• 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.