contemporary painting and a Buddhist understanding of the world in a similar way. For A Wind Woman the artist holds a camera steady as a segment of the world passes by and through it. She helps us to be present by modeling the action: remaining stable and focused while the busy drama of the momentary floods in. In A Laundry Woman we see the artist; in A Wind Woman we see what the artist sees. Her body is no longer present. The subject is less spiritual, more focused on the essence of things in the world. Kim characterizes it as "trying to investigate the depth of the borderline which exists in-between things...the fine line of co-existing space of the in-betweenness."

• Kim's videos are disarming in their simplicity. There is no elaborate production. The artist does not insist on a precise installation structure, as do her video colleagues in the exhibition, who stipulate that walls and ceilings frame their images precisely. Rather, the work screens at a certain scale that presents the artist’s body at approximately the same size as ours.

• This work teaches a way of seeing. Its meaning becomes clear if one gives it time — the duration of the tape, or even the temporal space to allow for an experience. Your body is engaged by empathy with the person in the image or behind the camera, who is upright, disposed vertically like the viewer. After a short while your shoulders might begin to rebel, acknowledging the difficulty of standing still, or you might feel a push-pull in your spine or feet. Your relationship to the video becomes somatic—felt because of the interaction of stable vertical and moving horizontal. At times a reversal may be felt, where it seems that your move, rather than the wind or the water.

• Up to this point, "the work of the work is discussed in regard to its ability to represent abstract functions, such as isolating a precise sort of experience or evoking a certain affect. In some cases, however, the notion of function can be seen much more concretely. For example, Mandala: Zone of Zero would make an ideal meditation room. It employs a series of rotating jukeboxes that both convey Tibetan, Gregorian, and Islamic chants and act as a visual object for meditation. The artist describes the center of the space, where the three soundtracks combine, as the Zone of Zero. To stand there is to find yourself entering a meditative state. Elements flash and revolve, casting lighted slices of yellow, red, blue. Even though this work comprises several parts, its effect is precise and economical; the lit structures are quite small in relation to their impact.

• In the beginning, readymades were chosen for their dumb simplicity: a bicycle wheel, a bottle rack, a shovel. Kimsooja, on the other hand, has chosen an object that is spectacular in its own right. The circular jukebox speaker that appeared four times in the installation Mandala: Zone of Zero features concentric bands of colored plastic, circulating bubbles, mirrored tiles and colored lights, all surrounding a brocade-covered audio element. A rotating knob at the center supports the resemblance to a roulette wheel; vaguely pagoda-shaped brackets give it a generic Asian accent. In the exhibition, the speakers were each centered on a wall in a room painted a deep soothing indigo and unlit, except for the audio units' multihued glow. Carpeting enhanced the serenity.

• But it was a jangly calm, which matched the east/west discordance of the glitzy object itself, a sensory buzz amplified by the sound composition Kimsooja assembled. Mixing Gregorian chant, Muslim singing and Tibetan bells, the music was, like the bubbling speakers, almost embarrassingly engrossing. The mutually subversive and anyway kitsch-challenged spirituality of the three soundtracks produced genitive dissonance where an unlikely and altogether gorgeous aural harmony reigned.

• The connection Kimsooja saw between the jukebox speakers and Tibetan mandalas is evident in this installation's title. Implicit in the subtitle is the question of whether its musical mixed messages transcend sectarianism to attain a higher level of spirituality than any one faith can offer (a zone of zero where striving particularity can be sublimated), or if the work points to the crass commercialism of which every religion can, at times, be found guilty (a zero zone of spiritual aridity).

• A Korean artist now in her 40's, Kimsooja is a past master of imperturbable resistance to conclusive statement. Her previous work includes installations of filmy Korean textiles hung on lines like drying laundry and, perhaps best known, an international series of performances called A Needle Woman. Standing sentinel in London, Cairo, New Delhi, Lagos, Mexico City, Shanghai, and elsewhere, Kimsooja was the unmoving obstacle around which pedestrian traffic swirled. In the video documentation that followed, she is always shown from the back. It's possible to read committed asceticism in her posture, but also frank refusal to engage.

• The same disinclination to take sides is evident in Mandala. Somewhere between the aggressive irreverence of Jason Rhoades's imaginary trip to Mecca, documented in his rapturously messy recent installation Meccatuna, and the prim eroticism of Duchamp's Precision Optics, with their hypnotic rotating geometries, is the null zone of quietly pulsing intransigence where Kimsooja has taken up residence.

• "My work explores the awakening of the self and the other... It is an awakening of the hidden meanings in elements of our mundane lives, to which the viewers previously haven't paid much attention."

• Growing up in South Korea, Kimsooja describes her complex spiritual background informed by Buddhism, Catholicism, and a code of moral conduct influenced by Confucianism. After high school, she intentionally "stepped out of organized religion in order to experience the real world". The artist felt uncomfortable with the systematization of beliefs and behavior within the faith traditions. Although Kimsooja does not practice Buddhism formally, her beliefs and personal practices strongly parallel this philosophy of life.

• A Laundry Woman (2002) is a video projection that suggests the harmony of the universe through its stillness and tranquility (figs. 25 and 26). It documents a meditative performance by the artist along the Yamuna River in North India. Videotaped from a slightly elevated vantage point and seen from the back, Kimsooja's figure is silhouetted against blue, opalescent waters. Although the sky is not visible, the viewer is made conscious of its presence by the reflections of flying birds in the water. The artist remains perfectly still while the video captures her state of quiet mindfulness.

• Kimsooja describes her experience during this meditation: "In the middle of the performance, I was completely confused...[about] whether it is the river which is running and moving or myself." The artist's perceptions of space and time were turned upside down and mentally she became completely immersed in and at one with the water. She later realized that it is not the river that constantly changes but her body, which is transforming all the time: "My body will disappear while the river is still flowing."

• While watching the video, the viewer slowly becomes aware of the ritual offerings and ashes of deceased people who were cremated at a site along the river. The cycle of life and death becomes a powerful theme in the work. Kimsooja began thinking of the decomposed bodies that floated before her. She meditated on "their lives and their memories and was trying to purify their bodies as well as mine. Praying for their future life with compassion for human beings." The artist experienced a heightened sense of what she describes as "awakeness", particularly in her awareness of the relationship between nature and the body, stillness and movement, life and death.

• By interpreting the confluence of river and atmosphere, Kimsooja highlights an idea embraced by many artists in the exhibition: the unity of life. She describes the effect of blending water and sky as a mirror presenting both reality and its opposite dimension. From a formal perspective, the artist conceives the river as a surface that is similar to a two-dimensional canvas. There is a strong impulse towards abstraction in A Laundry Woman, which reflects Kimsooja's early career as a painter.

• Through the video, the artist invites the viewer to share her meditative experience. As she explains, "That is why my body is facing against the viewer. Look at what I look at. I do not present my ego, my identity." Kimsooja's desire for the viewer to "wear" her body suggests the idea of the artist as mediator in order to open possibilities for other people to participate in a "certain awareness and awakening." She points out that there are few opportunities in daily life to achieve this concentrated state of mind.

• In A Laundry Woman, Kimsooja's body in essence becomes an offering for others to use in order to achieve an expanded consciousness. "Some people referred to me as a shaman who mediates between the dead and the living. I sometimes feel that way too because, in a way, I am doing that all the time. I think it comes from compassion. Understanding others' suffering. Sharing suffering. Sharing love." For many people familiar with India, the title of the work may conjure images of the low-caste women whose livelihood revolves around the river. In this interpretation, the artist becomes the laundry woman in an act of empathy.

• While discussing the idea of pairing A Laundry Woman with a small sculpture of Buddha Shakyamuni touching the earth to witness his enlightenment, Kimsooja immediately responded to the shared symbolic gesture in the two works of art (fig. 4). She noted that her video establishes connections between the individual and nature; similarly, the Buddha links himself to the land. Through the body, she also connects herself with other human beings from all cultures. As she explains, "All human activities are about linking the self to the other."

• Relationships are a central theme in a group of installations that depict sewing as a metaphor for threading together different aspects of life. Kimsooja conceives her video works as "invisible sewing." The artist created another work with the title of Laundry Woman (exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Vienna and the Zacheta Gallery of Art in Warsaw, 2002), an installation consisting of suspended fabrics that suggest linens drying outdoors. These materials become symbols of women, love, the body, and sleep. On a social level, they are associated with women's roles in society. For Kim, cloth transcends its materiality and functions as "a container for the spirit"; people are swathed at birth and at death in cloth, and it is also used ceremonially in weddings and other rites of passage.

• The Laundry Woman also relates to a group of works called Bottari — beautifully wrapped bundles of used Korean bedcovers, fabrics that are either manufactured or sewn by mothers and daughters as shared experiences. These pieces of cloth remind us of the cycle of life; they are used to bundle together household possessions when leaving home, and they help to establish domestic comfort in the absence of a true shelter. Their stitches bind people together.

• Kimsooja insists that what is most essential is not the body of work but the questions that it raises. She hopes that the viewer will participate in her works by sharing this inquiring state of mind. When asked what her hopes were for the museum visitor, she replied, "I would like the audience to share with me the experience I had during my performance, question and answer, and really put each one's state of mind and body into that position."

• Visitors arriving at this gallery, recently relocated to midtown from Harlem, will step into a darkened room carpeted and painted meditative, deep-space blue. Sitting down risks becoming entranced by the little bubbles moving around one of the four circular red-yellow-and-blue jukebox speakers placed on each wall, where they emit a warm, tap-room glow.

• Some viewers may be as struck by the speakers' resemblance to Tibetan mandalas (symbolizing the design of the universe) as was Kimsooja, who arrived in New York from South Korea in 1998 and saw in these artifacts of American pop culture a perfect meld of East and West. Others maybe reminded of stained-glass windows, since what pours out is an ethereal mix of Gregorian, Islamic and Tibetan chants that circulate, like those bubbles, in an endless loop of male voices, both rumbling and sweet.

• In her previous installations and videos, Kimsooja focused on the body as a protective cover for powerful emotions. Korean textiles figured prominently, wrapping immigrants or outcasts as they moved from place to place with belongings that survived them and were passed to others. It is the unmoving viewer being wrapped this time, in waves of sound and light. But because there is more here to experience internally than to see, viewers may dismiss the work as a literalized notion of the-gallery-as-chapel in which to worship at the altar of art, without realizing that they are part of the ritual.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  In Buddhist philosophy, there is a notion which has a great importance: the impermanence of the world we live in. The needle woman stands in front of passing-by elements, like as if you were stressing on this impermanence, or on the fluidity of things. How does the Eastern way of thinking match contemporary art history, in you work?

• Kimsooja
  The impermanence of our lives is an important notion in my work and thinking and with this perception, comes a deeper compassion for human beings. Meditation about impermanence has been shading in my work since I first started the sewing pieces in the early 80's — connecting fragments of my deceased grandmother's clothes.

• Buddhist philosophy, especially Zen Buddhism is similar to the way I perceive and function in the world. However, the ideas in my work are created from my own questions and experiences, not from Buddhist theory itself. (It is more complicated — as I was brought up formally a catholic, and practiced also Christian for some time, but Korean daily life practice is greatly dominated by Confucianism, mixture of Buddhism, and Shamanism.)

• Certainly, where my immediate perceptions and decisions in art making meets the disciplines of Buddhism — making art and living my life are not consciously borrowed from theories. I intentionally stopped reading over a decade ago to concentrate and follow my own thoughts, but I recently started reading again especially on Buddhism as I find amazing similarities in my work and perception of life in it.

• I might add that, the Eastern way of thinking inhabits every context of contemporary art history not just as a theory but as attitude melded in ones personality and existence and is inseparable with Western thinking.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  Do you think that oriental (eastern) thought has a real impact on the contemporary art world, or is it only a postmodern kind of exoticism, a decor for western aesthetic investigations?

• Kimsooja
  It would be unfortunate if the Western art world considered Eastern thought as a decor for Western aesthetic investigation — as if it were another element to add without noticing the fact that it is a way — in the process of making art. It is always there — as a dialectic — in all basic phenomena of art and life together. Eastern thought often functions in a passive and reserved way of expression, usually invisible, non verbal, indirect, disguised, and immaterial. Western thought functions more with identity, controversy, gravity, construction in general rather than de-construction, and material than immaterial compared to Eastern. The process finally becomes the awareness and necessity of the presence of both in contemporary Art. It is the 'Yin' and 'Yang' — a co-existence that endlessly transforms and enriches.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  You could have chosen to ignore your Korean cultural background, but you decided to use it as a material. In a way, especially the Bottari series, your work Post-produces formal elements from this already existing Korean shapes and patterns. But formally speaking, your exhibitions are playing with minimal art. Would minimalism play a special role onto this connection between East and West? And which movements or artists were the most influential for you?

• Kimsooja
  I have always used my personal life as the basic material for my work — hoping it would embrace the other. If I hadn't grown up and lived as a married woman in a Korean society, I wouldn't have chosen these traditional bedcovers. In Korea, they have a special meaning as the bed is the site of birth and death — of sleeping, loving, suffering, dreaming dying — it frames our existence. The bedcover is given to and used by newly married couples in Korea with messages beautifully embroidered and emblematic of wishes for love, fortune, happiness, many sons, and a long life.... it is so easy to notice it's contradiction when we see these symbols. I can't interpret my own culture with other culture's materials in the same way..... I try to find materials in their own context, but it always ended up with me bringing materials from Korea as theirs looked so neutral and hard to get the sense of the energy I feel from ours.

• As for minimalism, I agree with you as a part of the nature of my practice but in the sense of extension of it's interpretation to the life as well as formalistic terms. The Japanese art critic Keiji Nakamura perceives my work as 'existential minimalism,' and this makes sense to me also. I greatly respect minimalism in the sense of the process of making art as well as it's vision. However the contents minimalists deal with are often maximal. It's hard to name any particular artist who was influential to me as I've been influenced in a way from anyone whom I have an opinion on their work-even from the ones we don't agree with. Yet, there is one statement by John Cage I saw it written in the bottom corners of an empty container at the 1985 Paris Biennale; that has reverberated for a long time in my mind. "Whether we try to make it or not, the sound is heard.".

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  You are partly working with objects and surfaces made by other people. Of course the readymade is not a stake anymore, but in your case it could be questioned on a social or psychological level. The notion of existential minimalism could bring us to this direction, too, because it carries the idea of humanity, concrete people making products in a particular context. So what is the status of those objects in your mind and in your work in general? Is it a neutral process to use those bedcovers, or do you consider their context of production and the condition of the workers? And, more generally, what is the status of pre-existing things in an artwork?

• Kimsooja
  Analyzing the nature of my already-mades, can give a significant clue to the context of my work. I've been using objects from Korean domestic daily life significantly in my series, 'Deductive Object' from the early 90's. Here, I chose traditional Korean domestic already-mades; wooden window frames, reels, drums, and agricultural tools; a saw, shovels, forks, hooks... and wrapped them with old Korean clothes and bedcovers.

• Now, I as am working exclusively in New York, I'm using objects found here; a child's toilet, a swing, vessels and an old directory board from a department store...etc. I've been thinking more about people who owned and used the objects and their traces rather than the people who made or manufactured them in those objects and I'm noticing that they are symbolically genderized in form and function.

• Perhaps we need to re-define the notion of readymade in a larger context than relying on Marcel Duchamp's investigation — especially in this mass producing, global networking era which needs constant re-definition. My work is about pre-existing things buried into our daily lives — not mentioned nor conceptualized in art history.

• My work also includes a presentation of the daily life of women's labor and her domestic performance trying to re-define the social, cultural and esthetic meaning of it to create it's own context in contemporary art history.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  This concept of pre-existence of things is very interesting. In a way, one could say that you are working with the ghosts of the objects, their aura, trying to turn the invisible into a shared experience. The anonymous is supposed to be invisible; so is the past, mostly. Is that important for you to make them visible?

• Kimsooja
  Yes. Depending on the nature of the already-made objects, my interest lies on different issues; for example, when I work with bed covers, I am working with pre-existing objects focusing more on the fact of 'pre-used' rather than 'pre-made' as I am more focused on anonymity of the bodies and the destinies of the couples rather than on anonymity who made the bed covers, although I am concern about the people who made them.

• On the other hand, the folklore objects I've used, my interest lies more on the genderized nature and esthetic structure of the object and it's function in daily life rather than the anonymous beings who made or used them. But when I made a series of carpets which embeded names of the African American slaves who used to work for the plantation houses in the US, I was trying to combine the nature of the painstaking labor of carpet weavers and that of the African American plantation slaves emphasizing both of theirs hardships as I find carpet weaving and plantation job is similar jobs in different dimension. I wish to reveal this anonymity — as myself — one of the anonymous.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  The Needle woman is a central figure in your video works: You are standing in front of people and objects, right in the middle of a maelstrom of things, as if you were out of the world. Is that another figure of anonymity (the voyeur? Or are you even more into the world by watching it pass?)

• Kimsooja
  It is the point of the needle which penetrates the fabric, and we can connect two different parts of the fabrics with threads, through the eye of the needle.

• A needle is an extension of the body, and a thread is an extension of mind. The traces of mind stays always in the fabric, but the needle leaves the site when it's medialization is complete. The needle is a medium, a mystery, a reality, a hermaphrodite, a barometer, a moment, and a Zen.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  Watching the needle woman, I was also thinking about a negative image of the baudelairian flaneur, an archetypal figure of the occidental modernity. Are you inscribing your work in the field of modernity, or is it a notion that is totally irrelevant for you?

• Kimsooja
  It is interesting to see my work discussed in this way — being compared to others from a completely different culture and social identity and also born at different time and space. My work is focused on the totality of life and art. One can see different realities in one persona or in art. Perhaps that is why one sees diverse similarities in my work.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  In a way, you are trying to capture the totality of human experience, which is quite rare. As you said, your work is not about any particular issue? Can you tell me what this ambition implies, and means?

• Kimsooja
  Totality is the truth and the reality of things. And it takes time to clarify in language as a whole. I am interested in approaching the reality that embraces everything because it is the only way to get to the point without manipulations. Most people approach reality from analysis or 'from language to colligation' which is the truth', but I am proposing a 'colligation to be analyzed' by audiences. My working process is intuitive and I believe it's own logic. If I have an ambition, it is to be just a 'being' who has no need to be anyone special, but is freed from human follies and desires — without doing anything particular. 'Being nothing/nothingness' and 'making nothing/nothingness' is my goal. It is a long process.

• Nicolas Bouriaud
  To be "freed from desires" sounds very buddhistic. Is the artist a kind of boddhisattva, who tries to free himself/herself and to liberate the viewer?

• Kimsooja
  I remember the way desire was talked about in the 80's through the work of "simulationnist" artists such as Jeff Koons or Haim Steinbach : art was the absolute object of desire, a "pure merchandise," a perfect exchange value. Desire was examined in terms of compulsion and acquisition. So today, what would be the relationships between art and desire?

• In any case, artists have been constantly dealing with their own desire and audience. For me, artists' practices are similar to that of Buddhist monks' in the sense that they both try to liberate and to become beyond themselves. In this era of globalization and technology however, the self, the body, the spirit, and the other can be perused in many ways -Artists deal with different types of desires depending on their social and cultural context. Desire can be visualized in a physical object form which satisfies sense of 'possession' or in a psychological and metaphorical way that deals desire as another 'subject'. When Claud Viallat said 'Desire leads', I think he referred to another origin of art instinct which links and visualizes these two different source of desires. Artists cannot help ask what is the origin of their desire, and what role desire plays in their work. To understand that this is 'the subject' an artist confronts in the end, and to extinguish it.

• In the art of Korean-born, New York-based Kim Sooja, we see an entire career built upon the notion of the anonymous as a metaphor for the wish to merge with forces and circumstances usually acting against the forthright assertion of self. Kim's art inverts expectations as a way of embracing the world. Her performance of self is at once oppositional and acquiescent, fated and willed. There is a tremendous strength and assertion in her apparently anonymous actions, which are not so much transgressions as they are recognitions of fate. It may well be that the very circumstances Kim addresses, presenting as oppositions, are what the self needs to define itself — in much the same way the whole defines the part. Kim stands alone, unnamed, in her struggle to achieve a consolidated awareness, whose definitions may be seen as Buddhist in their unboundaried flow. In the elaborations of her anonymity, then, Kim presents a sensibility acutely aware of the warring contradictions between her desire for an erasure of self and the kind of resolve necessary to confront the environment she so eloquently, albeit silently, strives against.

• When, in the performance A Needle Woman (1999-2001), Kim stands against waves of Japanese passersby on a street in Shibuya, Tokyo, her pose begins as antithesis but becomes, over time, a wordless affirmation of human resilience, even of individual worth, despite the conditions of anonymity she imposes upon herself. In a remarkable transformation of value, her actions quite literally embody the progress of a self increasingly cognizant of its mortal limits — it is as though Kim is mourning death, which is always ahead of its time. Yet the overall thrust of her vision is far from dark or macabre; her art demonstrates a knowing perception of life's circumstances that is by implication assenting, and her engagement with different cultures — Kim has performed A Needle Woman in eight cities throughout the world (in order: Tokyo, Shanghai, Delhi, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Lagos, and London) — amounts to an affirmation of existence no matter what the environment.

• Kim's development as an artist has been steady and assured. Born in 1957 in Taegu, Korea, she studied painting at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, where she completed graduate school in 1984. She spent half a year in France, on a grant from the French government. In 1992-93, Kim came to New York as an artist-in-residence at the contemporary art center P.S. 1. Deciding on cultural exile, Kim again returned to New York in 1998; this move marked her permanent stay in America, where she has received more and more recognition, becoming an artist of international reputation. Although Kim did not stay long as a painter, she remains interested in investigating the issue of surface, an activity she has continued throughout her career. Indeed, Kim comments, "This pursuit [of the surface], along with my will towards artistic freedom, enabled me to open up new horizons in my art." The change in expression came quickly to Kim; as early as 1983, while still in graduate school, she first "discovered the methodology of sewing as a means of questioning art and life while I was sewing a traditional bedspread in 1983." Kim made the decision to use fabric in daily life as a new kind of canvas. But the act of sewing was also personal, being tied to mourning: "My first attempt at sewing used clothes was done with the remains of my grandmother's clothing, left behind after her death a year before."

• Kim began as a painter who questioned the surface of her canvas, seeing it as "a wall and barrier that painters wish to overcome." Over the course of a decade, she moved into new developments incorporating different media and strategies — videos and performances — in which the emphasis shifted from a treatment of surface to her now recognized language of wrapped used clothes and bedding: an image bundle. The changes in her art revolved around an increasingly emblematic use of materials; when asked why she makes use of bedcovers, Kim replies: "The bedcover is a symbolic site. It is where we are born, where we rest and love, where we dream and suffer and finally die. It keeps memories of the body alive, which result in another dimension." Now that she is concentrating on the world of performance and video, Kim has turned toward an increasingly allegorical reading of her environment, in which her life and actions function as an existence representative of ours. The human condition is taken up as essentially anonymous because Kim comprehends that all of us share the recognition that our actions reveal a deep-seated isolation, as well as an unconscious awareness that behavior takes on paradigmatic meaning in the face of our limited span of time. In Kim's art our understanding of death becomes enlightened by her mediation as an individual toward her audience; her actions resonate because they enter into an existential dialogue with their viewers, replete with the high moral seriousness the presence of death inevitably calls to mind.

• A Needle Woman enacts the isolation we all feel by offering a resonant silence, contemplational in nature, in the midst of the crowd. Kim, who is not a practicing Buddhist, nevertheless sees Zen Buddhist affinities in her recent performances. Her art is suggestive of meditational mind in the encompassing awareness of its practice. She disavows her sense of herself in favor of a stance that heals and binds by taking in the energy, or noise, of the world. As Kim herself has said, "After a decade of sewing practice [since 1983], I came to see myself as a needle weaving the fabric of nature."

• The artist intends to bring together disparate parts of the real as an act of selflessness represented by the precise metaphor of needle and silk. Her silent, even prayerful, interactions with the amused, bemused crowds in eight cities show a tenacity of purpose as well as a self deliberately obliterated so as to take in, out of harm's way, the various responses her stillness and silence create. Video witnesses her activities, creating an archive of interactions. Interestingly, Kim sees the use of video, which documents her activities in different places, metaphorically as well: "Another encounter occurs when audiences see the video resulting from my performance. My body functions as a barometer, as a needle connecting people from a different time and space." She means to emphasize the ties that bind people, by extinguishing, for the duration of the performance, the illusion that the self is primary.

• Kim's epic eleven-day journey Cities on the Move — 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck (November 1997) retraced sites in her memory; she traveled to different cities and villages where she used to live, carrying colorful bottari on a flat-bed truck. Kim considers the performance "a social sculpture, loaded with memory and history, which locates and then equalizes physical and mental space." The video, witnessing Kim's transit in Korea's Taebek Mountains, movingly and also literally presents the baggage she carries with her as she seeks to face her past. The performance presents her travels as a metaphor for the narrative of our existence; as Kim states in a catalogue accompanying the piece, "Bottari Truck is a processing object throughout space and time/locating and dislocating ourselves to the place/where we come from/and where we are going to." The figurative language engages the viewer on a metaphysical plane, demanding that we read her journey as emblematic of our own. Kim is particularly strong when her imagery is offered as a symbolic representation of awareness; the notion of moving along a path resonates in sympathy with the inevitable determination that the path will end when the person is gone. Asked in the catalogue to comment on unrealized projects, Kim replies, "I contain my projects in my body which I find as my studio, and I don't try to remember or describe them all." The statement returns us to the idea that Kim holds within her body a wellspring of creativity, which acts as the counterpart to the anonymous public self she so carefully presents. If it is true that we never see her face in her performance videos, it is because her anonymity is large enough to incorporate whatever occurs in the world around her.

• As one follows the steps left by Kim in her sojourns of memory, it becomes clear that the implications of her path — itself a Buddhist term — suggest deep affinities with Buddhism. Kim comments that her "attitude and way of looking are similar to that of Buddhists." At the same time, she reserves the right to remain "an independent individual, who looks at the world in one's own way and who recognizes that one's own path can sometimes meet with a broad stream of thought." In the isolation of her artwork, Kim seeks out a generalized correspondence with the world, but on her own terms and from her own experience. Her allegories are successful because they originate, despite seeming otherwise, from a highly individuated sense of purpose. In a way, Kim's anonymity is a subterfuge, a manner of relating a sense of self whose boundaries are so extended as to do away with the notions of limit entirely. The odd thing about Kim's isolation is that it in fact completely engages with her audience; just as she offers solitude as a way of emphasizing universal implications, so she underscores her autonomy as a way of proceeding toward a wide involvement with others. Indeed, her lonely actions appear to call for help — in the video A Beggar Woman, done in Lagos in 2001, she sits crosslegged, her palm extended for alms. Someone gives her some change, and the muteness of the scene intensifies the artist's vulnerability. We read the interaction as evidence of need everywhere; in her dramatization of want, Kim reduces herself — and us as well — to a egoless composite of desires, an enactment of utter poverty.

• As a result, Kim objectifies our intuitive knowledge in a language of actions stripped to the bare essence of their intent. There are of course feminist implications to her devotions, accomplished with a purposeful humility. In a remarkable performance, entitled A Needle Woman-Kitakyushu, done in 1999 in Japan, Kim stretched out on top of a limestone mountain, her curving body echoing the stony rise. The video confirms the artist's procedure, whereby her interaction with her surroundings envelops them in a unified will. The suggestion of the earth mother comes into play; there is a sense of limitless identification with nature. At the same time, some of the other performances have political implications, as suggested by A Beggar Woman or A Homeless Woman — Delhi (2000), in which Kim lies down on the sidewalk of a busy street. The lack of a direct message advocating social change does not affect the two pieces, which render suffering as intrinsic to our condition. Indeed, the indirectness of Kim's premises actually enhances her expression, which feels inevitable in light of its universality.

• In the recent installation A Mirror Woman (2002), Kim hung used bedcovers across the width of the Peter Blum Gallery in New York City. She also placed mirrored surfaces on both of the side walls, reflecting the path of visitors as they made their way through a labyrinth of colorful cloth. There was a sound element as well — the chants of Tibetan monks accompanied the exhibition. Overall, the experience of the piece was otherworldly to the point of being disturbing. Perhaps, in the largest sense, Kim's interventions are indeed disturbing, for they remind us of our mortality. In Epitaph (2002), Kim waves a bedcover in the midst of a cemetery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; it is a moment that merges life with its apparent opponent, death. As such, the work suggests that the interpretation between existence and nonbeing may be forced; sometimes, a seeming dichotomy is actually two surfaces of a single idea. Kim's great strength as an artist is to find the moment wherein passion and calm, action and passivity, merge.

• She would have us understand that art is the great equalizer of false dualities; our mind is a place capable of including most everything. In the generosity of her vision, Kim reiterates the great truths of the unknown, what lies above and beyond our lives. She takes what we implicitly know and bestows upon it a public grace. As she grows larger in her art, so do we, so completely are we included in her generous expanse of her imagination.

• 베니스, 상파울로, 리용 등 세계 유수의 비엔날레에 초대되면서 세계를 무대로 활발한 활동을 하고 있는 김수자는 전통적인 천과 바느질이라는 일상적인 행위를 삶과 사회를 포용하는 예술로 승화시킨 작가이다. 그는 1980년대 초반 어머니와 함께 이불을 꿰매다가 천이라는 소재를 새롭게 자각 하게 되었고, 천이라는 소재에 필연적으로 수반되는 바느질의 행위에서 당시 자신은 물론 미술계가 천착하였던 '평면' 의 한계를 극복할 가능성을 발견하게 된다. 그러나 주로 천 위에 드로잉 또는 채색을 가미한 그의 1980년대 후반까지의 작품들은 비록 캔버스를 벗어나긴 하였으나 평회화의 또 다른 연장이었다고 볼 수 있다. 그러다 1990년에 들어서면서 창호지 문틀이나 지게, 얼레 등 전통적인 일상의 오브제들을 천으로 감싸 그 기본 구조를 재확인하는 <연역적 오브제> 시리즈 작업을 하면서 그는 천을 평면적으로 다루던 기존의 작업에서 탈피하여 천이 가진 입체성에 주목하기 시작한다.

• 김수자를 세계적으로 유명하게 한 보따리와의 만남은 뉴욕 P.S. 1에서 작업을 하던 중 우연히 이루어졌다. 천 작업을 하려고 싸놓았던 보따리를 어느 순간 이제까지와는 전혀 다른 새로운 시각으로 보게 된 것이다. 작가의 말에 따르면 보따리는 평면적인 천을'묶는다'는 단순한 행위를 통해 서 3차원화 할 수 있으며 따라서 회화적 방법을 연출할 수 있는 동시에 볼륨있는 조각으로 볼 수도 있다는 것이다. 보따리는 평면이 3차원화한 입체내지는 오브제이면서 그것이 놓이는 장소성이라 는 문제와 연관될 때 설치로서 자리하기도 한다. 처음에 평면에 대한 대체물로 천을 채택하였던 김수자는 천의 여러 가지 다양성을 모색하면서 그것의 끊임없은 확산 가능성을 깨닫게 되었고, 특히 공간에 유연하게 대처할 수 있는 보따리를 발견하면서 계속적으로 공간, 장소에 대한 관심을 확대해 나아갔다.

• 1997년 11일간 트럭에 보따리를 가득 싣고 전국을 일주하는 퍼포먼스를 담아 제작한 비디오 작품 〈떠도는 도시들-2727km 보따리 트럭〉은 평면, 오브제, 설치 작업의 과정을 두루 거치면서 그의 작업 영역이 전시장 밖으로 더욱 확장되어 나아갔음을 보여 준다.이 작품은 군인이었던 아버지를 따라 이사를 자주 하였던 어린 시절에 대한 기억의 흐름을 따라가는 여정이자 작업을 위해 세 계 곳곳을 돌아다니는 현재 자신의 모습을 은유하면서 보따리 자체에 내재되어 있는 '이동'과 '유 랑' 의 정서를 표출한 작품이다. 이 보따리 트럭이 1998년 상 파울로 비엔날레와 1999년의 베니 스 비엔날레에 출품되면서 김수자는 세계미술계에 유랑과 자유로운 의식의 유목주의적 사유와 함 께 정체성에 대한 문제 등을 제기한 일명 '보따리' 작가로 알려지게 된다.
  김수자 작업의 기본이었던 바느질이라는 행위도 실제로 꿰매는 행위 없이 실과 바늘이 없이도 관계를 맺어 가는 개념적인 바느질 작업으로 전개되어 나아갔다. 작가는 특히 바늘이 갖는 '치유의 도구'로서의 기능에 주목하면서 스스로를 바늘에 비유하기 시작한다. 그에게 바느질 행위는 '호흡 또는 소통같은 것'이며 분리된 것들을 한땀 한땀 이어 나가 관계를 맺게 하는 행위이다. 바늘은 매개체로서 갈라진 틈 사이를 지나면서 그 틈을 연결시키지만 정작 남는 것은 자신과 연결되었던 실만이 흔적으로 남을 뿐이다. 작가는 이렇게 매개체로서의 역할이 끝난 후 무(無)화되는 바늘과 자기 자신을 동일시 하는 것이다.

• 바늘로서의 작가의 모습은 일본 동경의 시부야 거리와 중국 상하이, 인도 델리, 그리고 미국 뉴욕에서 벌인 퍼포먼스를 담은 비디오 작품 <바늘 여인>에서 분명하게 나타난다. 길 한가운데에서 마주 오는 행인들을 바라 보며 미동도 없이 서 있는 작가의 모습과 각 도시 행인들의 다양한 반응을 담은 이 비디오 작업은 자신의 몸을 매개로 하여 나와 타인, 나와 세계의 관계를 엮고자 하는 작가 의 시각을 반영하고 있다. 그는 이 작업에 대해 "하나의 매개체, 혹은 바로미터 또는 나침반으로서 의 작가의 몸은 인파 속에서 스쳐 가는 사람들을 보이지 않게 관계 지을 뿐 결국 투명 인간처럼 거의 무의 상태로 소외되고 사라지고 만다"고 설명한다. 우리의 일상 생활과 떨어질 수 없는 천이라는 소재와 전통적으로 여성의 노동이었던 바느질이라는 일상적 행위를 인간의 보편적인 문맥으로 발전시켜 나간 김수자는 결국 자신의 예술을 사유하는 것으로 정의하고 그 속에 치유, 정화, 그리고 포용을 내포하는 관계 맺기를 지향하고 있다.

• Kimsooja transforms the quotidian act of sewing and traditional cloths into art that embraces life and society. She has exhibited her art all over the world, including many prominent international art biennales such as Venice, Sao Paolo, and Lyon. It was sometime in the early 1980s, Kim recalls, that she came to realize cloth as a new artistic medium, while sewing a blanket cover with her mother. In the act of sewing, which necessarily accompanies the material of cloth, Kim also discovered a possibility of overcoming the limitations of the "surface plane" — the concept to which the modernist-dominated art world still was fettered. Through the late 1980s, she produced a series of works — drawings and paintings done on unstretched cloths — to break away from the painting canvas, but these works were still an extension of 2-dimensional painting. In the early 1990s, Kim began to produce the series titled Deductive Objects; she took traditional everyday objects such as a doorframe, an A-frame, and a bobbin, and swathed them with cloths, in the process reassuring the objects’ basic structures. With this series of works, Kim reached a turning point in her art, in which cloth is no longer treated as a 2-dimensional pictorial surface, but a material open to many 3-dimensional potentials.

• Kim’s encounter with the bottari (a bundle of household belongings wrapped in traditional Korean bedcovers), for which she would be widely known, took place rather fortuitously when she was in artist’s residency at P.S.1, New York. One day, Kim began to see wrapped bundles"bottaris"she had collected in a corner of her studio with a new eye. Kim states that the bottari turns flat cloths into a three-dimensional object through the simple act of "wrapping" — a method of making that is both painterly and sculptural; the bottari is a flat surface turned into a volumetric object, and can also further evoleve into an installation when located in specific place. Although she was initially interested in cloth as an alternative to the modernist flat surface, Kimsooja soon came to understand the material’s infinite possibilities through her exploration of its multi-faceted character. It was through her discovery of the bottari, the form that can flexibly adapt to different environments, that her work began to develop spatially.

• In her 1997 video work Cities on the Move - 2727 km bottari truck, she traveled throughout the countryside of Korea for 11 days in a small truck piled high with bottaris in the back. This work is an eloquent testimony to how her work went through the processes of painting, object, and installation, gradually exploding out of the gallery walls. Kim moved often when she was a child because her father, who was a serviceman, had frequent job transfers. In that sense, Cities on the move is a travel through the memories of her own childhood. At the same time, it is a metaphor for her current state of being, an artist who constantly travels for work to different places in the world, and the work expresses the sensibilities of "on the move" and "itinerant" inherent in the bottari. When the video protion of the work, accompanied by the bottari truck, were shown at the 1998 Bienal do Sao Paolo and the 1999 La Biennale di Venezia, Kimsooja became known in the art world as the so-called bottari artist who poses the questions of identity, mobility, borderlessness, and nomadism.

• The main methodology of her artmaking"sewing"also went through subsequent evolutionary processes. In more recent years, sewing for Kim has become a conceptual act, without an actual needle or thread, of forming and mediating relations. Pointing to the function of "healing" which the needle possesses, the artist compares her own being to the needle. For Kim, sewing is "like breathing, or communicating" and is an act of bringing separate beings together by linking them, one stitch at a time. The needle is a mediator that travels in the gap, closing it. But when the needle completes its work, the trace of its labor remains only as the thread which it was attached to. The artist identifies with the needle, then in the sense that when her role as mediator is finished, her being becomes "Nothing".

• The artist as the needle appears again and again in A Needle Woman (1999-2000), a series of video works which records Kim’s repeated performances on the streets of Shibuya (Tokyo), Shanghai, Delhi, and New York. In all these videos, Kimsooja stands motionless, with her back facing the camera and her front facing the oncoming traffic of pedestrians. The bypassing people’s responses captured by the camera’s eye are varied depending on the location of the performance. The work is a manifestation of the artist’s wish to sew the self and the others, and the self and the world into relationships, using her own body as the medium. Kim explains A Needle Woman as follows: "the artist’s body, as a medium, or a barometer or a compass, forms only unseen links between people passing by it, but in the end, it becomes alienated and almost disappears into the state of nothingness, like an invisible man." Earlier, Kimsooja’s art developed cloths (an irreplaceable part of our lives) and sewing (traditionally women’s labor) into the general human context through her art. Now, she sees her art as a metaphor, and in it, she wishes to make relationships of healing, cleansing, and ultimately, embrace.

• "The body itself is the most complicated bundle." — Kim Sooja

I. Sewing beyond space and time

• Since the 1980s, between thread and needle, Kim Sooja's work has been developing; from Korea to New York, via Paris and a number of other cities across the different continents, like an avowed metaphor of the act of sewing. But it is less a question of sewing as such than linking up and uniting fragments of varied realities that were previously disparate. From her first works, with pieces laid end to end and sewn together, like a sort of collage involving both hand, body and mind in relation to matter, up to the recent videos of A Needle Woman, where the artist herself becomes a needle and integrates into the urban fabric, sewing has been the guiding thread in a subtle research project from which a language has evolved, and where a unique commitment can be read, with references that are first of all local, but whose scope has become global.

• Over the course of time, Kim Sooja went from matter and the plane of the painting to the conquest of a liberating third dimension, and this allowed her to acquire greater mobility with the works entitled Bottari. In her videos and performances, her language subsequently became ever more economical, pursuing as though by incursion the possibility of the emergence of her oeuvre. The artist would like to be a needle that leaves no mark, that sews and disappears after closing the wound; after joining two bits of cloth, two continents or states of consciousness. Her discretion is consubstantial with her research, and her self-effacement facilitates revelation: to the appearance of the other, and to his presence. This path starts out from an approach to textiles, and a practice, that are rooted in Korean tradition but go beyond these local references through a language which is that of wandering, exchange and openness to the other, the unknown.

• Kim Sooja's training as a painter predisposed her to consider the plane surface of the canvas as a field of exploration. Her first compositions were formal, based on grids and interlinking motifs. She had a penchant for the art of the 20th-century avant-gardes, and notably Mondrian, both in her practice and in the theoretical spirit that informed all her work. But the physical dimension of her sewn canvases dominated her work. The very act of making a picture with pieces of fabric became predominant, and this opened the way to gestures that were simpler, though just as emblematic.

• Sewing thus became the essential element of her artistic process in the 1980s, to the point where it overshadowed pictorial considerations as such, and introduced the emotional charge that she had discovered while sewing by her mother's side. The act of sewing is one of intimacy, of withdrawing into oneself, close to symbiosis with a state of being that represents both tradition and family memory. This activity — almost passive, enthralling — locks the artist into a sequence of slow movements that repeat to infinity and are conducive to meditation. It is to be one with oneself, the fact of saturating oneself in one's own history. And the blankets made by Kim Sooja and her mother brought together two worlds that had previously been dissociated: the ancestral Korean tradition and her own pictorial quest.

• Kim Sooja's first works were an introspection turned towards herself, and a way of calling herself into question so as to become a totality. In this sense, the action she accomplished could be seen as the denouement of the self. Skein, bobbin or hank: the thread has to be unwound.

• The process begins with choosing pieces of cloth. To collect different textiles is to recompose one's being as one would reconstruct the fragments of a past: bits of individual stories that are becoming a new wholeness. The assemblage of these lacerations retains the marks and stigmata of the bodies that have borne them, with their dreams and daily sufferings. These recomposed entities become offerings, surrogates through which the memory of the other can act.

• To salvage materials, assemble them, and sew them together is an intoxicating, almost ecstatic act of patience and repetition (from immobility to rapture). By the monotony of the gesture, this process makes it possible, also, to create a void within oneself — a void which can become a plenitude. For Kim Sooja, a work like Portrait of Yourself (1990-1991) is a solitary confession, an incessant and infinite conversation with oneself. The process is as important as the result. The production of this particular work is something like a meditation, and if one approaches it with the required intimacy it becomes a mandala. Iso it is both a self-portrait and a profound expression, a communication of the artist's humours, which shows how she carried out an apprenticeship on herself, how she matured through experiencing the passage of time and stepping aside from its onward movement. Despite the repetition of a movement that could become tiresome, the artist claims to have derived a great deal of energy from the experience. Through it she renewed her resources, as is suggested by the title of a work dating from this period, Towards the Mother Earth (1990-1991).

• The back-and-forth movement of the needle through the material, from front to back, again and again, ended up by going beyond the plane surface, surreptitiously opening up towards a third dimension. Applying a reductionist logic to her work, Kim Sooja began covering objects with fabric, and thereby conquering space.

• At the beginning of the 1990s came the first constructions of this order (Untitled, 1991). Two hoops connected by rods made the shift from the line to the third dimension. These constructions were then enveloped in pieces of fabric as a way of freeing them from the wall (which indicated a transition in the oeuvre), and from the plane surface of the painting, without giving up the symbolic charge of the first sewn works. For a time, the artist moved away from the act of sewing, strictly speaking, and transposed her metaphor into the simple act of covering objects.

II. Enveloping memory

• Always seeking greater simplicity, Kim Sooja has rendered this emancipating act more radical still over the last decade, with works which now constitute, in a way, her signature: the bundles entitled Bottari.

• The first of these date from 1992. They were created in the Open Studio at the P.S.1 (a contemporary art centre in New York, now associated with MOMA), and came into being, according to the artist, spontaneously, unrelated to any particular consciousness of things. But though nothing anticipated the event, everything announced the simplification of the procedure that had already been set up, in the direction of its essence and its highest degree of efficacy, with the abolition of all artifice, accessory or substrate in favour of the fabric alone. Cloth became the content and the container of the work, its structure and its surface, inside and outside. The Bottari provided an aesthetic solution to the question of the surface by stepping outside it, with a structure which was both open and closed; which revealed and concealed at the same time.

• The bundle corresponds as much to a reference within the Korean tradition as to a universal metaphor of displacement, or even adventure, and a Bottari can hold all an individual's belongings. Originally, the custom was to use still-serviceable scraps of bright-coloured, precious silk from worn-out clothing, something of which was thus preserved.

• In Korea, fabrics are traditionally used for multiple common functions such as storing bedding and clothing, or moving it around, notably when it has to be washed, as well as transporting food, or even wrapping gifts. For Koreans, the Bottari is both intimate and familiar, and is used on a daily basis. It is a sign of time-honoured aesthetic refinement, and is often an object of great value. It carries a strong affective charge, and is passed down from generation to generation.

• It is symptomatic that Kim Sooja first explored the Bottari's possibilities while living outside Korea. She marked her return from her memorable stay at the P.S.1, where she had been a guest artist, with a Bottari installation in an abandoned house in Kyunju (1994). Bottari symbolize, in a way, the migrant who can put all his material goods in a bundle and be ready to set off at any moment. So when she came back and placed her bundles on a floor, Kim Sooja was reclaiming the space, but she was also indicating her readiness for an imminent departure. The inclination to travel is constant, or even necessary, when one has been elsewhere.

• The "elsewhere" through which the artist found herself confronted with another perception of woman remains implicit as an underlying theme in her work: the body is torn between the modern Western world and her Eastern ancestral universe. This ambivalence would be irreconcilable if travelling did not offer a possibility of agreement between two different universes, in their alternation.

• The resulting tension, which is latent in all her work, was laid bare by an installation, Deductive Object / Dedicated to my Neighbors, presented at Nagoya in 1996, where two forms amongst her productions were brought together in the exhibition space. For the first time, Kim Sooja made a contrast between the placing of the bundles and an arrangement of Korean bedspreads on the floor.

• These are often given as presents to accompany a bride's trousseau, and are one of a household's most treasured possessions. In their folds they silently attest to the history of the couple. The motifs are symbolic references and exhortations to a happy life full of love, children and health.

• Between the revelation of the bedspreads' symbolic motifs and the mystery of the bundles, with the precious contents that can be imagined, there is a tension which is all the stronger when one realizses the particular importance of the traditional bedspread in the Korean context; and it goes beyond a purely formal interpretation of the opposition between the flat surface of the bedspreads and the sculptural dimension of the bundles. The installation thus makes it possible to appreciate, simultaneously, the unveiling of a private life and the intensity of a retreat into oneself.

• The bedspread is a witness-object whose day-to-day contact everyone can feel, It accompanies love, sex, dreams, nightmares, childbirth... and finally, at the moment of death, it becomes a shroud. So this envelope is a sort of skin, carrying in its folds what could be considered as a sort of portrait of its owner(s). Folded onto itself as a Bottari, the bedspread gathers up intimate possessions and protects them from inquisitive eyes. Opened out, it gives itself up in its flatness, and suggests the dreams that are incorporated into its traditional motifs.

• In this sense, the Nagoya installation, so simple and pure in its expression, contained an entire mode of thinking about time, and the cycle of life and death. Later, exploiting the charged nature of such references, the artist used the bedspreads by themselves in various situations, as restaurant tablecloths and lines stretched out for washing to be hung on. With each installation, the visitor's participation is decisive, since it is up to him to activate the mechanism. In the case of a tablecloth, it is the actual use of the table by the visitor, in a museum restaurant, that makes the work exist. In the Korean context, this almost-reverse use of the bedspread as a tablecloth is of the order of thea transgression, since tradition prohibits eating in the place where one sleeps. For the duration of a meal, the tablecloth is an integral part of the table companions' life. It is imprinted with the stains they leave, the traces of this slice of existence that it will have subtly transformed by its presence.

• As in most of Kim Sooja's other installations, the onlooker is thus a protagonist — a constitutive element of the space in question. When he moves around to look at the work from different viewpoints, it is renewed at each step. Pursuing this logic so as to extend it ever further, in a recent presentation of the Laundry installations at the Peter Blum gallery in New York, A Mirror Woman (2002) had mirrors on all the walls with lines stretched out for hanging up washing. The spectator's contemplation of the work was eroded by his discovery of himself in the mirrors, which projected the field of the work into an infinite space. This visual confrontation with oneself is a curious, singular fact in a work that is characterizsed rather by the inconspicuousness of the artist in the interest of internalizsed reflection. In general, when a figure appears in her work (and in her more recent videos it is often herself), it has its back turned, as if to suggest a presence, but not a particular individuality. This is the case, for example, in the video of her performance Cities on the Move - 2727 Kilometers.

• In November 1997, rejoining the nomadic life of contemporary artists, the better to in order to better reinforce it (but also enlarging the field of action of her work and its semantic purview), Kim Sooja decided to take her bundles on the road. She spent eleven days going round towns and other places in Korea that held specific memories for her. This meant that her bundles were loaded with new content: the memory of her past history and travels. In the filmed performance she is seen from behind, hieratic and impassive, sitting above firmly-attached Bottari in a truck driving through ever-changing scenery.

• The idea of moving around becomes a reality in this video, which combines, for the first time in such an obvious way, a sense of the intimate and with a public dimension. The artist's silhouette, in its sobriety and black clothes, unlike the Bottari with their vivid, varied colours, stands up straight, like a needle.

• The fact that she presents us only her back is a procedure that challenges us and thrusts us into the middle of the landscape. As in Caspar David Friedrich's romantic paintings, the silhouette of a back becomes our bodily referent, and we project onto it. This transfer gives extra substance to the work, and confers on it a shape for us, so that we become the subject. (The phenomenon is clearer still in the later videos of towns, which this performance adumbrates). Perched high up on the bundles, while the road goes by, the needle-woman both cuts through the landscape and sews it up again, the way a wound closes up. Finally, this Calvary of memory is a way for Kim Sooja to forge a link with her history and re-inject an emotional charge into her itinerary. So the Bottari that she takes round with her are phantoms of time gone by, to which this itinerary pays tribute. Each of them can be related to a person, and the journey takes on the character of a pilgrimage in honour of dear, loved beings.

• This dimension of personal ritual was transcended when the artist presented her Bottari Truck in major festivals of contemporary art. What was of the order of the intimate then took on a universal, even denunciatory dimension with regard to its context.

• She has taken part in the biennials which are the focal points of artistic nomadism: São Paulo (the 24th, in 1998), Venice (the 48th, in 1999), and Lyon (the 5th, in 2000). Arriving as in a bazaar upon which groups from different regions converge to exchange merchandise and cultures, the truck filled with Bottari of every colour accentuates the idea of displacement at the very moment when the international press is taking an interest in the situation of populations forced into exile across the world. But if Kim Sooja's installation can express displacement as a positive value, a search for a new paradise, it cannot cancel out the premises that any change of place is firstly seen as the breakup of a unity that has been lost forever. Displacement always implies cutting oneself off from one's birthplace and ancestral roots. There are voluntary exiles who have struck it lucky and found a better life. But deep in the soul of the uprooted person there is always a secret, persistent wound.

• The historical context of the Bottari Truck cannot fail to recall the atrocities committed at the time of its creation in the Balkans, Africa and the Near East (to mention only those that made the headlines).

• It is often never-ending struggles, and more rarely natural disasters, that force entire populations to pack up their bundles and set out from home, into the unknown. The Bottari, with their shimmering colours, convey all these paradoxical feelings, which are stirring memories but also as well as deep wounds.

III. The simultaneous elsewhere

• Following the thread of her wanderings, Kim Sooja's recent series of videos are both at once subtle in their poetry, strong in their presentation, and complex in their social implications. They are grouped together by generic title. A Needle Woman alludes to her desire to disappear like a needle in a haystack, but also to be the needle that insinuates itself into the urban fabric. These performances, and the ones that derive from them, like A Beggar Woman, were presented for the first time in a solo exhibition at P.S.1 in 2001.

• A Needle Woman (1999-2001) is a set of eight videos projected simultaneously on the four walls of a room. Each shows Kim Sooja from behind, dressed identically in the most neutral possible way, immobile, facing the human wave that is rushing round her in a busy street in one of the world's most populous cities: New York, Tokyo, London, Mexico City, Cairo, Delhi, Shanghai and Lagos.

• The artist transports us into cities in every continent by taking them into a place where we become active participants. The large-format projections bring us face to face with life-size people, justifying a total immersion in the space of the work. The artist's back — as we said above — allows us to pass through into the work, into the depths of metropolises, and to narrowly avoid the abyss. This illustrates, more or less, the Kantian definition of the sublime: to feel an emotion through the devices the artist offers us as she opens up her own experience so that we can enter into it without risk or peril. The unobtrusiveness of the artist, in spite of her presence, could produce a multitude of approaches in which individuality would give way to the essence of our own thinking.

• Kim Sooja's discretion eliminates every psychological aspect of the ordeal she has taken on. The whole point is what occurs around her, which appears as a catalyst. Taking our place in this installation, we realizse what is intimate and personal about the ordeal, for anyone who goes through it. Evidently the physical side of it begins with a meditation that leads to a sort of ecstasy. And in this sense, the artist, as an individual, is outside herself. She abstracts herself and becomes like a keyhole, or a negative image of herself, which makes perception possible for us.

• Her interest in the elsewhere makes her central to the generation of migratory artists who, at the dawn of the new millenium, are questioning the limits of globalizsation. As an artist, she is invited to present her work in cultural institutions around the globe, while the art world has gone beyond the rich countries — where there are people who take an interest in such creative activity — to include less favoured countries. The result is that artistic discourse is becomes enriched by other voices, and the circulation of works finds new perspectives.

• The simultaneity of her presence in these no more than a hunch: distant though they are from one another, and different as the historical and economic contexts may be, apart from their urbanistic and architectural characteristics, these cities are alike in the steady streams of individuals people going about their business, moving towards an inevitable meeting with their destiny. And so a continuum of races and peoples finds itself virtually at the centerre of the space. Simultaneity of presentation makes the common features of the beings in movement in these eight videos obvious at a glance. Only an attentive eye will be able to discern what differentiates them.

• While the time of the work is acting on us, our body replaces that of the artist, and becomes the needle that leads the guiding thread. A Needle Woman, as Kim Sooja likes to define herself, weaves, as much as she rends, the urban fabric. The fine needle pierces the world, but the whole universe passes through the eye of the needle. In certain contexts, in spite of her self-effacement, the artist cannot escape her otherness: she is the foreigner, the observer, the element that can split apart as well as bind together. In fact she cuts the human flow, which has to pass around her, avoid her like an obstacle, open up before her. The specificity of each particular population appears in this encounter. And the encounter is the indicator of the specificity.

• The characteristics of towns come out through contrast, according to what opposes them. Each possesses a distinct rhythm that is demonstrated by the perfect immobility of the artist as an immutable reference. Her proper time seems to be in suspension, while the rest of the town swirls round her. Kim Sooja's passivity is a source of worry and tension. One expects something to happen: an intrusion, something violent... Possible violence, like a specterre haunting life in these metropolises at every moment.

• The reactions of the passers-by (or their total absence of reaction) are archetypes of the imaginative profile that a given city suggests. And thus, without wanting to paint a sociological portrait, the videos comprise a number of elements that make it possible to characterizse the people and their surroundings: their clothes, their way of occupying the street, their attitude in urban space... For example, passers-by in New York, London and Tokyo are distinguished by their rapid, determined gait. They have an objective, and their walk is a "power walk": they are efficacious, and scarcely notice the artist's presence. They have an individual goal, outside the range of the camera, in the direction of a horizon that protects them and immunizses them against everything that could deflect them from their path. Their life is traced out, and there is no place for the unexpected. The street is only a vector, and not a place of sociability.

• In these cosmopolitan cities, all racial differences seem to fade. The artist goes almost unnoticed, and her features do not mark her out in places where there are people of all origins, and where hybrids are common. Modernity asserts itself here as an exacerbation of individuality, a sort of autism that tends towards homogeneity. Such cities are so full of stimuli and diverse fantasies that the intervention of an artist attracts little attention.

• In places like Cairo, Delhi, Mexico, and especially Lagos, on the other hand, there is a tension between the modern and the traditional which means that existence is highly charged. The individual finds his full dimensions in an open space where he is attentive to those around him, because he seeks to evaluate his position and rank in the immense gamut of social classes and traditional hierarchies that are an essential part of these cultures.

• The members of different castes and social classes mix in the street. They are wary of one another; they keep an eye on one another and expose themselves to situations in which there is always tension. Here, the street becomes a place of both coexistence and distinctions.

• In these cities where the contrasts are strong, individuals want to assert themselves across the cleavages. They look at one another so as to make comparisons between one another, and every look contains a question (Am I from the same class or not? How am I to position myself, and where, in such a wide spectrum?); so it is not surprising that these are the cities where the immobile presence of Kim Sooja gets garners the most reactions. They are still preserved from blasé mundanity, and the artist stands out more strongly as a stranger. But it is above all her passivity and her determination to abstract herself that arouse curiosity, along with a desire to make her react, to draw her out of herself, so as to bring her back to everyday life and the flux of the community. In all these cities, it is the ever-present children who are the least hesitant about teasing the artist and turning her performance into a game.

• The virtual meeting-point of eight streets in a unique space plunges us into the improbable river of the human continuum. Engulfed in the multitude, the artist is invisible, as she often aspires to being. This takes her work beyond the nature-culture cleavage, or the opposition of the contemporary urban to original nature. In natural settings, as in the performance A Needle Woman / Kitakyushu (1999), where she is stretched out on a rock, or in A Laundry Woman / Yamuna River, India (2000), where she is facing the river in question, she strives for the same contemplative detachment as in urban settings. Perhaps her deepest desire is to reconcile perfect immobility and perpetual motion. And is this not what she seems to be seeking when she indicates her wish to disappear for an entire month, as she dreamt of doing during the last Whitney Biennial? Is there not a paradox in the fact of wanting to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere?

• Kim Sooja embodies the complexity of the kind of globalizsation which both proclaims and denies the local spirit. Her work with textiles had a specificity that was linked to the Korean context of her origins. This opened up in the course of her peregrinations, gaining in breadth without cutting itself off from its roots, or disowning them. Her videos combine nature and the urban, the individual and the collective, the global and the local. The richness of her approach, in its discretion and subtlety, lies no doubt in her unique way of transcending divisions and resolving them in works that place the spectator at the heart of an extreme questioning process, which for each individual becomes personal and intimate.

• The trace of a body. Not long ago, maybe just a while ago, there was a body here. It lived in a rhythm of everyday behaviour and actions, shaping the values and sense requisite to the existence of the objects surrounding it; clothes above all, the obvious, but usually trivialized signs of life, which remain in the body's place, in the place vacated by it, empty and useless. The independent existence of clothes, alongside the body's life, begins at birth, starting with little baby clothes and moving on to bigger and bigger ones. Clothes — there are always some bodies putting them on, wearing them, desiring them, striving to get them, taking possession of them, discarding, storing, inheriting. Nearly all their life bodies never part with what clothes, adorns and protects them, what is closest to them, next to the skin, what absorbs its smell, grime and sweat.

• The objects left by the body, the clothes saturated with its physicality — are they not the most obvious and tangible traces of its reality, the proof of its existence? Is the material world coexisting with the body not its most faithful memory? The sense of this world disappears with the passing of a particular life, although it can be reborn with the life of new bodies. One moment, a freeze frame of the stream of life changes forever the state of the subject and object. It is maybe the most strongly felt — physically and psychically — end of the stream of the time of life, flowing in between, in space and time..

• Kim Sooja: "We are wrapped in cotton cloth at birth, we wear it until we die, and we are again wrapped in it for burial. Especially in Korea, we use cloth as a symbolic material on important occasions such as coming of age ceremonies, weddings, funerals, and rites for ancestors. Therefore cloth is thought to be more than a material, being identified with the body - that is, as a container for the spirit. When a person dies, his family burns the clothes and sheets he used. This may have the symbolic meaning of sending his body and spirit to the sky, the world of the sky, the world of the unknown."

• Scattered clothes and bottari, bundles stuffed with clothes, made of traditional Korean fabrics, are spread on the ground in a forest during the First Biennial in Kwangju in 1995. This installation, made of 2.5 tonnes of second-hand clothes and entitled Sewing into Walking was dedicated by Kim Sooja to the victims of the suppression of a democratic protest in Kwangju in 1980. The tragedy of those victims was expressed by an installation made of a mass of used clothes, those most obvious signs of the presence of a body.

• Kim Sooja, e-mail, April 1, 2003:

• The Kwangju Massacre happened in the 1980 and hundreds of people died for their democracy movement. When I was invited from Kwangju, I couldn't do anything before I commemorate their lives...

• Deductive Object-dedicated to my neighbours was done in 1996 when the department store was completely collapsed and killed hundreds of people and I was in that building with my son 30 mins before collapse, and we used to live in the same block. I had to comment and commemorate the victims of my neighbours especially when I had an occasion to install my piece in Japan which had a lot to do with Korea in the history (war, colonization, conflict ...). So the neighbour means both my own neighbour in Seoul but also Korea-Japan relationship, so I mixed the Korean used clothes with Japanese.

• Kwangju, Seoul and Kosovo are just a few of the many places in the world which have been marked forever by the death of many beings. Kim Sooja sees it, but she does not get involved in political conflicts. So when she presents Bottari Truck — in Exile, a truck loaded with colourful bottari, at the Venice biennial and dedicates that event to the [victims of] the war going on at the same time in Kosovo (so close to Venice), that gesture is just an expression of concern for the lot of other people.

• Kim Sooja conceptualizes political events through installations in which an important element are bottari and traditional Korean bedcovers, objects strongly associated with women and the roles they play (in Korea considerably limited by Confucianism). Another key element of the installation are used clothes, which in Korean tradition are carriers of the spiritual element, and in Kim Sooja's works also become a representation of the human body. Those are, it seems, the only three projects with implied political, social and emotional meanings; all the others are creative acts made concrete as objects, installations, performances and videos; recently, those are becoming increasingly minimalist. An attitude of conscious "inaction" is articulated ever more plainly in the performances realized and registered on video in different places around the world and shown in exhibition rooms.

• In an essay published in this catalogue Adam Szymczyk proposes a new interpretation of the artist's work. Giving descriptions of journalist's reports of the war in Iraq, he confronts Kim's quiet presence with the media clamour accompanying the current political situation in the world. Kim Sooja's media personality is radically different from the way the media operate. In her video performances she shows her body, but remains silent and conceals her face, turning away from the viewers. She seems to be protesting against the noise made by the media and against all acts directed against human beings, including accidental tragedies (such as the collapse of the supermarket in Seoul), expressing her opposition to the pain and suffering accumulated in the clothes.

• Kim Sooja consciously cultivates this attitude by a contemplative perception of the world and a rejection of excess information (e.g. deciding not to read books). She is a nomadic artist, constantly on the move, but she seems to stand firmly on the ground. In fact, her attitude may be interpreted, in a simplified way, as a practical exemplification of Heidegger's being-in-the-world, an existence cast into the world, but conscious of its "spatiality"; concerned, but not frightened; a being open to cognition and "the world's worldliness"; a being which accepts other "beings".

• Kim Sooja: "When I look back over my more than twenty years of handling bedcovers, I feel that I have always been performing, guided by the piles of cloth I haved live among. What in the world have I stitched and patched. What have I tied up in bundles. When will the journey of my needle end, my silkworm unwrap its flesh. Will it in the end slough off its skin. Will the boundless with no destinations find theirs ways to go."

• Looking at the twenty years of Kim Sooja's work we can see that they form a consistent process. After art studies in Seoul, until about 1992, Kim Sooja makes abstract collage using traditional Korean fabrics and clothes. She combines sewing as a technique with drawing and painting. In those pieces sewing becomes not only a direct way of creating form, but a constitutive element defining her work. The use of this unique technique, associated rather with gender art, women's art, is blends with the artist's personal experience, taken from her family home, of sewing the traditional bedspreads together with her mother and grandmother. She sews her first objects from inherited clothes and bedspreads.

• Kim Sooja's early collages come in different geometrical shapes, as flat reliefs, their surfaces made of bits of fabric sewn together, painted in ink or covered with abstract drawings — The Earth and the Heaven (1984), Blue (1987), Black (1987). In the 1990s they are gradually transformed into three-dimensional objects, assemblages, which, although they can be hung like paintings, have a richer texture, as they consist of larger pieces of cloth, creased, draped in a baroque fashion, fastened to the base. They form a crumpled, crammed, multicoloured mass, suggestive of an abstract flower (Toward the Flower, 1992), of earth, (Toward the Mother Earth, 1990-1991), of a portrait (Portrait, 1991), or carrying even more metaphorical meanings (Mind and the World, 1991). Some of them are objects leaning against the wall or propped up with bamboo sticks. As such, they already belong to the genre of installation — between the reality of a two-dimensional wall and space.

• At the same time, from about 1991 Kim Sooja starts creating spatial objects and installations, leaving the painting and more or less flat textile compositions almost entirely behind. Those new compositions feature ready-made objects, always covered, wrapped up, rolled up in cloth (among others, a ladder, part of a rowing boat, a table, some tools and many old-fashioned objects of everyday use, which the artist treats with nostalgia, as the most precious traces of life and also as beautiful forms.) A series of those objects is called Deductive Object; it was afterwards expanded to include spatial objects made solely of fabrics. Needles, cloth, threads, sewing, sewing together, wrapping, covering, unfolding and spreading define Kim Sooja's artistic activities.

• Kim Sooja, e-mail, April 2, 2003

• "Korean traditional wrapping cloth is 'Bojagi'( I prefer to use this way although people used to call it Pojagi - now Koreans try to match with the actual pronunciation of (Po)jagi and (Bo)ttari is same letter and pronunciation in Korea. Bojagi is traditionally used as wrapping cloth which was made out of small pieces of cloth sawn by anonymous women. But I used only used bedcovers which are made for the newly married couples.

• 'Bottari' is a wrapped bundle but normally people wrap households, cloth, clothes, books, gifts,...whatever, but my bundle is wrapped used clothes from anonymous people — I used yellow pages and white pages from New York in 1993 before I leave NYC as if wrapping people in New York."

• A turning point in Kim Sooja's work was her exhibition in P.S. 1 Studio in New York in 1992. There, beside earlier work, she presented bottari made of traditional Korean bedspreads, filled with clothes. She also exhibited pictures, assemblage and even a kind of "tableau" made of crumpled fabrics, stuck to a surface and partly extending beyond the frame, as if pulled out of the inside of the picture. It was through those objects that a symbolic disruption of frames was effected. A year later at the Ise Art Foundation in New York Kim Sooja shows only a massive bottari, provocative not only in its shape, but also through the intensive red of the rectangular piece of fabric.

• In the early 1990s Kim Sooja departs completely from the closed form of "tableau" with its limitations, and devotes herself to multi-directional exploration of space. The group exhibition "In Their Own Images" at the P.S.1 Museum in New York (1994) marks the starting point of Kim Sooja's new experiment with the "spatiality" and intimacy of a wall. Deductive Object — scraps of cloth filling cracks in a wall — is used by her at the 5th Biennial in Istanbul in 1997. While at the P.S.1 Museum colourful bits of fabrics protruded blithely beyond the wall, in Istanbul the blend discreetly with the old walls of the Hagia Eireni museum, becoming no more than patches of colour, hardly visible in the arcaded corridor. The association between those scraps stuck in the cracks of a wall with the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is rather obvious.

• Since the exhibitions at the P.S.1 Studio (1992) and the ISE Art Foundation (1993) Kim Sooja increasingly often exhibits bottari entitled Deductive Object, arranging them in different ways: a solitary bottari in a gallery (Museum Fridericianum, Kasel, 1998), one combined with bedcovers spread on the floor (Akira Ikeda Gallery, Nagoya, 1996 and the 5th Biennial in Lyon, 2000); crammed (Kwanhoon Gallery, Seoul, 1994), or against the background of a landscape, where they evoke their basic function: a practical means of transporting the most necessary things or one's all belongings, thus becoming a symbol of nomadism (Yongyou, Korea, 1995), and finally in combination with a video installation at the Seomi Gallery in Seoul (1994), consisting of bottari, monitors and scattered clothes. It was that installation, entitled Sewing into Walking, that anticipated the one dedicated to the victims of the Kwangju Massacre.

• Apart form bottari, the most important thing are the traditional Korean bedspreads — to the artist, symbols of woman, of sex, love, the body at rest, sleep, privacy, fertility, longevity and health. They can also be interpreted as a special kind of traces of life. They are used fabrics — extraordinary witnesses of life, birth and death. At the artist's second individual exhibition at the Hyunday Gallery (1991) a single one of those is hung, together with old, sentimental objects. Then we encounter a whole mass of them, forming a patch of colourful fabrics. Long before, Sooja ties them into bottari, spreads them on the grass with deliberately slow gestures (performance Sewing into Walking, 1994). In recent years, they most often appear in installations such as A Laundry Woman, a simple presentation of a number of cloths hung out in the gallery to resemble drying linen. Is that not a metaphor for the roles of woman in Korean society, and women's roles in general? All the time Kim Sooja imitates women's activities in spare, minimalist gestures: she spreads, ties, folds, hangs out.

• In November 1997 Kim Sooja takes an 11-day performance-trip around Korea in a truck. The 33-minute video from that trip is a record of the views of the truck with its load of colourful bottari. Possibly, Kim Sooja is making a journey into the past, going back to the journeys which her family was obliged to embark on following her father, an Army man working in the demilitarized zone. At the same time it is a metaphor for her current life — the life of a nomad artist, crossing ever new borders in order to meet new people. That aspect of nomadism, shown in Kim Sooja's performances, in installations using the symbolic bottari and in videos, is one of the key points of her art. Such nomadism takes place in open spaces and needs them to come into being, although it is confronted with the horizontal plan of the world and the limitations imposed by the organization of space by the "state".

• Kim Sooja's videos are a record of performances happening in various cities and places around the world. Kim appears in them with her back to the camera. She is the woman who stands among passers-by or lies on a rock in Kitakyushu (A Needle Woman); the woman who sits on the pavement and begs in Cairo and Mexico (A Beggar Woman); the woman lying in the street in Delhi and Cairo (A Homeless Woman) and standing by the river in Delhi (A Laundry Woman).

• As a figure against the background of the filmed spaces and people she is clearly distinct from their rhythm, their movement, their image. That is an effect of the medium of communication — video, which produces a flat and illusion-like picture. It is also due to the artist taking on the role of the "other" or even "stranger", and the position of the motionless figure — in the foreground — further prevents her from integrating with the surroundings. There is no sound from the crowded streets and the landscapes in which we see Kim Sooja; she reduces the reception to pure vision. We do not know who's filming her; if it were not for the artist's figure in the centre of the picture, it could be perceived as the record of an anonymous security camera, continuously controlling the streets, filming live with no scenario. All the passers-by, inhabitants of great cities, are filmed and become unwitting actors.

• In the video A Needle Woman (1999-2001) the artist stands in crowded streets. Her complete immobility contrasts with the movement and noise of the metropolis, but the noise we can only guess at. The camera films the masses of bodies making their way along the streets of London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Lagos, New York, Cairo, Mexico City, Delhi. In Tokyo, the crowd does not get thinner even during the sultry summer. It moves smoothly, pattering and shuffling in a characteristic Japanese way. In the evenings, what sounds like one huge conversation hovers over the city, intermingled with street sounds.

• In Kim Sooja's video, however, we will not hear Tokyo. In this, as in other films, instead of the sounds and the artist's face, we are shown her body and the face of the anonymous crowd. Thousands of people walk towards her, enter the frame and disappear after a moment. The video takes on the role of a sociologist's record — it shows the reactions of the crowd in confrontation with "another". In London, New York and Mexico City that crowd passes Kim Sooja ignoring her almost entirely. Similarly in Tokyo — here the indifference is greatest (no wonder many street performances were held here, for example by the group HiRed Center, to "activate" the street and the crowd). In Shanghai, Delhi and Cairo the crowd shows more interest; sometimes somebody turns, or stops for a while to stare. It is in Lagos that Kim Sooja arouses the greatest curiosity. Freeze frames from the video show not a crowd, but individual faces, feelings, reactions. In Tokyo, a smiling Japanese woman's face appearing for a moment is the only instance of emotion in the anonymous crowd. In Cairo the camera registers little events: somebody meets somebody, there is a warm greeting etc. Those are the most fascinating observations that Kim Sooja presents us with. On the other hand, it is well known what hostility and aggression a "crowd" can show: against itself as a whole, but also against the individuals that constitute it. Those video records and the artist's attitude express a sort of protest and something that stems from her affirmation of the world and total "being-in-the-world". There is also something innocent and naïve about them, and certainly something brave. Kim Sooja may not pose the question, but it would be difficult not to ask ourselves: why do stranger bodies incite so much hatred in us?

• In A Beggar Woman Sooja begs on the streets of Lagos, Cairo, Mexico. In Cairo, two issues coincide: the problem of gender and of cultural differences. Kim — a woman, an "other" is surrounded solely by men, younger and older; a crowd of them encircle her body so that at times the motionless figure is no longer visible. In A Homeless Woman, shot in Delhi and Cairo, it is in Cairo that the homeless woman excites greatest interests. A group of men can not restrain their curiosity: they talk, they stare, even directly into the camera.

• Kim Sooja makes her presence in the world noticeable through the continuity of repeated situations and shots of her own unchanging image: a figure standing among people or against a natural background. People bring in their own physicality and materiality into her works, and so does nature. It is a manifestation of various ways of being in the world. In that way Kim Sooja points to the basic problems of existence: that we are always alone, but also, that we always have the world and people around us.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  In your work you have been using very consistently two media: fabrics and video. The most immediate connection one makes comes out from the title of one of your video works: the series Needle woman. Who is the needle woman? Is she a metaphor? Does she represents a condition of humanity, as the title of your show in Lyon would suggest? And what is the relationship between the needle woman and the fabrics use have been using?

• Kimsooja
  The fabrics I've been using for my sewn work, Object, and installation were used Korean traditional costumes, bedcovers and used clothes which I found from anonymous people. These fabrics represent presence of body whose smell, memory and time is still there. On the other hand, a series of my video pieces represent and wrap the actual human body in immaterial way, while the fabric installations are materialistic way of representing and wrapping human body — yet it represents the invisible body.

• In my recent video performance A Needle Woman (1999-2001), my body stands as a medium between the viewers of the video and the people in the street where my performance is taking place, as if it functions as a barometer while weaving/woven (by) different nation, races, culture, society and economy by standing still in the middle of the busy streets in 8 different metropolitans in the world.

• Apart from A Needle Woman video, I've been also examining the conditions of human being by putting myself in one of the lowest state of human being as A Homeless Woman, A Beggar Woman, A Laundry Woman and as a refugee by making Bottari installations — refugee as a persona, as a woman, and as a collective group of people in a broad sense of refugee in existential, social, cultural, and political context.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  The needle woman might take different positions, like in Needle Woman - Kitayashu, in which she lies on a rock facing the sky perfectly still. Or she might take different names, like in Laundry Woman, where, in the same position, she faces the Yamuna river in Delhi...

• Kimsooja
  As I mentioned earlier, the Needle Woman signifies a medium which connects different parts of the fabrics of society, culture and landscape — in that sense, A Needle Woman - Kitakyshu divides and links four different element of the world which are the earth and the sky, the human side and that of the nature. As long as my body functions as a mediator, A Laundry Woman is not different from the other performances although the position is different depending on the structure of the landscape and cityscapes. But I could say my work has also a parallel relationship to the structure of the painting in formalistic reading.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  In these works you stand perfectly still, in crowded cities in different parts of the world, or in the landscape. Watching them one cannot but think about how you managed to reach such an immobility and concentration. And also they made me think about the goal of so many meditation practices: the ability to live the present moment to its ultimate intensity, or the notion of impermanence. However you said that zen theory has not been important in your work...

• Kimsooja
  Immobility comes out of mobility. I could reach to the immobility only by practicing mobility in my life. I was always thinking every moment is a meditation and the moment when a perception and an artistic decision comes up to my mind was Zen, but I'd never practiced Zen meditation.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  In all of your video installations the viewer is faced with your back, so that he shares your point of view. In Needle Woman the viewer is immersed in a 8 channels installation in which he witnesses you standing still in the middle of the most crowded streets of the world. Do you imagine the viewers standing on your back when you do your video performances? What kind of visual and emotional experience you project on your viewers?

• Kimsooja
  It would have been very interesting if someone on the street stood right behind me posing exactly the same way I do. I would say the person who is standing behind me is the camera which is eyes of myself. This idea can be compared to my video I made in a crowed street in Istanbul in 1997 which takes people coming and going in Istiklal street by setting a fixed frame for an hour wrapping people into the camera lens which can be juxtaposed to my body.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  Time, it seems to me, is a crucial element in your work. Not only because of the duration of the videos but also because in all of them you watch transient elements: people in the streets, clouds in the sky or flowers in the river. Time and past experiences seem to be crucial also in your work with fabrics in which you use tissues which have been used already and carry with them the sign of past experiences.

• Kimsooja
  The idea of impermanency of existences gives me a deep compassion for human being and has been embedded in my work since the beginning of my sewing practice till now — the fabrics I first sewn together were the remained fragments from my grandmother's clothes when she passed away — memorizing her presence. I've been living such mobile life from my childhood wrapping and unwrapping household and luggage and the strong memory I have from my childhood were the huge mountain in front which I was looking in the dark from our house yard and the passing by landscapes I used to see on our way to somewhere else from a bus or a train. Leaving people behind us from where I live and meeting new people in a strange city was part of my family life.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  You have been using the fabrics in a variety of contexts and often in public places, like in a old post office in Trieste (am I right?) and in the open air cafè in Central Park New York. You also took them, as Bottari, to different parts of the world in a work eventually dedicated to the Kosovo refugees. What is the relation, if there is, between private memory and public place, function and aesthetics?

• Kimsooja
  Presenting private materials in public spaces sometimes provokes intimate questions such as table cloths and laundry installation I made with newly married couple's bedcover cloth from Korea. Eating in the bed, or Wrapping bundle/Bottari ( especially when it's refered to a woman) are Taboo in Korea. I am questioning this site of birth, sleep, love, suffer, and death considering as our frame of life and its reality in sexuality, morality, conflicts in humanity as well as its impermanency. On the contrary, the color and embroideries of those fabrics are brilliant and beautiful, while showing contradiction in reality of life which is not always same as these symbols signify and the esthetic structures I present in situ.

• Flaminia Generi Santori
  Lately you have been working with lights and sound, like in Charleston or like in a lighted mandala you showed in Lyon. Is this a new direction in your work?

• Kimsooja
  A permanent question and desire I have has a lot to do with possession and its void in Yin and Yang relationship in our world. The whole process of my work has to do with process of void in life and art and its extinguishment at the end.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Let's talk about how sewing has been a contemplative practice for you and a way of connecting your body to a greater whole?

• Kimsooja
  One day in 1983, I was sewing a bedcover with my mother and then at the very moment when I passed the needle through the fabric's surface, I had a sensation like an electric shock, the energy of my body channeled through the needle, seeming to connect to the energy of the world. From that moment, I understood the power of sewing: the relationship of needle to fabric is like my body to the universe, and the fundamental relationship of things and structure were in it. From this experience, for about ten years, I worked with cloth and clothes, sewing and wrapping them, processes shared with contemplation and healing. By 1992, I started making bundles or bottari in Korean — I always used old clothes and traditional Korean bedcovers — that retain the smells of other's lives, memories, and histories, though their bodies are no longer there — embracing and protecting people, celebrating their lives and creating a network of existences.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Korea was not a very visible part of the contemporary art world. You yourself came to the U.S. in 1992 on a residency at P.S. 1 in New York. Then Korea joined the ranks of international biennale presenters in the southwestern city of Kwangju, a place where Korean and American identity is sadly linked.

• [In May 1980 students and other demonstrators against martial law were killed by government forces with brutal force, the death toll mounting to 2000, though officials claim only 191. The U.S. was implicated in support of President Chun who seized power in a military junta and a wave of botched diplomatic that followed.]

• Kimsooja
  This is the site of a national tragedy. It is marked by anniversary reenactments each year. With my work for the first biennale there, Sewing into Walking: Dedicated to the Victims of Kwangju, I placed 2.5 tons of clothes in bundles on a mountainside at the Biennale site. It was the image of the sacrificed bodies. People could walk on them, listening to the "Imagine" song by John Lennon which, through the audiences' bodies, evoked the confrontation of stepping on bodies and guilty conscience, as well as memorializing the victims' lives. Over the two months of the show, the seasons changed and the clothes became mixed with the soil, rain, and fallen leaves, becoming like dead bodies: this was the installation scene I wished to create for the viewers. The audience — the Korean people — opened the bundles and removed nearly one ton of clothes; they hung some onto the trees and took others away with them.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Have your works, as a means of healing and connecting, been autobiographical?

• Kimsooja
  When I went back to Korea in 1993, after spending time in the U.S. and having a different perspective on my own culture and gender roles in Korean life, I re-confronted the society as a woman and a woman artist. I started realizing my own personal history in bottari projects, using them more as real bottari than for an aesthetic context. My first video performance piece, Sewing into Walking-kyung ju (1994), resulted from an installation; in its documentation I recognized that my own body was a sewing tool, a needle that invisibly wraps, weaves, and sews different fabrics and people together in nature. For my next video performance, Cities on the Move — 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck in 1997, I made an eleven-day journey throughout Korea atop a truck loaded with bottaris, visiting cities and villages where I used to live and have memories. Because the bottari truck is constantly moving around and through this geography, viewers question the location of my body: my body — which is just another bottari on the move — is in the present, is tracing the past and, at the same time, is heading for the future, non-stop movement by sitting still on the truck. And though I used myself in this work, I tried to locate a more universal point where time and space coincide.

• I realize now that Cities on the Move — 2727 Kilometers Bottari Truck emerged from the history of my family that moved from one place to another almost every two years, mostly near the DMZ area, because of my father's job in the military. We were wrapping and unwrapping bundles all the time; we were endlessly in a new environment, leaving people whom we loved behind and meeting new neighbors, as we passed from one city to another, one village to another. We were, in fact, nomads, and I am continuing the nomadic life as an artist, a condition which has become one of the main issues in contemporary art and society. Yet I am also aware that migration is just an extension of nature and we are literally in a state of migration at every moment.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  It seems like sites — out in the world — have become your studio for making art?

• Kimsooja
  Usually, I don't like to make or create anything in nature because I am really afraid of damaging it. Instead, I decided to use existing elements which can be related to my idea of location/dislocation and its gravity and energy towards the future. In 1997 I did another work in the series, Sewing into Walking-Istiklal Cadessi, a video shoot in Istanbul. I experimented with documenting peoples' coming and going through the fixed frame of the lens; it was an invisible way of sewing and wrapping people. Then, with A Needle Woman project (1999-2001), I inserted myself in the middle of the busy street and looked towards the people of eight different metropolises in the world: Tokyo, Shanghai, Berlin, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Lagos, and London. I considered my body to be a needle that weaves different people, societies, and cultures together by just standing still. Inverting the notion of performing and remaining fixed within the crowd, my body functioned like a barometer, showing more by doing nothing. The needle is an evident yet ambiguous tool, androgynous, maintaining contradiction within it. The needle functions only as a medium; it never remains at the site and disappears at the end. It just leaves traces, connecting or healing things.

• Each performance lasted 25-30 minutes, during which I just stared straight ahead. I eventually cut each tape to an unedited section 6-minutes and 30-second in length. In the beginning I had a difficulty resisting all the energies from people coming at me. By the middle of the performance I was centered and focused, and could become liberated from them. In the beginning my body was very, very intense, but in the end I was just smiling, liberated from all attention. I could see the light coming from the back, far from the front, over these waves of people. I was in complete enlightenment.

• I didn't know where the smile came from but I was just smiling. Maybe it was the moment when I was freed from my self-consciousness and engaged with the whole picture of the world and people as oneness and totality beyond this stream or ocean of people in the street. I think enlightenment can be gained by seeing reality as it is, as a whole which is a harmonious state within contradiction that requires no more intentional adjustment or healing.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Your personal posture as well as the overall stance of your art, seems to aim to profoundly communicate experience. So while we do not have your experience as it was in the real time of making the video, it is still more than our experience of an artwork; you become this portal through which we pass to have our own experience in real time. At the same time you are a conduit for others' experience, the needle through which they pass, the empathetic locus. And like Buddhism, these works are about relationality, not just of human beings but among all beings and with nature.

• Kimsooja
  I did another performance called A Needle Woman at Kitakishu in Japan, laying down my body on a limestone mountain, the front of my body away from the viewer. Nothing changes in this video except the natural light from the sky and a little bit of breeze, and at the end there is one fly that is just passing by against the slow movement of the clouds. Of course, I had to control my breath, so my shoulders wouldn't move; I taught myself how to breathe with my stomach. I was there a pretty long time. The rock was a little bit cold, but it was just so peaceful. I was completely abandoning my will and desire to nature and I was at such a peace. There is one face of nature that caresses the human being in the most harmless way. So we feel at absolute peace in this mild nature. Of course, when it becomes harmful, nothing can compete with its absolute damage.

• In a way this work looks a little bit like the reclining Buddha, parinirvana; but, abandoning my ego, at the same time, in a different way, I consider it as a form of crucifix. My body is located at the central point of four different elements which are in-between the sky and the earth, nature and human beings. I located myself on the borderline of the earth and the sky, facing nature and away from the viewers. In the beginning of the video I think my body looks fragile and dramatic, feminine and provocative: an organic body or a body of desire. Over time, I find that my body, with its duration of stillness — breathing in the rhythm of nature — becomes a part of nature as matter itself, neutral, a transcendent state. To me it is like offering and serving my body to nature.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Has performance become an actual practice of meditation for you, focusing and centering, to attain something for you, perhaps enlightenment, as well as give an experience to the viewer?

• Kimsooja
  For me, the most important thing (to arise out of) these performances is my own experience of self, and awakenness, rather than the video as an artwork. That's how I continue to ask deeper questions to the world and to myself. That is the enlightenment I encounter while doing this kind of performance. One such experience occurred with A Laundry Woman — Yamuna River, India (2000) I was just looking at some different locations for a performance, but when I passed by this riverside, I immediately felt the energy and decided, “Let's do it.” Again I put my back to the viewer and looked to the river. It was right next to the cremation place on the Yamuna, so the floating images on the surface of the river were all flowers and debris from cremations. While I was facing the river, I was actually looking at anonymous people's life and death, including mine. It was a purifying experience, praying and celebrating. There's a lot of detail on the surface of the river, so I consider this piece as a painting. It's all reflection: there is no sky, but it looks like sky; there are no real birds passing, only reflections of birds from above. So, in a way, the river functions as a mirror of reality.

• I decided to be there until the limit of my body. I was there for almost an hour in total. In the middle of standing there, I was completely confused: is it the river that is moving, or myself? My sense of time and space were turned completely upside-down. I was asking and asking and asking again, is it the river or myself? I finally realized that it is river that is changing all the time in front of this still body, but it is my body that will be changed and vanish very soon, while the river will remain there, moving slowly, as it is now. In other words, the changing of our body into a state of death is like floating on the big stream of river of the universe. Doing this performance gave me an important awakenness. It suddenly reminded me of one unforgettable dream that I had in my early twenties. I was looking down at Han River from a hillside in Seoul. After looking at the surface of the river for some time, my vision was fixed on the river and the movement of water inside it, showing me the bottom of the river with sand and round stones. Then I started seeing the dancing and spinning stones touch and hit together, mashing and breaking them into pebbles and dust, which eventually will become part of the river itself: "Stone is Water, Water is Stone!" I screamed in the dream and woke up being shocked by this awakenness as if my brain was hit by a strong metal bell.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Your awareness of the impermanence of all things and embodiment of compassion--which is key to the teachings of Buddha--have brought your earlier expressions of healing to another level. I now recognize that this was at the root of our work together for the Spoleto Festival USA in 2002: Planted Names--four unique carpets at the 1742 Drayton Hall, bearing the names of enslaved Africans and African-Americans who built and cultivated this Palladian plantation--and A Lighthouse Woman in which you used the Morris Island Lighthouse.

• Kimsooja
  When I was filming A Needle Woman in Lagos, I happened to visit to an island offshore from which slaves were put on ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Standing there, looking out, I could feel the enormous pain of those who departed. The horizontal line of the ocean looked like the saddest line I had ever seen in my life. Then when I visited Drayton Hall and learned about the history of African-American slaves from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I immediately saw this plantation site as a vast carpet where enslaved bodies were embedded. There are so many sad stories behind these colonial places. Carpets are not about the beauty of an artist's design, but about the labor of the carpet maker, so I chose carpets as the form to celebrate their labor and time.

• In the companion work, I considered this lighthouse on Morris Island as a witness of water, witnessing all the histories and memories standing still there. When I first visited it, I was so impressed by this lighthouse's loneliness. I related its loneliness to a woman's body and to women who wait for their sons, lovers, brothers and fathers to come home from the sea, who stand by the sea, waiting for them. I programmed a one-hour sequence of nine saturated colors that illuminated the whole tower, spilling onto and reflecting in the surrounding water, changing its rhythm as if it was breathing with the same rhythm of the ocean tides — in and out, inhale and exhale. It wasn't captured in video this time: it was important to experience in the site with the sound of the waves, and the air, and the real sequence of the rhythm of change. I miss the lighthouse.

• Mary Jane Jacob
  Yvonne Rand has spoken about how we can develop our capacity to be with suffering, as it arises, by developing our ability to be in attention. A way to develop this capacity is to continually, over and over, come back to the posture of the body that goes with being in attention. This arrangement of the body entails having the three energy centers in the torso in alignment: the head energy center for perception, the heart energy center for emotions, and the energy center in the belly, the hara, for spiritual strength and stability. When these three energy centers (located in the center of the body just in front of the spine) are lined up, then one is in the posture of attention or presence. This centered posture, in combination with a breath, allows one to be present. When I am fully present, in the moment, I can then be in the field of energy that I stand in with others. Here, in this field, I can more easily put myself in another's shoes, imagine their point of view--not in the "either/or" way of thinking but "both/and": I can hold both what is true in my experience and what is so for the other person. This is what it means to be present and, out of that, to have the skillfulness to develop the capacity to experience another person's suffering. So, Yvonne recognized that you had developed your capacity to become present in your breath with your own suffering as it arose and fell, and simultaneously experiencing the suffering of others, not as separate from yourself but as one: as you stood at the shore of the Yamuna River, on that coast of the island off Lagos, and in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

• On March 24, 2003 the police in New York arrested a hundred and forty participants of an anti-war demonstration, who had lain down in Fifth Avenue, blocking traffic and bringing the city to a standstill.

• The demonstrators lay motionless on their backs; some were holding photographs of civilian war casualties in Iraq. Police officers lifted them off the ground and carried them into cars, slowly making their way along the body-strewn street. That "die-in" demonstration was one of hundreds of bigger and smaller manifestations of civil disobedience which swept over cities in all parts of the world in response to the war waged under American leadership in Iraq.

• An act of civil disobedience consists in an ostentatious and consistent breach of the existing law. The disturbance is deliberate and limited in scope. Such an act of disobedience may be compared to a well-posed question. When it is one carefully chosen element of the system that becomes the object of criticism, the act is expressive and effective in exposing a false, albeit legally sanctioned, state of affairs.

• A special form of civil disobedience are demonstrations in which a group of people temporarily occupies a section of public space to which they have no right at that moment. This includes such forms of protest as "sit-in", popularized by the American movement against racial segregation in the 1960s (the iconic sit-in by four black citizens, known as the "Greensboro Four", started at the counter of a white-only bar in Woolworth's department store on the first of February 1960) and then adopted by the student revolt of 1968, or "be-in", demonstration through being together (creatively) in a certain area - from mass gatherings of hippies (the most famous one took place in the Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, on the 14 of January 1967) to the occupation of premises, which is also a form of pressure through occupying space the right to which is disputed. Occupying a place in defiance of the norms regulating its use is an expression of the wish to be able to decide maters important to that place and to the people in it. New York's "die-in" dramatizes the risk of participants being run over by cars, but its main point is made through the clash between the concrete image of demonstrators lying in a street symbolizing ultimate material wealth and the vision of a heap of bodies - the clich image of how war affects civilians in a poor country. The renunciation of violence expressed in the form of a theatrical death on an improvised stage acquires the force of an ultimatum.

• Quiet and persevering like stones which no one throws, Kim Sooja's works inevitably resonate with various forms of symbolic behaviour through which active members of civil society respond to the definitions of war put forward in media commentaries, using military metaphors of movement, and to the summary interpretations which politicians direct through the same media - always downwards, like bombs, leaflets and food supplies. One of the most suggestive images revealing this one-way movement - from the top down - is the agency photo of a truck, from which charity workers are throwing food parcels directly into the outstretched hands of hungry people. At the very top, on the roof of the truck, a group of reporters are standing, pointing their cameras down. It is easy to imagine what this scene, filmed from the roof of the truck, would look like on a TV screen: it would be us, the kindly viewers, who would be handing out food through other's hands to the people in need.

• Kim Sooja stages her presence as a gap: motionless "being-in", which is gradually removed from the onlooker's field of vision, becoming something as known and obvious as the place itself. Being in a place becomes the place. Like the surface of water closes over a stone, like the eye fills in a blind spot for us. By remaining in a place, being gains a right to it, not through some special title located outside the place, in the space of ideology and codified law, but because it becomes a place, for some time a certain place in uncertain times and in places of uncertainty, in cities on the move. Sewing and travelling across (borders), begging in (the streets), lying on (a rock) and under (the sky), sitting under (a tree), standing in front of (a marching crowd). Sewing the top to the bottom, sewing with oneself, with a disappearing stitch, a blind stitch.

• A typical TV report from the front lines: after many hardships a journalist managed to get there; his tired, happy face confirms the truth of his account. Wearing a helmet and a bullet-proof vest, the reporter grips a microphone. Although he's often dressed in camouflage, he is unarmed and that's why we should trust him. The reporter looks us in the eye and speaks to us. Behind him there is action, or just an epilogue or prologue to action. The movement of vehicles, of soldiers, of civilians, burnt-out ruins, wrecked equipment, a captured bridge, some children. The caption on the screen removes all doubt as to the place: a specific geographical name combined with a concrete person who is there and is talking to us now. There can be no more doubt: this is presence and we are experiencing it.

• In a series of films shot in different cities around the world Kim Sooja does not show her face. A static camera films a motionless, standing figure from behind. The black vertical shape in the centre of the screen partially blocks the view. On the edges of the screen a crowd throngs; we see it fragmentarily, between the edge of the frame and the dark figure in the middle, on which it is hard to focus. Our view of the scene taking place here is as if "delegated" to that person, about whom we don't know much, not being able to see her face. We don't even know if her eyes are open, if she is looking. She's just a stubborn presence, a gap in our field of vision, standing between us and the image we want to see in its entirety. It's someone who is standing in front of us and whom we want to push aside to be able to see more. Kim Sooja leaves us with this sense of partial knowledge, which will not be made complete.

• Her works make one think of the analogies between ways of working with human presence in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s and various forms of demonstrating civil disobedience through a political staging of human presence with reference to a given context.

• In 1970 Adrian Piper decided to "become the object of art" and to stop making objects. In a series of performances realized in various public places (street, bar, bus stop etc.) the artist used herself as a "persona" slightly disrupting the usual order of things and testing the reactions of onlookers to the appearance of the Other. In Catalysis III (1970) she entered a department store wearing clothes covered in white paint, with the sign WET PAINT. The situations arranged by Adrian Piper were direct interventions by the black artist in the falsified sphere of aesthetics and custom, which conceal violence.

• Kim Sooja also confronts the possibility of violence and responds to it with her directed personality. In Beggar Woman (Lagos, Nigeria) Kim Sooja sits in the street with her hand outstretched, in a beggar's pose. At the beginning the hand is empty; then someone puts some coins into it; the hand does not close, so somebody else steals them. In this microsituation, apart from economic motivations, issues of trust and responsibility emerge. The beggar's hand becomes a place of transit, an intermediate point/spot in the transit of money. It accepts and offers a gift. The beggar creates a certain community. Abstaining from the usual begging activity - the game of persuasion and resistance - she establishes a network of relations, sets a whole business operation in motion around herself. Kim Sooja's work is also reminiscent of the Real Money Piece (1969) be Lee Lozano, who started with 585 dollars in a jar. The people she met could either take out or add money to the jar; the circumstances, names and sums were recorded. An economic circulation was created, undermining the economy from inside.

• If we define art stemming from a minimalist syndrome of progressive self-questioning of the object and focusing on the conditions of its presentation as, using Dennis Oppenheim's words, "displacement of sensory pressures from object to place", Kim Sooja's works certainly initiate a move of attention from object to place. Kim Sooja attracts our attention only to transfer it entirely to the place where she is.

Action 1: "A One-Word Name Is An Anarchist's Name."

Identity of the one word name

• New York, July 14, 2003

• When I decided to open a website using my name — which I hesitated to do for years because of its commercial aspect — I was hoping for an ideal society and relationship among people in the art world in which we could share real opinions with honesty, sincerity, dignity and love of art and life. I hope that my website project will not just introduce my activities but can bring more articulated discussions and criticism on art and the world.

• I am careful to open this site, as mass media is one of the most influential media and another form of power which often leads this (art)world unfairly and untruthfully. But this is also what I wanted to work out and to bring out the true face of it — by opening another critical mass media to balance the public opinions. Think how much internet information and how many discussions are going on in this world — it is excessive. But I find most of them nothing but consuming information which have no content or true concern about art and the world.

• I feel a responsibility now to put my endeavor to the (art)world in a modest way, even with one single person in this whole world to share and to support the real concerns — which I've been thinking for sometime, experiencing how the opinion of the society can be twisted by leading the public with wrong information or by not giving information, or by manipulating the reality mainly using mass media — partly because they are ignorant, partly because they are insecure, and are serving themselves for money and power. I wish to see the real art and meet real spirit, and to create something real with real people, and share it with every single person one to one, mostly discovering the ideas that have not been revealed or appreciated enough in this world.

• One night, I suddenly discovered an important aspect in naming the website domain which keeps mostly one-word name — and it drove me to make up my decision to open a website for the public which I've been hesitating to do for years — like others, <www.kimsooja.com>. I was struck by the fact that it shows no reference of the name which has two or three words put together, with the first name and the family name, sometimes with a middle name.

• A one word name refuses gender identity, marital status, socio-political or cultural and geographical identity by not separating the family name and the first name. Action One: "A One-Word Name Is An Anarchist's Name" is my first statement for opening my website project.

• You are invited to my station to share any concern or critical ideas and I will communicate with you one to one, posing questions, inviting significant artists, writers and thinkers, as well as curators in the near future.

• Thanks very much for your concern and support for this project.

• Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or ideas to share.

• I look forward to communicating with you soon.

• Sincerely,

• Kimsooja

• From February 23 to May 18, 2002, the Peter Blum Gallery of New York presents the exhibition A Mirror Woman by the Korean artist Kimsooja. At the same time, her work can be seen as part of the Whitney Biennial (which this year has overflowed the physical limits of the Marcel Breuer building, taking over part of the public space of Central Park). The work of Kimsooja in the Biennial is titled Deductive Object, and is in the Leaping Frog Cafe in the Central Park Zoo.

• The notion of nomadism has been privileged in the discussion and practice of the visual arts in the last decade, coinciding with the phenomenon of globalization and the effects that this has had on the circulation of goods and ideas — as much in economic as cultural terms — and the "mutual contamination" that this traffic implies. Kimsooja, a Korean artist living in New York, is one of those artists who exemplify in a complex way the paradoxes of globalization. While she works with deeply local materials and references, her work has been inserted comfortably into the international scene, holding a position of resistance against being digested into an aseptic internationalism but taking care, in these days of multiculturalism, to hyperbolize the characteristics of its difference to become more "exotic" in a medium eager for otherness.

• Kimsooja is not a new face in New York. A year ago, P.S.1. (the "alternative" space par excellence of the 90s, nowadays associated to MoMA) presented an individual exhibition of her work, which had been shown already in that same space shortly before, within the framework of the very publicized Cities on the Move. Perhaps the work that has given her the greatest international visibility is her series of videos titled A Needle Woman, initiated in 1999. The artist traveled to eight cities in several continents, among them some of the most populated cities of the world: Cairo, New Delhi, Lagos, London, Mexico City, New York, Shangai and Tokyo. Generally, they are presented / displayed as large-format projections, in whose image is seen the artist from the back in a crowded city street.

• The passers-by look in the direction of the camera — which they encounter from a considerable distance — and this depth of field has the effect of "leveling" the image on which figure and background are based and is difficult to calculate the proximity between the artist and the locals that encounter her. The artist is immovable in a meditative attitude, totally passive to the reaction of the people. This passivity generates a tension: at any moment we are hoping that she is interrupted, bothered, or even attacked. One of the immediate readings provoked by this work is one of the uncomfortable relation of the individual with society, a personal act of meditation facing the collective interaction in a public space. The artist opposes the slowness of individual, metaphysical time, at the speed of the collective time, whose rate is marked by conventions. A Needle Woman is, in the words of Paulo Herkenhoff, "the cartography of a 'displaced being.'" The needle, the artist reminds us, is an ambiguous image, as much masculine as feminine: "it can inflict a wound and at the same time be used to heal it." When facing the human river in the streets of these great cities, Kimsooja is penetrating the social weave and is simultaneously being permeated by its particularities. This tension is clearly perceivable in the videos, in which there is always a latent sensation of violence — implicit in the confrontation between individual and society, foreigner and locals, the woman and a phallocentric society; the confrontation is literalized by the formal disposition of the performance.

• The status of a foreigner in another country and the condition of the urban immigrant is also invoked here. The tension between the urban landscape, full of color and vitality, and the immovable image of the artist, always dressed in the same grey tunic (which recalls the clothes of indigents and the poor, unavoidable presences in all contemporary metropolises) adds a political reading to this confrontation between individual and society. It is worth noting that the use of an indefinite article to title the work, "A" Needle Woman instead of "The" Needle Woman, testifies to the will of Kimsooja to allude more to the human condition than to a particular history, presenting / displaying "the lost soul to us of globalized modernity," as the critic Ken Jonson wrote in the New York Times.

• The work of Kimsooja is in the tradition of the performance, though the body remains immovable here. But it is also in the tradition of the landscape and, why not, of the urban documentary. These videos are pictures of the local life in each one of the selected contexts: the chaotic architecture in which tradition and modernity mix in cities like Delhi and Shangai; the human rivers in New York or Tokyo. Each video incorporates abundant sociological information on the "local color": clothes, means of transport, forms to be related in the public space. In New York and London people ignore each other (and the artist) but simultaneously speak on cellular phones, establishing an alternative relational plot in which the notion of the street as the space of social interaction par excellence is challenged by the technological and social reality of the great contemporary large cities.

• The images of the eight cities vary significantly, in their color, texture and, as was already said, in the attitude of the passers-by with respect to the artist, confirming that in the base of national stereotypes much truth exists: in London and New York, cultures in where individuality is an appraised good, people pass to the side without becoming jumbled, minding their own business, doing something that is not there. In the cities of Asia a similar attitude is perceived, although the furtive glances attest more to a timid nature than of an affirmation of individuality. And readings could be made still more particular: as the critic Gregory Volk writes, in Tokyo the artist could just as well not be there, because the people ignore her completely, "before which it is inevitable to think about how the Korean minority in Japan has long suffered from cultural invisibility and discrimination." In Sao Paolo or Mexico City, people were more direct in satisfying the curiosity generated by this unusual urban presence (an Asian woman completely immovable in a sidewalk is without a doubt an unexpected appearance), whereas in Lagos, the performance caused a true collapse in the circulation of this large African city, when a group of boys crowded itself around the artist to watch her, to ask her questions and to try to obtain some type of reaction. And so on in each case.

• From 1994 the artist has used multicolored fabrics presented/displayed in several ways: spread on the ground, folded in piles, hung on lines as if they were being dried in the sun or in bunches (called Bottaris), which have become one of her more characteristic visual resources. In their different uses, these colorful fabrics have a great evocative capacity; they recall the clothes hung in the patios, or put out to dry on the banks of rivers in the rural areas of many countries — no only in the Third World. The bunches have more complex readings; it is inevitable to think of displaced urbanites with their properties in the hills, or of associations even more macabre, because many of them are the size to wrap a human body. The fabric in this case is a delicate limit between interior and outside, spirit and materiality, the individual and the world that surrounds it. The Bottaris are made from fabrics traditionally used in Korea to surround domestic objects like clothes or books. These bulks symbolize the historical displacement of the Korean population, but they touch upon a global preoccupation, the phenomenon of internal migrants and the immigrants, displaced from their places of origin for diverse reasons — religious, political, economic — one of the subjects of greatest importance in the postindustrial societies. The Bottaris are the house in the absence of the house, indices of a left or lost place, that guarantee a connection with history.

• A Mirror Woman, the installation in the Peter Blum Gallery, consists of a kind of multicolor labyrinth formed by the fabrics that hang from cables like the ones used to dry clothes, that cross - extended across the rectangular space of the gallery. In the two sidewalls the artist has placed mirrors that cover the entire surface of the walls, with which one has the sensation to be immersed in an infinite space. For Kim, the mirror is "another way to surround the world". These textiles are associated with the condition of the woman in Korean society, and to domestic rites like sewing and embroidering bedcovers as marriage gifts. Kimsooja has described how she arrived at this material: "I was sewing bedcovers for my mother and after a while I had a strange sensation in which my thoughts, my feelings and my actions seemed to get to be on [with the fabric and the act of sewing it]." These fabrics are all the same form and size (a regular square), but vary significantly in their color, texture and composition, because they are made in many cases from pieces of used dresses or other blankets. Most of them belonged to somebody, and this "biographical load" is perceivable in the installation, in where they are a stirring presence.

• The intervention in the Leap Frog Cafe in Central Park is very subtle, because as it is not an artistic space, the fabrics tend to merge with the colorful atmosphere of the park. When using the bedcovers like tablecloths in the restaurant, Kimsooja incorporates in this scope of socialization the presence of experiences lived in other times and other contexts; apparently this displacement is a transgressive act, because in Korea it is taboo to eat upon the bed. Probably a casual person at the table does not perceive the presence of "the work", but this is the risk associated with all intervention that is not codified by its inclusion in a museological space. What is certain is that for many others the social act around the table (eating, talking, drinking coffee) will be mediated by their presence, and by the consciousness that these fabrics have been dumb witnesses of many other lives. Like the mirrors.

"HOMELAND EXISTS ONLY IN OUR MEMORY IN THIS ERA" [1]

• The work "2727 kilometers Bottari Truck" (1997) by the Korean artist Kimsooja has prompted many commentaries – on the Internet too – that are full of inaccurate quotes and half-truths, but that also include some quite imaginative interpretations. For example, there is talk of the "video loop of her sojourn throughout Seoul and the surrounding countryside" (I am deliberately excluding source references here.) In the film itself, however, there is nothing to be seen of the metropolis of Seoul. In another commentary: "In 1997, Kimsooja toured Korea for eleven days in a truck containing a large number of 'bottari' made from clothing she had gathered from all over the world." This universalistic interpretation is contradicted by the following reduction to local history in another text: "The mountain of colorful, knotted cloths in the truck alludes to the troubled episodes of Korean history, in which city dwellers and the inhabitants of the countryside alike were forced to flee their homes, carrying their valuables in similar large 'bottari'." However, it is impossible to examine the content of the bundles in the film, and inconceivable – at least for the lay person – to deduce the forced nomadism of the Korean people from the truck journey performance. What I am attempting here, therefore, is to allow the images to speak for themselves and at the same time take account of the written information which the artist has provided in her film.

• A woman is sitting on a truck loaded with bundles. The bundles are tightly secured with thick ropes; they also serve as a seat for the woman. Throughout the whole film this female figure is shown only from behind. Occasionally, at a bend in the road, her concealed profile appears momentarily. She is wearing a neutral black dress that defies classification, either chronologically or geographically, and her hair is bound up. The camera following her tries to vary as little as possible the distance it keeps from her and to always keep her at the centre of the frame. Accordingly, in the lower half of the frame we see the heap of colorful bundles (only once does the rear of the truck sways briefly into the image), and in the upper half, we see the woman and the passing scenery [2]. The truck first travels upwards along a mountain road, then, having crossed a pass, down again into the valley. The road winds, with fairly sharp bends, through a landscape which during the ascent looks quite barren, but on the descent turns out to be wooded. Traces of snow can be seen at the road-side and around several groups of buildings. The landscape is geographically unidentifiable. There could be places like this in almost any continent of the world. The script on one of the passing road-signs, however, indicates the Asian region.

• The information directly available from the images is complemented by some written data. The almost seven-minute video begins with a fade-in followed by the title "Cities on the Move". This refers to the context in which the work originated – namely, the exhibition "Cities on the Move", which was created by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist and, in keeping with the theme, was shown in different formats in different cities and continents [3].

• Right from the beginning, this fade-in also provides a pointer to the general problem of how cities are developing. What is specifically "on the move" is the truck fully loaded with bundles. The truck must, therefore, be associated with "cities." And yet only a mountain road is visible in the frames. Do the bundles come from cities? Are they being transported to cities? Throughout the whole film, the word "cities" lodges in our mind like a foreign body, forming the conceptual counterpart to the landscape, which is visible all the time in the background. The general title "Cities on the Move" implies that the journey passes through city and country. Shortly before the end of the film, its actual title appears: "2727 kilometers Bottari Truck". Only now do we realize that the seven-minute sequence is no more than an extract from a much longer journey. The final credits contain information on the director (Kimsooja), the year the film was made (1997) and the location. Thus the point in time (the present) and the place where the action occurs (Korea) become clear. Yet we still feel confused. As image and text mutually influence each other, there is a tense interplay at several levels: between city and country, part and whole, now and (almost) any time, here and (almost) everywhere – or, in contemporary terms: the local and the global. Furthermore, the linear structure of the film and the journey is weakened by its repetition (the video runs in a loop). Although the journey is the central theme of this work by Kimsooja, stasis proves to be just as vital.
  "2727 kilometers Bottari Truck" can be seen as a minimalist road movie. The classical road movie simultaneously depicts a physical and a spiritual journey: a person, but mostly two people, travel the country in a car or on a motorcycle in order to find both the true America and themselves [4]. Though the road movie refers to the past and suggests a future, it concentrates on the in-between, the road, the distance between past and future, city and country, civilization and nature, immobility and movement. In an e-mail interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kimsooja writes: " 'Bottari Truck' is…a loaded in –between"[5]. The road promises not only release from the bonds of the past but also the adventure of a new beginning. The reasons that drive someone onto the road have a lasting effect on the plot of the road movie. In Kimsooja's film there is neither action nor motivation. The woman dressed in black is traveling alone. She remains seated, while still moving forward. Deleuze and Guattari refer to the progress in repose of the nomad in their Nomadology: "The nomad distributes himself in a smooth space; he occupies, inhabits, holds that space; that is his territorial principle. It is therefore false to define the nomad by movement. Toynbee is profoundly right to suggest that the nomad is on the contrary he who does not move. …Of course, the nomad moves, but while seated, and he is only seated while moving (the Bedouin galloping, knees on the saddle, sitting on the soles of his upturned feet, 'a feat of balance')." [6] We do not know where the dark female figure comes from or where she is going to. We are not informed about her reasons for making the journey, why she has tied up her bundles. She exists only in this in-between space constituted by the road. Deleuze and Guattari emphasize this in-between space as a further characteristic of nomadism: "The nomad has a territory; he follows customary paths, he goes from one point to another, he is not ignorant of points (water points, dwelling points, assembly points, etc). …A path is always between two points, but the in-between has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an autonomy and a direction of its own. The life of the nomads is the intermezzo." [7] The classical road movie operates with the opposition between space and place. Space – abstract space, wide open space –symbolizes inestimable freedom, while place – the precisely localized place – means civilization, the norm, the rule, i.e., restriction. In Kimsooja's film the two terms coincide in the concept of the bundle. This temporary place, the bundle, on which the woman is sitting, is simultaneously space and movement. It thus integrates the opposites of stasis and displacement, bondage and freedom. In the interview with Obrist, the artist puts this paradox as follows: " 'Bottari truck' is a development-object through space and time, an object that brings us to and from the place from which we came and to which we will return." [8] Kimsooja uses the elementary bundle – literally a "transitory object" – as a complex, contradictory symbol of location and placeless-ness.

• At first sight, everything in "2727 kilometers Bottari Truck" seems to be in motion, flowing: the truck with the bundles roped onto it, the woman swaying slightly on the bends and at times shaken because of the bumpy road, the passing landscape. Meanwhile, the woman is taken as a fixed point (the heaped bundles function as a mere "plinth"); she is the referential object, although almost all we see of her is a cloth covering. The woman cannot be identified and is thus as anonymous as the bundles, whose contents remain concealed. This makes her a genuine identification figure. She can be anyone. Her body is a bundle, a container of many things, a corpus. In the interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kimsooja remarks: " 'Bottari Truck' is a laden self, a laden other." [9] The body as bundle enables the transfer between "me" and "the other in me", between "me" and "the other". [10] The travelling woman seated on the bundles is not least a symbol both of primitive and of modern man, of nomadism and of the mobility and flexibility that have been raised to the new ideal and are often linked with values such as non-identity, placeless-ness, migration, cultural hybridism, etc. Yet this woman radiated an immense loneliness – melancholy? Marc Auge analyses the loneliness of modern cartography and in so doing, he investigates both those "places" which are characterized by identity, relation and history, and those "non-places" which have no anthropological identity. His conclusion is: "Movement adds a special experience, a form of loneliness, to the juxtaposition of the worlds and the experience of the anthropological place." As the images pass by, loneliness manifests itself in them "as a going beyond individuality, in short, the flickering of the hypothesis of a past and the possibility of a future." [11] Is loneliness perhaps the unexpected price to be paid for being open to the world?

• New York-based since 1998, Kim Sooja here exhibited a new installation titled A Mirror Woman. The artist, who was much praised last year for her riveting video A Needle Woman, seen at P.S.1 and later at this year's Whitney Biennial, has said that in her native Korea, her work is sometimes not seen as art, since it so closely approximates the look of daily life. For this show, she presented the best-looking room of laundry you're ever likely to see: gaily colored silk bedspreads, 14 rows deep, pinned to clothes-lines strung across the gallery, whose walls had been mirrored from floor to ceiling for the occasion. The coverlets, elaborately embroidered with phoenixes, dragons, fruits and flowers — symbols of long life and fertility — were strikingly festive, with their high-pitched color schemes of fuchsia, emerald green, sour lime, royal blue, golden yellow, ripe plum, hot pink and cherry red. The mirrors extended the installation in endless, repetitive sequences.

• Traditionally given as gifts to newly married couples, these salvaged wedding bedspreads are domestic objects that can be folded, wrapped and carried away, if need be; indeed, like tents, these covers can create a dwelling, an emblematic compound of sorts, in which women perform centuries-old, conventional domestic tasks, like hanging out the wash, attending to fabrics they have woven and embellished in considered acts of art and meditation. "A fundamental site," the artist says, "these bedcovers refer to marriage beds and shrouds, birth and death, love and pain, hope and despair, sleep and awakenings, cycles of incarnation and dreams, a delicate but comprehensive view of a woman's world."

• Hung, with the exception of the first and the last two rows, in pairs, the bedcovers were strategically positioned. Entering the installation was a little like entering a painting. As you negotiated the space, which resembled a maze, you had to choose your route, your subsequent progress gently controlled in a ritual of passage both profoundly symbolic and quite ordinary. Small unobtrusive ceiling fans set the silk aflutter as if it were animated by chi, the breath of life. Encompassed by planes of color, you were soothed by the faint hum of recorded Tibetan mantras interrupted by the tinkling of bells — a spiritual version of pillow talk, perhaps. This was a comely, courteous kind of feminism, from an Asian Buddhist perspective seen lightly, self-consciously, through artfully arrayed mirrors.

• We are wrapped in cotton cloth at birth, we wear it until we die, and we are again wrapped in it for burial. Especially in Korea, we use cloth as a symbolic material on important occasions such as coming of age ceremonies, weddings, funerals, and rites for ancestors. Therefore, cloth is thought to be more than a material, being identified with the body — that is, as a container for the spirit.

• When a person dies, his family burns the clothes and sheets he used. This may have the symbolic meaning of sending his body and spirit to the sky, the world of the unknown. When I look back over my more than twenty years of handling bedcovers, I feel that I have always been performing, guided by the piles of cloth I have lived among.

• What in the world have I stitched and patched. What have I tied up in bundles. When will the journey of my needle end, my silkworm unwrap its flesh. Will it in the end slough off its skin. Will the bundles with no destination find their way to go.

• Compared to the sixties and the seventies when performance as a visual arts medium was in its initial stages as a popular medium to explore, today, very few contemporary artists rely on performance as their primary medium of artistic expression. Kim Sooja (b. 1957 in Korea) is one of the leading contemporary artists in the field, combining her performances with video and photography. In her latest project A Needle Woman and as a performance artist, Kim Sooja could almost be described as an 'non-performance artist': silently standing still in the street with her back towards the camera, the audience appearing to be the actual performer.

• Over the past years, the work of Kim Sooja has gone through important transitions. However, the idea of sewing remains central to all of her pieces, in a more figurative way at first in her early work, and recently, in a more abstract way. What started as a remnant, as a static patchwork of several individual lives (the sewing together of traditional Korean used clothes gathered by the artist or brought together as bundles on a truck, as in Cities on the Move - Bottari Truck), turned into the tailoring of a garment larger than life, that on a global level would include the existence of millions of people from different continents.

• Kim Sooja, now based in New York, gained critical acclaim with her Bottari Truck, which was shown in the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1998 and the Venice Biennale in 1999 based on her performance of driving a truck loaded with bottari bundles through Korea. Kim Sooja's performances are very subtle and never does she impose any conclusions on the viewer. On the contrary, it is the flow of her deliberate 'inaction,' her silence that over time creates an almost meditative state of mind or religious experience for the viewer. With minimal action, Kim Sooja's performances include aesthetics, poetry and contemplation, qualities that often appear to be missing in contemporary art today.

• In the following interview, Kim Sooja discusses her recent projects, performance art, as well as the contemporary art scene in Korea.

• OS: You are one the very few non-US artists that has been selected for the Whitney Biennial opening in New York (Whitney Museum of American Art). What type of work will you be showing?

• KS: We were talking about a project in Central Park, but it is not confirmed yet. The first proposal I made was actually rejected because that specific space in Central Park was already being used (a space similar to a stage close to the fountain). I was going to install theatre curtains in relationship to the piece. I was planning on entitling it Invisible Woman, where I would disappear for the whole month. That was my plan, but it is not going to be realized. However, we are still trying to find another location and I might install table-cloths in one of the cafeterias of the zoo. The museum is very excited about the project. I was also given a space within the museum to do an installation. We nevertheless have to confirm whether I can use both spaces.

• OS: How did you select the various sites for your performances of A Needle Woman, your latest work?

• KS: I tended to select cities that had a very large population, where I would meet many people on the street. I did not really plan to go to mega cities, located in different continents, but this is what actually happened. After my first performance in Tokyo, people told me I should go to Shanghai where I would meet a lot of people. In order to complete my project, I ended up going there. Following that, I, of course, also thought of India as a place for a performance. I chose Delhi, then Mexico City, another city with a large population, then Cairo and Lagos. All these cities in different continents are very unique. In a way, A Needle Woman addresses globalism, but also localism. At the same time, it is interesting to witness how people from various cultures react differently towards my work. For me, this project created fascinating interactions.

• OS: More specifically, how was the reaction to the performance in these various places?

• KS: Of course, the reaction was very different from one place to another. In Tokyo, when I was standing in the street, nobody dared to look at me. It was as if I was an invisible person. In the beginning, my body was very tense, but at the end, since nobody was looking at me anyway, my body became lighter and lighter, and I was in a state of meditation. As people were just ignoring me and passing by, my body became like a ghost. In Shanghai, the people showed more interest. They looked at me with curiosity, but without really approaching me. They just went on their way. In Delhi, it was more intense because people on the street were so curious. They stopped in front of me trying to understand what I did, and who I was. Needless to say, I caused a lot of traffic problems! Many people inquired with my cameraperson whether I was a sculpture or a Buddha. I think that in a way, they were just so innocent and didn't have many experiences of that kind with foreigners. It was a very intense encounter. Mexico City was more like a mixture between Shanghai and Tokyo. The people didn't overtly show their interest, but they still found me 'strange'. They would look back, and sometimes laugh and talk about me, but without ever touching my body.

• Cairo was a very different experience because people were very curious, and tried to provoke me. For example, a man just ran into my performance and sprayed some perfume at me in order to wake me up, and see how I would react. Also, a woman started walking around me. She suddenly approached me and grabbed my hair. The audience just played with me like a doll, and of course, I couldn't move. It was interesting the way they reacted. They were very eager to communicate with me, coming into the camera frame, talking to the camera people. There was always some interaction going on. The next stop was in Lagos. It was the most static performance as far as the relationship with the audience goes. People on the marketplace stood in front of me as if they were taking a group photo that included me. They were trying to provoke me by waving their hands in front of me to see if I would react or not. They wanted to find out whether I was a ghost. Children were always standing there, laughing. Sometimes they were curious, sometimes they became very serious about what I was doing. At the end of the performance, they all took a photograph. With them, it was similar to a humanistic relationship. London was also very similar to New York. People were just following their way, coming and going, walking fast, talking on their cell phones. Also, a lot of people were having their lunch on the street while was performing, and they tried to find some information about my presence. Sometimes, they were even trying to imitate what I was doing.

• OS: Do you welcome the interaction with the audience?

• KS: Most performers are doing and showing something which involves moving their body, with people watching in a static position. Instead, I wanted to show different reactions from people towards my performance by standing still, and not moving my body.

• OS: Throughout your latest projects, how did you become 'a needle woman'?

• KS: Initially, I was sewing together used clothing from my grandmother, mother and family. Then, I started collecting anonymous clothing, used clothing. They kept people's smells and the shape of their body. The sewing process enabled me to become a needle itself. In the beginning, I was sewing with my hands with the needle, but then, I started my 'wrapping series.' This also deals with sewing because I see sewing as a wrapping process of the fabric with the thread. Then, I developed the wrapping series of the bundles. I feel that the bundle is another type of sewing. It is almost three-dimensional sewing that wraps together. In 1994, I started connecting my body as a symbol of a needle with a piece called Sewing into Walking where I was performing in nature. On the ground, I put bed covers, and I would then walk around to collect these fabrics one by one. So this walking process, the collecting and gathering of all these things is about the meaning of the needle which my body is serving. From that point, I started to focus more on the invisible character of the needle like in Sewing into Looking: I see people's way of looking, communicating, eating, loving. In a way, everything that implies a connecting process is sewing. When I did Laundry woman, Looking into Sewing, Laundry Field, it was related to my sewing, looking, and walking process all together as one function of the needle. My body became the needle itself. Of course, it is symbolic but I find I don't really need to do needle-work by hand anymore. I am now more interested in the invisible daily activities of people. Putting myself in the middle of people is like a weaving process. Over the years, my work has become more abstract, different from the work I was previously showing. I am discovering a new horizon.

• OS: Most of the time you have used cloth both in a positive and in a negative way. Are you planning on further exploring the negative side of cloth?

• KS: I did that kind of performance / video / photo work in 1998. I covered myself with cloth, I was completely hidden. I am actually thinking of doing more performances in a hidden situation. Overall, the cloth and clothing that we wear living together for our whole life deals with my basic question on life, and also with my question on surface which is canvas, since I started out as a painter. For example, the Korean bed cover is a symbol of our body and stands as the frame of our life. It is the site where we are born, where we love, dream, sleep, suffer and die. So it is a symbolic field of human life. Wrapping and unwrapping inside is more about questioning our own way and our own destiny. Putting clothes in it was also very much related to my earlier sewn pieces, but also it is completely related to my recent needle woman performances.

• OS: So your early training was as a painter?

• KS: I studied painting so my questions came through the painting issues in contemporary painting. Of course, I was examining oil painting, objects, doing all these different experimental paintings and exploring various processes. Still, I was always wondering how I could really get into the object I was dealing with, and become one with this object? That was my main question. However, I could never feel the oneness when I was dealing with canvas, paper, or any other medium. I was always trying to find the level where I can completely overlap myself. I had a great desire to melt with this object. The sewing process is all about desire, which can also be love in a way. I discovered the tactility in the sewing process in 1998 when I was making bed covers: putting the needlepoint to the fabric, I almost felt an electric shock, which intrigued me. I felt that I had found what I was looking for, this was the way I could explore the question of surface, the question of life itself. Sewing was a very important starting point which then led me to use my body as a needle.

• OS: During your studies, you traveled extensively. Which trip was the most influential?

• KS: I received a grant from the French government to study in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was also an important opportunity for me to discover Europe, and I traveled to Italy, Germany and Denmark. These trips just confirmed what I had learnt from books, but they were not that influential to my work. The one most important trip to me was the one to Japan. I went there in 1979. Until then, in Korea, one was not allowed to travel abroad, and consequently we didn't have much information about our neighbours. Before going to Japan, I thought all Asian countries were the same culture. When I went to Japan, I found it was very different from my country, Korea. In Japan, the structure, the culture and architecture are all very humble and 'simple'. Although I was fascinated by what I saw in Japan, I also felt that there were some limitations in terms of aesthetic quality. Their art is very sophisticated, and I find it very interesting. However, I also found my own reality from that trip, and I started to appreciate our culture in Korea with its colourful, and almost 'shamanistic' elements. I became very interested in further discovering the Korean aspects dealing with structure and aesthetic. That is one reason why I was very keen to use typical Korean fabrics as material in my work.

• OS: The Bottari Truck project is one of your most famous pieces. How did it come about? Which cities did you cover?

• KS: It was started in 1997 in Korea. I made a trip in Korea to visit old cities and villages I used to live in, and in which I had memories. It took 11 days to make the whole trip. Out of this trip, I made one video called Cities on the Move, 2727 km which was showing my back passing through the mountains. It explores the question of time and space, and their coexistence. Initially, while I was sewing, my mind would always travel somewhere else. I would always dream of traveling. The Bottari Truck performance was my actual traveling, with my mind going back towards the past, looking back on my life in Korea.

• OS: Recently more and more curators and dealers travel to Korea to find "new talent".

• KS: Over the past decades, there were two important changing points: the Olympics in 1988 and the first Kwangju Biennale in the mid 1990's. Following the Olympics, more people from abroad started coming to Korea, and after the Biennale, more and more people could come to visit artists studios and exhibitions. Today, there are numerous contemporary art exhibitions taking place, and the artists get to show their work abroad. There has been a major transition from the time when it used to be very closed to today where it is completely open.

• Having followed the work of Kim SooJa for nearly a decade, I have become increasingly aware of her focus and commitment in developing a unique vision of the world through art. Her vision is, of course, a subjective one. It is subjective in relation to the conjugation of mind and body. As with any refined manner of subjectivity, SooJa depends on a type of alertness based on the sensing of her immediate environment. While performing in relation to the video camera, whether in an urban metropolis or in the wilderness of nature, she maintains a relaxed aura. Her demeanor reveals a purposeful intensity combined with the sensitivity of observation. To develop one's sense of the world through art — indeed, to develop a perception of oneself — is initially contingent on observation, and later, on a phenomenological reduction of what one sees through the process of reflection; in essence, it is the search for an intentionality.

• In working with brightly colored textiles in various contexts, SooJa has discovered a ground for her recent observations. She has discovered a way of making sense, of finding an order, regardless of the chaos that intervenes on the surface. In recent years she has extended the meaning of her textile installations ('deductive objects') and bottaris (wrapped bundles of cloth) through a series of remarkable video performances, collectively known as A Needle Woman. Through her process of engagement in the world — in other people's worlds, in specific places and cultures, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Delhi, New York, Mexico City and Cairo — Kim SooJa has gone deeply within herself in order to find a new transcultural reality.

• As an artist, she is not concerned with repeating hypothetical universals borrowed from the Modernist past. This is clearly antithetical to her position, to her ethos. As with her ongoing work, A Needle Woman, SooJa searches for a structural invisibility as the means by which to communicate her intention. To be deeply personal (which is also to be spiritual) opens up the possibility of significant communication — a human transmission — on a transcultural level. By going deeply within oneself, below the surface of narcissism (as defined in Western terms), one discovers the invisible self paradoxically asserting itself within a transcultural, transglobal world.

• As is sometimes the case, and I am thinking specifically of Yves Klein, the most radical departures at any given moment in art are often confused with traditional ideas (l'ancien et l'ultramoderne ). What changes, of course, is the context in which the ideas are felt. One might consider that certain ideas in art retain an accelerating force as they evolve within a perpetually shifting globalized environment. Kim SooJa's bottaris have this potential. They refer to a certain kind of transport, a personal history, a private vision of one's own space, a nomadic space, going from one place to another. In the process of going from one place to another, there is a momentum that builds, a certain engagement with the transition of the present. Within this transition of present time — what the philosopher Husserl calls 'internal time-consciousness' — there is the possibility to reflect on the space of the moment. In Zen Buddhism, this is the place of samadhi or the contemplation of a single thought, a sense of oneness, that is often used in meditation. Samadhi offers the possibility of feeling a sense of wholeness, of bringing one's thought into focus, into a single thought, of entering into the space of that thought with full consciousness. This was used by Yves Klein in a manner quite differently from Kim SooJa. Even so, one cannot ignore the affinity — though at a different time and place, a different culture, to be sure.

• If anything, A Needle Woman — already emphasizing a kind of anonymity by using the article 'A' as opposed to 'The'— is about the space of samadhi on one level, but only on one level. Contrary to the position of Arthur Danto, not all art exists at the service of philosophy. While the spirit of samadhi is close to A Needle Woman, it cannot operate as its raison d'etre. It can only function as a parallel system, as a personal motivation that the artist feels. In essence, Zen Buddhism may offer an affinity with SooJa's work — particular, it would seem, in A Needle Woman — but it cannot become her art. It is precisely for this reason that Kim SooJa rejects the lamination of theoretical rhetoric against her art. This is particularly true given the varieties of feminist theory, exported from the West, that often usurps the possibility for her art to speak on its own terms, and thereby suggest other parallel systems of thought. Kim SooJa is not interested in making her art an air-tight case and is certainly not a gender-case; it is about the significance of the human being in a chaotic world, how to survive the virtual excess and abandonment of the self, through a rejuvenation of mind/body awareness. Rather than following the theoretical pre-occupations of the West, she follows her own course of social and political engagement emanating from her own history, memory, and intelligence of feeling.

• While Western rhetoric may have taken the foreground of attention in much recent art — more intent on "investigations" and visual anthropology than upon the phenomenology of experience — SooJa's position is more related to the nomadic artist, the human being who moves at will (not as a refugee), but within the another context of globalized reality. In doing so, she confronts excesses of all kinds, prematurely archaic or obsolescent structures that have devolved through overabundant information, tabloid-receptive populations who feel devalued in their everyday work and without a sense of history. This puts her art in opposition to the prevailing cynicism of the day, the ultimate detachment that is de rigeur /span>in the fashion world, the failing present where time exists without duration, without memory, and without any sense of a cause-and-effect impact on the proverbial future.

• The poet and critic T.S. Eliot has spoken of the "perfect artist" as one who is so committed to his (her) art, with such ineluctable consistency, that the personality becomes less the issue than what is being transmitted through the art. I find Eliot's paradigm interesting in relation to Kim SooJa. One could say that the emphasis in her work has always been one of non-emphasis; instead of a presence we get an absence. The absence is always more profound, more subtle, and somehow more durable. The terms of absence are literally true, specifically in her rediscovery of bottari in 1992 as a kind of ready-made gesture, and most recently in her video projections.

• The feeling of absence is also true in her earlier work. Going back to an earlier work, such as Portrait of Yourself (1985), SooJa ingeniously reverses the gaze of the viewer through the presentation of sewn pieces of cloth into a colorful garment. The work suggests that she is there, somehow within the space of the garment. By identifying the trace of her body within a form of representation, the viewer becomes complicit with the intimacy of the work. One may sense the transmission of memory as the cloth has been sewn, painted, and constructed. Absence exists as a condition of memory — a 'trace' of what is being represented. The process leads inevitably to the maker, to the one perceiving what is being made, in essence, to the craft of its making. This is an intimate, more than a social act(ion); yet it is consistent with what SooJa has recounted on afternnon in 1983 while she was sewing a bedcover with her mother: "I made a surprising discovery, whereby my thoughts, my feelings, and my activities of the moment seemed to come into harmony. And I discovered new possibilities for conveying buried memories and pain along with the quiet passions of life."

• In the West, art historians are fond of saying that no artist or movement in art comes from the void, that there are always cause-and-effect linkages, relationships, motivations, and consequences. This is, to some extent, true; but its truth is isolated within the discipline of art history, not necessarily within the process of how an artist thinks. What is happening in today's "art world" — the transcultural satellite of globalization — is relevant only to the following extent. Most of these objects and events are academicized into oblivion by the time they hit the market. They are merely symptomatic of the bifurcation between advanced technologies and the socioeconomic well-being of people's lives, particularly those living outside of the Western world.

• Here is the crux of the issue: Many artists live in an environment of high transition filled with enormous frustrations. They spend hours in front of the computer. They are dependent on mobile phones and internet data. Traffic on city streets and airport terminals is greater than ever before. They cannot keep us with the piles of work that confront them in the studio. When do they have time to think about the direction of our work? Or, more relevant, when do they have time to think of their lives as forming the substance of their work? These questions, by the way, are not only germane to artists. Many of us are in a similar boat. And this boat seems more often than not to be floating in an empty void — a Western schism that is far removed from the nature of the self.

• This is to suggest that Kim SooJa's art is directed towards another kind of void — neither the void of art history nor the void of the today's split in human consciousness, but the void of the self, the concept of "no mind" as described by the Japanese Zen teacher (Sensei) Daisetz Suzuki. When we look at the interwoven elements — material, visual, conceptual — as presented between SooJa's tactile and virtual images, we get a sense of her vision. Somewhere in the interstices between the bottari and the video projections, there is a profound coherence to everything we know. We are exhilarated as human beings to know that we are allowed to "unknow" the burden that constitutes much of our superficial identity. The temptation is always there — to avoid the void. In confronting the crowds of Shanghai, Delhi, or Istanbul, we may become aware that the feelings of the void so clearly articulated in the performances of Kim SooJa, are endangered in a world of chaotic excess. We can only look to the void that she has created, the cancellation of the chaos around her, and ultimately receive the infinite joy of being who we are.

• Reactions to Kim Sooja's silent video projections tend to be just as soundless - indeed speechless - as the works themselves. We have little trouble recognizing what is shown; there is no "plot" whatsoever, nor does any new information crop up at any point during a sequence. In short, there is hardly food for discussion. This makes it all the more tempting to seek some sort of exegesis with respect to the work of this Korean artist, to link it historically with certain artistic or philosophic traditions, in order to define it in words. To that end, certain catchwords represent particularly appealing departure points: Zen Buddhism, meditation, yoga, the suspension of the body, the emptying of the mind, ecstasy through asceticism, becoming one with the cosmic forces, and so forth. Kim's art may well touch upon any or all of these. Public response to her work, however, has repeatedly proven that viewers who balk at Eastern philosophy are nonetheless capable of empathizing with what she presents.

• This leads us to consider linking Kim's work with Western Existentialist or phenomenological trends, prone as they are to claiming universalism. For instance, then, the mere fact of the artist's Da-Sein (that is, her being + there) in her videos might to some extent relate to Heidegger's notion of Ek-sistenz as analyzed in Being and Time . His "being-in-the-world" means to exist, from the Latin ex-sistere, the equivalent of standing outside one's self in a state of being that has always preexisted. In other words, it is precisely the most innocuously quotidien aspect of life that allows us to be and become what we already are, enabling the pure "what is and is to be" to emerge while "wherefrom and whereto" remain shrouded in mystery. To Heidegger, the body is inconsequential, simply there, a mere background for our acts, never standing in the foreground; the body is an instrument of transcendence. Might we not say as much of the artist's body, as it appears in her videos? By contrast, for Maurice Merleau-Ponty, author of a most important Phénoménologie de la perception, our perception of things always depends on a standpoint, namely that of our body. To be body means to be linked to a certain world ("Etre corps, c'est être noué à un certain monde..."). And that world is what makes me aware of my body "at the center of the world," as "the unperceived end point towards which all objects turn their face" ("le terme inaperçu vers lequel tous les objets tournent leur face"), "the hub of the world" ("le pivot du monde"). By way of illustration, see the four-part video installation A Needle Woman !

• Several art-historical contexts might lend themselves to "explaining" Kim Sooja's work. Traditional Chinese landscape painting, for instance, uses the dialectical relationship between solid and liquid: the landscapes reflect the reciprocal influence of rock and water, mountain and clouds, as captured by the interplay of brush and India ink. Although painting is not her medium, Kim does seem to follow these roughly sketched principles, allowing the stiff bodies she presents to interact with flows found in nature or streaming crowds.

• Western art history, too, offers several frameworks within which it would be feasible to position Kim's work. "Forerunners" of sorts easily come to mind in the realms of performance and body art: one thinks of the Marina Abramovic/Ulay pair's experiments with the basic positions of the human body - standing, lying, sitting - or the statue-like and aura-pervaded standing role into which James Lee Byars enjoyed casting himself. However, art historians also tend to link Kim's stance in her videos with the back-view figures that so frequently appear in Caspar David Friedrich's paintings of around 1818. The title figures of two of these - his Woman before the Setting Sun (Museum Folkwang, Essen) and Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Kunsthalle Hamburg) - each stand full-length, parallel to the painting and in the foreground, exactly in the middle of the composition. Both turn their back to the viewer: solitary individuals, they stand confronted by the endless breadth and immeasurable magnitude of Nature. Just as in Kim's work, through their anonymity, these figures seen from behind serve as substitutes - within the painting - for the viewer. They are at once subject and object of our gaze.

• It would certainly be interesting to carry some of these ideas a few steps further, or to explore still others, such as the concept of the sublime, or Baudelaire's notion of the " bain de foule" (to revel in crowds). For the purposes of this essay, however, we shall focus on the video images themselves, attempting to discover what constitutes their definition-defying fascination. The common denominator for most of Kim's works is the standing or lying female figure, motionless and seen from the back. In the first place, the figure is inaccessible because the woman turns her face away, that is, away from the viewer. It is the crowd streaming towards the "Needle Woman," in the video sequence by that name, who can see her from the front; they see something we are denied. Were we to take the place of the female figure, we would discover nothing more than what we already see as viewers. Hence, to identify with the back-view figure is relatively beside the point. It would be far more interesting to adopt the standpoint of one of the passersby. In the last analysis, it seems that the figure "invisible" to us holds the key to the whole scene. Why are the passersby looking at her or ignoring her? Is she crying or laughing, speaking or holding her silence? Are her eyes open or shut? Is she pretty or ugly? The gazes of the passersby offer no clue in the matter. This woman is no individual (she can be multiplied) but an abstraction. Clad in neutral gray, the artist's figure seems incorporeal, silhouette-like, a shadow of ourselves, a Doppelgänger. And yet she stands her ground with respect to the crowd, tacitly but nonetheless forcefully asserting her presence. In fact, the artist strikes a delicate balance between presence and absence; she is at once herself and the "other."

• A second factor rendering inaccessible the figure viewed from behind is that the viewer is incapable of sharing her standpoint. The "Needle Woman" on the rocks lies above the viewer's eye level and above the horizon; no pathway leads to her. Moreover, deprived of a foreground, she cannot be situated in depth. The landscape lying ahead of her is invisible to us. We wonder if the woman is sleeping or meditating with closed eyes, whether she even deigns to cast a glance at what is hidden from us. Not content with refusing to show herself, she further denies us the possibility of seeing things from her standpoint, thus cutting off our view ahead. This female figure represents unattainable distance. The "Laundry Woman" presents similar spatial problems, inviting us to wonder where it is that she is standing. Very near the river bank? High above the river? The water forms a wall in front of her: instead of mirroring the artist herself, it reflects the sky above and its flock of whirring birds. On the other hand, the viewer is refused her standpoint, prevented from sharing her space. Here, the female figure is invisible to us from the waist down, with only her upper body jutting out into the image. (The reclining figure, too, does not seem to be in the picture but to project itself onto the picture from the side, shoving itself in between the rocks and the sky.) This "upper-body figure" is impossible to pin down in any fixed spatial terms. Nevertheless, the figure seems "grounded" in the literal sense of the word, standing as it does exactly at the center of the image, which it divides symmetrically into two. It is this figure that determines and creates the spatial coordinates. Everything starts out from it, relates to it: it is the center, the alpha and the omega.

• The third reason that this back-view figure is inaccessible has to do with the space itself — the space the figure faces, to which it is exposed. This space is unstable, constantly changing, liquid. A longer look makes even the supposedly solid rocks in Kitakyushu, upon which the "Needle Woman" reclines, seem subject to "change": the ridges look like the flow of hair that has been let down. Anthropomorphic elements begin appearing in the rocks, something like the features of a human skull lying about. The woman sitting on the bundles in Cities on the Move may be shaken about a bit by the potholes in the street, but it is nonetheless she who remains the static element in the sequence. The street winds its way through the images before our eyes, and the landscape comes towards us. Yet, despite the space's instability — its dynamic quality to put it more positively — no uneasiness or menace is suggested (by contrast, for instance, with the progressive deformation and narrowing of the lead character's living quarters in Boris Vian's Froth on the Daydream. The female figure not only exists in space that is anisotropic, but also belongs to another time — an extremely slow-motion version of our own world. Kim's video imagery portrays the world's continuous transformation as an inexorable but altogether natural turn of events. However, the strength of the individuals exposed to this unending transformation is equally inexorable: through the simple fact of their presence-laden Da-Sein, they are capable of neutralizing it.

• Here we have what most probably explains the fascination of Kim Sooja's video works. Refusing to draw her systematic play of contrasts into any sort of tension-charged dialectical relationship, she instead achieves such a delicate equilibrium that opposite poles are brought to the fore as a natural basis for harmony. Although what she stages is commonplace, her video imagery does not come across as believable. The balance struck between presence and absence exists not only in her images, but in our head as well, inasmuch as the back-view figure can show itself as soon as the video projector is switched off. Kim Sooja: at once subject and object of our gaze, an individual and an abstraction, a specific woman and every(wo)man, instrument and actress, motionless and purposeful. In theories of perception, the fact that the eye sees what moves is a truism. In Kim's work, it is immobility that catches the eye. While setting herself at the center of the imagery, the artist distances herself from it. Her forceful but simple appearance is an incredible manner of self-assertion, proving that it is possible here and now, and with a strict economy of means, to adventure into new spatial and temporal dimensions.