• 1980년대 후반 이후 서구 미술에서 ‘부재(不在)’의 문제는 여러 측면에서 영향력 있는 주제로 다루어졌다. 서비스 아트, 큐레이팅으로서의 예술, 유목적 존재, 집단 창작으로 인한 작가 개인의 익명화 등은, 1960년대 이후 서구 미술에 중대한 영향을 미쳐 온 자기지시적 체계를 벗어나고자 지난 수년 간 예술가들이 기울여 온 노력을 보여주는 지표다. 여기서 부재는 개인화된 예술의 증가 추세를 약화시키고, 다시금 예술과 그 사회적 차원 간의 강한 연결을 가능케 하는 영역에 접근하기 위한 전략으로 사용된다. 그럼에도 이러한 전략은 언제나 자기반영의 구조(matrix of self-reflexiveness) 내에서 작동한다.

• 세계화의 흐름 속에서 서구 미술이 다른 대륙의 문화적 영향을 받아들이기 시작한 것은 이러한 국면에서 특별한 의미를 갖는다. 왜냐하면 서구 미술시장을 겨냥한 안전한 담론을 넘어서서, 예술이 현대적 미학을 유지하면서도 인간 삶의 근본적 물음에 다시 응답할 수 있는 중요한 동력이 생겨나기 때문이다.

• 김수자는 1957년 한국에서 태어나 현재 뉴욕에서 살고 있다. 그는 지난 15여 년간 동시대 미술의 이러한 방향 재설정에 상당한 기여를 해 온 작가다. 그는 유교적 전통이 뿌리 내린 문화에서 성장했지만, 그의 삶을 둘러싼 직접적인 환경은 가톨릭의 영향이 지배적이었다. 군인이셨던 아버지의 직업으로 인한 가족의 반복적 이사는 그로 하여금 ‘뿌리 뽑힘’을 일찍이 경험하게 했다. 이는 20세기 서구 문화 전반에 걸쳐 영향을 미쳤던 정서이기도 하다. 게랄트 마트(Gerald Matt)와의 인터뷰에서 김수자는 자신을 다음과 같이 설명한 바 있다. “나에게 여행은 언제나 자발적인 것은 아니었다. 나는 종종 여행을 해야 했다. 여행은 내가 어릴 때부터 늘 내 삶 안에 있었다. (중략) 정착하기와 이곳저곳을 옮겨다니기, 만남과 헤어짐 같은 주제는 언제나 나와 함께했다. 나는 국경 위에 사는 사람의 사고방식을 갖고 있으며, 내가 작업에서 사용하는 재료는 그러한 성향에 부합한다. 어릴 때부터 나는 ‘그리움’과 ‘향수’, ‘기억의 공백’과 ‘새로운 환경에 적응하기’라는 문제를 늘 안고 살았다.”

• 이 같은 개인적 경험은 김수자의 예술 세계 형성에 영향을 주었고, 그의 작업 세계는 1980년대부터 꾸준히 발전해 왔다. 작가는 처음에는 할머니의 물건을 앞서 언급한 재료로 사용했다. 할머니가 돌아가신 후, 김수자는 할머니의 옷과 천을 대형 벽화 형식의 작품을 위해 사용했는데, 이는 당초 그가 한국에서 공부했던 회화적 정신에 입각한 작업이었다. 그러나 기억에 물든 이 재료의 사용은, 추상적 구성을 만들어 내는 개별 재료들의 색채와 함께 그 자체로 이미 부재(즉 돌아가신 할머니의 부재)를 핵심 주제로 제시한다. 동시에, 그러한 천을 사용하는 일은 그 자체로 금기를 깨는 일이었다. 옷은 생전에 그것을 입었던 사람에게 속하는 것으로 여겨지기 때문이다. 이같은 이중의 ‘부재’(하나는 할머니의 정신-신체의 부재, 다른 하나는 전통에 대한 위반), 즉 양가성은 김수자의 작업 전반에 걸쳐 나타나는 특징적인 예술적 수행 방식이다.
  이 글에서 김수자의 작업 전체의 전개 과정을 자세히 논하는 것은 적절치 않을 것이므로, 그의 작업 전반을 개괄하는 책이 최근에 출간되었음을 언급하는 것으로 대신하고자 한다.

• 그렇지만 김수자가 지금까지 제작한 모든 작업에서 ‘부재’라는 모티프가 일관되게 발견된다는 사실은 나에게 매우 중요하다. 주목해 볼 점은 작가가 부재를 결핍의 모티프가 아니라 건설적인, 변증법적 전략으로 이해한다는 사실이다. 뉴욕 P.S.1 아트센터 레지던시 입주 이후 처음으로 선보인 새로운 작업에서 김수자는 무엇보다도 사물에 남겨진 사용의 흔적에 집중했다. 바로 〈연역적 오브제〉였다. 이 작업을 통해 작가는 그간 자신의 시각 작업의 중심에 있었던 회화로부터 스스로를 분리해 내는 데 성공했고, 그 결과 자신의 조형 언어를 설치, 비디오, 사진, 퍼포먼스로 빠르게 확장해 갔다.

• ‘바느질하며 걷기’와 ‘보따리’, 그리고 ‘빨래하는 여인’ 연작의 일부 작품에서 천은 중요한 역할을 한다. 나아가 2004년에는 판화 작품 〈일곱 가지 소망〉의 토대가 되기도 한다. 이 작품에는 보따리 작업과 ‘빨래하는 여인’ 연작의 여러 설치 작품에 사용됐던 한국 이불보의 다양한 문양이 등장한다. 뿐만 아니라 사진, 비디오, 퍼포먼스를 결합한 ‘만남’ 연작과 사진 작업 〈묘비명(Epitaph)〉 같은 작품은 이 주제를 김수자가 얼마나 능숙하고 주도적으로 다루는지를 잘 보여준다.

• 또 다른 작품군에서 ‘부재’는 시공간적 질문과 맞물린다. 이 작품에서는 강한 회화적 성격을 지닌 비유의 기능이 약화되고, 작품과 관객 사이의 상호작용에 더욱 초점이 맞춰진다. 이와 관련해 특히 언급할 작업은 퍼포먼스 비디오 연작 ‘바늘여인(이 연작의 두 번째 시리즈는 아직 진행 중이다)’, 서로 연관된 작업인 ‘집 없는 여인’과 ‘구걸하는 여인’, 그리고 ‘빨래하는 여인’ 연작 중 일부 작품이다. 이 작품에서 김수자는 항상 화면 중앙에서, 보는 이를 등지고 움직임 없이 앉아 있거나 누워 있다. 모든 일은 그녀 주변에서 일어난다. 그는 여러 대륙의 대도시 속에서 인파에 둘러싸이거나, 천천히 흐르며 자기 앞을 지나가는 강물을 바라본다.

• 이미 여러 연구자들이 지적한 것과 같이, 이들 작업에서 나타나는 ‘부동(immobility)’과 ‘이동(mobility)’의 변증법은 김수자의 작업 전반을 관통하는 ‘부재’를 중심축으로 전개된다. 작가 역시 이를 다음과 같이 강조한 바 있다. “모든 것은 움직이고, 움직임은 존재의 근본 조건이다. 각 순간의 진동(oscillation)에는 그 나름의 리듬이 있다. 그렇지만 나에게는 이동과 부동의 차이가 비교적 작게 느껴진다. 나는 내 몸을 이동과 부동의 미세한 경계를 구분짓는 예민한 기압계의 한계점에 맞춰 두었다. 그러니까 어떤 길이나 도시, 어떤 대륙에 위치한 내 몸의 이동은 부동의 한 사례가 되는 반면, 이동하겠다는 내 결정은 완전히 갑작스럽고 무의식적으로 일어나는 것이다. 그 결정은 서로 다른 두 요소, 즉 내 몸과 외부 세계 사이의 역동적 긴장 속에서 일어난다. 대부분의 예술가나 배우는 무언가 새로운 것을 만들거나 보여주려 분투하지만, 나는 언제나 무언가를 하거나, 더 만들거나 새로 창조하지 않고 현실을 있는 그대로 사람들에게 보여주고 싶었다.”

• 그러므로 부재는 작가가 자기 자신의 경험과 성찰에 상응하는 경험을 관객에게 전하기 위한 중요한 예술적 수단이 된다. 그렇기 때문에 김수자의 예술적 접근이 ‘실존적 미니멀리즘’이라 불려 온 것은 충분히 타당하며, 작가 자신도 이 용어를 자신의 예술 세계를 규정하는 표현으로 기꺼이 받아들이고 있다. 이 개념 아래에서 동시대 서구의 한 예술적 경향은 선불교의 변하지 않는 관습(timeless practices)과 조우한다. 불교에서 ‘공’(空), 즉 부재는 결핍이 아니라 오히려 충만함을 뜻한다. 빈 공간이야말로 삶을 명상할 수 있는 자리를 마련해 주기 때문이다. 따라서 우리는 김수자의 작업을 여러 문화 사이에서 드물게 이루어지는 특별한 융합 사례로 규정할 수 있으며, 이는 그의 예술이 지니는 특별한 의미를 더욱 부각시킨다.

《김수자 ― 보따리 쾰른 2005》

• 김수자는 쾰른 소재의 케베니히 갤러리에서 열린 전시를 하나의 설치 작업으로 구상했다. 전시의 중심에는 보따리를 실은 오래된 트럭 한 대를 두고, 그 주변으로 개별 보따리들, 보따리 소재와 연관된 판화 작품인 〈일곱 가지 소망〉, 그리고 비디오 프로젝션 네 점을 배치했다. 전시 제목은 이 전시의 과도기적 성격을 분명하게 지시한다. 이미 세 가지 언어적 요소, 즉 ‘보따리’라는 용어 그 자체, 날짜, 그리고 장소와의 결합이 이를 드러내고 있다. 보따리는 한국 사람들, 특히 여성이 필요에 의해서든 자발적으로든 다른 장소로 이동할 때 소지품을 천으로 싸서 묶어 들고 다니던 꾸러미를 뜻한다. 보따리를 싸기 위한 천으로는 전통적으로 혼수품으로 받았던 이불이나 이불보를 사용했다. 따라서 이 천들은 주인과 긴밀하게 관련되어 있으며, 대개 생애 마지막까지 함께하는 대상이었다. 이는 천에 새겨진 문양이 그것을 선물로 준 사람의 축복을 나타내며, 이 축복이 인생을 통해 이루어지기를 바라는 마음이 담겨 있기 때문이다. 〈일곱 가지 소망〉에서 김수자는 이러한 다섯 가지 모티프를 선보이며, 생명으로 채워지기를 기다리는 두 개의 대형 추상 모티프로 이를 보완한다.

• 갤러리 입구에는 보따리 하나가 곧바로 관객을 맞이하고 있다. 하지만 개별 보따리는 주로 갤러리 지하의 작고 단순한 아치형 천장으로 구획된 공간에서 발견된다. 이 설치에는 언제나 고독함이 배어 있지만, 여기서는 그 쓸쓸한 분위기가 특히 강하게 나타난다. 그러나 이는 단지 공간의 미적 특성 때문만은 아니다. 보따리는 언제나 한 개인의 성정이 깃들어 있는 삶의 증거로 이해될 수 있다. 그러나 이번 설치에서 김수자는 이 장소의 특별한 역사를 놀라울 만큼 강렬한 방식으로 환기한다. 케베니히 갤러리와 이웃한 건물의 일부는 나치 시대 비밀국가경찰이 체계적인 고문을 행하던 감옥이었다. 나치 정권이 추구했던 개인의 파괴는, 인간 영혼의 파괴 불가능함을 강조하는 김수자의 조용하지만 헤아리기 어려운 울림에 의해 상쇄된다.

• 위층 갤러리의 중앙에는 1938년 생산된 오래된 삼륜 트럭 템포(Tempo) 한 대가 놓여있다. 짐칸에는 운전석 지붕을 넘는 높이까지 보따리가 가득 실려 있다. 이 공간에 들어서면서 관객은 뾰족하게 튀어나온 보닛 쪽으로 다가서게 되는데, 이 때 트럭의 형태가 뒤틀려 보이게 된다. 이 〈보따리 트럭〉은 1997년 작가가 11일 동안 한국을 종횡무진하며 펼쳤던 퍼포먼스에서 사용했던 원본 트럭의 새로운 버전이다. 원본 트럭은 이후 여러 전시에서 ‘망명 중’인 것으로 등장하는데, 쾰른 전시에서 김수자는 약간 작은 크기로 새 트럭을 제작해 보여준다.

• 원본 퍼포먼스는 ‘떠도는 도시들’이라는 프로젝트의 일환으로 진행됐으며, 생활 형편상 어쩔 수 없이 계속해서 고향을 떠나 이주해야 하는 상황에 놓인 사람들의 특수한 심리 상태를 보여 주었다. 그러한 상황 속에서 이주민들이 전형적으로 공간과 시간과 맺게 되는 특수한 관계, 대개 비이주민은 이해하기 어려운 이 관계는 〈보따리 트럭〉에서 특히 잘 드러난다. 이에 관해 작가는 다음과 같이 설명한다. “보따리 트럭은 시간과 공간 전체에 걸쳐 있는 과정의 오브제이다. 그것은 우리 자신을 우리가 떠나온 곳과 우리가 향해 가는 곳에 위치시키고, 다시 그곳에서 이탈시킨다.” 이주라는 주제를 다루면서 사람들을 반복적으로 특정 방식으로 사로잡는 작품은 거의 없고, 그러면서도 특정 이데올로기에 갇히지 않는 작품은 더욱 드물다.

• 작가는 트럭이 놓인 갤러리 공간에 네 개의 비디오 프로젝션을 배치해, 〈보따리 트럭〉의 정서적 모티프를 보다 추상적이고 철학적인 수준으로 옮겨 놓는다. 네 점의 비디오 작업은 모두 2000년과 2001년에 제작된 것으로, 지금까지는 드물게 공개되어 왔다. 그중에서 단 한 작품에만 군중이 등장하는데, 이는 즉각적으로 퍼포먼스 연작인 ‘바늘 여인’을 떠올리게 한다. 그러나 그 퍼포먼스 작업과 〈보따리 – 조칼로〉 사이에는 아무런 관련성이 없다. 이 작품에서 작가는 보이지 않으며, ‘바늘 여인’에서처럼 인파에 둘러싸여 있지도 않다. 군중은 거의 움직이지 않고, 어느 특정한 방향으로 움직이지 않는다. 관객은 그저 각기 다른 방향으로 움직이는 개별 움직임을 알아볼 수 있을 뿐이다. 대다수의 사람들은 축구 경기장에서 열리는 대규모 콘서트에서처럼, 알아볼 수 없는 상태이다. 영상 속 이미지는 빠르게 재생되는 동시에 흐릿하게 처리되어 있는데, 이 때문에 기묘하게 추상적 효과가 발생한다. 구성 요소의 움직임의 기원이 불분명한 다른 추상적 사이클로그래피(cyclographic) 이미지와의 시각적 유사성은, 영상에 녹화된 사람들이 놓여 있는 특정 상황에 대한 인식을 일반적인 차원으로 전환시킨다. 그렇게 군중의 정적인 상태와 군중 속 개별 요소의 움직임 사이의 변증법을 더욱 강조한다.

• 〈보따리 ― 눈 그리기(Bottari – Drawing the Snow)〉에서도 이와 비슷한 일이 벌어진다. 겨울 밤에 눈 내리는 모습을 담아낸 이 작품에서 카메라는 내리는 눈을 올려다보고 있는데, 앞서 살펴본 작품에서와 마찬가지로 그 이미지는 방향을 알 수 있는 아무런 좌표도 포함하지 않는다. 화면 속에는 각자 우연적인 방향으로 움직이는 듯이 보이는 눈송이들의 움직임과 그 뒤의 어두운 공간 속으로 사라지며 정지된 듯 보이는 눈송이의 대비만이 남는다. 이 이미지는 아주 높은 수준으로 추상화됨으로써 오히려 구체성의 차원에 이르게 되고, 감상자는 그 속으로 깊이 몰입하게 된다. 이것은 명상의 이미지인가?

• 〈보따리 ― 뇌우를 싸다(Bottari – Wrapping the Thunderstorm)〉는 〈보따리 ― 눈 그리기〉의 모티프를 이어 받지만, 이번에는 자연 이미지로부터 완전히 벗어난다. 감상자는 스크린이 적절한 신호를 받지 못할 때 화면에 생기는 전자적 ‘눈’만을 보게 된다. 작품 제목에는 쓰인 자연에서 가져온 용어는 이 경우에는 작품 해석의 출발점이 된다. 여기서의 ‘폭풍우’는 극도로 미세한 수준에서 빠른 속도로 일어나기 때문에, 인간의 지각에서는 거의 움직임이 없는 것처럼 보인다. 또한 〈보따리 ― 눈 그리기〉에서는 어느 정도 감지할 수 있었던 화면 속 공간의 깊이도 이 작품에서는 온전히 감상자의 상상에 맡겨진다.

• 그러나 네 번째 비디오 프로젝션 〈보따리 ― 알파 비치〉는 ‘자연 공간’을 특징으로 한다. 거의 움직이지 않는 바다와 하늘 한 조각이 위아래가 뒤집혀 투사된다. 화면의 중앙은 수평선이 가로지르고 있는데, 그것을 바라보면 이 이미지를 만들어낸 좌표에 관한 질문이 떠오른다. 위와 아래, 표면과 깊이 ― 이런 용어는 이 단순한 반전의 동작을 고려할 때 의문이 생기고, 재확인을 요구하게 된다.

• 〈일곱 가지 소망〉을 제외하면, 비디오 프로젝션을 포함해 이번 전시에서 소개한 모든 작품의 제목은 ‘보따리’로 시작한다. 이 묶인 ‘꾸러미’의 양가적 표상성—보따리가 한편으로는 이주와 더불어 이주민의 내적 상태를 은유하고, 다른 한편으로는 삶을 구성하는 구체적이면서 거의 마법적이라고 할 만한 하나의 요소라는 점—을 의미적 토대로 인정한다면, 이번 전시의 설치는 다시 한번 의미를 부여받은 부재(不在), 즉 충만함으로서의 비어 있음을 가리킨다고 볼 수 있다. 왜냐하면 “김수자의 예술은 또 다른 종류의 공(空)을 향한다는 것, 미술사적 공백도, 오늘날 인간 의식의 분열이 만든 공허도 아닌, 자기의 비움, 즉 ‘무심’(無心)이라는 개념을 향하고 있다”는 사실이 분명해지기 때문이다.

• 쾰른 케베니히 갤러리에서 열린 김수자의 전시를 고려하면 로버트 모건의 고찰은 예언에 가까운 성격을 갖게 된다. 그로써 ‘보따리’는 지금까지 김수자의 예술 세계에서 인식된 적 없던 또 다른 층위의 의미를 얻는다. 일종의 타임캡슐이 되는 것이다. 앤디 워홀의 〈타임 캡슐(Time Capsules)〉이 지닌 선형적 일시성과 대조적으로, 김수자의 보따리는 시간을 우리의 의식적이고 통제적인 접근을 벗어나는 차원과 연결한다. 김수자는 1997년에 이미 다음과 같이 이에 대해 설명한 바 있다. “시간은 그 물리적 현전을 결코 파악할 수 없는 정신적 공간이다. 우리는 그 공간을 결코 벗어날 수 없다. 원할 때면 언제든 특정한 시간을 회상할 수는 있지만, 그 순간에 맞추어 우리 몸의 위치를 옮길 수는 없다.”

• 2005년 6월 파두츠에서

• 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.

• 김수자의 영상 작업 <빨래하는 여인>(2000)은 관객을 고요한 화면 앞에 세운다. 강물이 화면을 가로질러 흐르고, 그 위로는 보이지 않는 강둑에서 쓸려온 나뭇가지와 풀잎, 꽃, 그리고 쓰레기가 떠내려간다. 화면 위쪽에서는 하얗게 번진 빛과 함께 강이 사라진다. 아마 강 위에 드리워진 아침 햇살인 그 빛은, 델리의 야무나 강가에 빨래하러 나온 이름 모를 인도 여인을 비춘다. 우리는 조금도 움직이지 않는 그의 뒷모습만 바라본다. 화면에서 움직이지 않는 것은 오직 이 여인뿐이다. 얼마 지나지 않아, 관객은 그가 정말 그곳에 있는 것인지 묻게 된다. 어쩌면 어떤 기계적 과정을 거쳐 비디오 테이프 위에 새겨졌거나, 디지털 편집을 통해 삽입된 존재일지도 모른다. 포토샵의 시대에, 과연 진짜라는 것은 있는가? 머리카락 한 올조차 흔들리지 않고, 옷자락에도 바람의 자취는 없다.

• 그러나 그는 여전히 인간이다. 우리의 시선은 자꾸만 단단하게 중심을 채운 여인의 모습으로 되돌아간다. 그는 관객에게 등을 돌린 채 미동도 없이 서 있다. 이는 이른바 뤼켄피구어(Rückenfigur), 즉 화면의 전경에 뒤돌아 있는 인물을 배치하는 기법이자 19세기 초반 유럽 낭만주의 화가들이 즐겨 사용하던 장치의 아시아적 변형이라고 볼 수 있을 것이다. 이는 관객을 회화 속으로 유혹하며, 시선을 이끄는 동시에 화면 가까이로 당긴다. 그리고 관객이 자신을 해당 인물과 견주기 시작할 때, 심지어 그 인물을 자기 자신의 또 다른 모습이나 작품 속에 존재하는 허구적 분신으로 여기게 될 때 그 평면은 점점 사라진다. <빨래하는 여인>은 인물을 영상 속에 정지시킴으로써 이러한 도상학적 장치를 떠올리게 한다. 김수자는 또 다른 무성 영상 작업인 <바늘 여인>(1999-2001)에서도 같은 모티프를 사용한 바 있다. 이 작품에서 작가는 도쿄, 상하이, 델리, 카이로, 라고스, 런던 등 세계 여러 도시의 붐비는 거리 한가운데에서 움직이지 않고 서 있었다. 이러한 행위를 통해 그는 회화와 영상이라는 두 매체의 경계를 흐리게 하는데, 이때 소리의 부재는 그 효과를 한층 더 뚜렷하게 한다.

• 작가는 왜 이러한 매체의 모호함을 감수하는가? 그저 예술이 예술을 다루는, 지겨운 자기반복의 또 다른 예시인가? 아마 이보다는 훨씬 생산적인 목적이 작동하고 있을 것이다. 김수자는 자신의 매체를, 말하자면 존재론적 한계까지 밀어붙인다. 그는 비디오가 더 이상 본래의 특성을 유지할 수 없을 듯한, 이 경우엔 회화로 변모할 듯한 지점까지 확장한다. 작가는 영상을 침묵으로 감싸 소리를 통해 느낄 수 있는 효과를 의도적으로 차단한다. 소리란 비디오를 정지된 시각 매체와 명확히 구별하는 요소이기 때문이다. 물은 멈추지 않고 흐르며, 흐릿한 표면은 왼쪽에서 오른쪽으로 떠다니는 부유물들로 방해받지만, 나는 그것이 강이라는 사실을 재발견하곤 했다. 화면 상단을 가로지르는 하얀 빛은 이미지를 강하게 평면화시키는데, 물속에서 그림자나 깊이가 전혀 느껴지지 않는다는 점이 이를 더욱 분명히 한다. 움직임 없는 인물은 마치 눈보라 속을, 혹은 얇은 장막 너머를 바라보는 듯하지만 물 위를 유유히 떠다니는 수련잎과 식물, 비닐봉지, 그리고 새의 그림자가 그것이 강이라는 사실을 상기시킨다. 지금도 그 장면을 떠올리면 나도 모르게 멀리서 들려오는 새소리, 물방울 소리, 물벌레가 미끄러지는 소리, 보이지 않는 물가 어딘가에서 조용히 밀려오는 물결의 소리 등을 덧입히게 된다. 김수자는 이토록 많은 것을 제거함으로써, 우리로 하여금 더욱 치열하게 바라보게 하고 '보는 행위' 자체를 되묻게 한다. 시각 매체를 한계점까지 밀어붙이는 것을 통해 예술가는 보는 행위의 본질을 시험하고, 특히 매체가 의식의 미묘한 결에 스스로를 잇는 그 희미한 경계를 탐구한다.

• 우리가 어떻게 생각하든, 매체란 결코 고정된 존재가 아니다. 상상력은 그림과 사진, 영상에 생명을 불어넣으며 존재하지 않는 것을 덧붙이고, 존재하는 것을 외면하며 때로는 기대하거나 보고 싶어 했던 것마저 전복한다. 이 사실은 의식의 근본적 매체인 마음에도 적용된다. 마음이란 현실의 확고한 형태나 원리가 새겨진, 돌처럼 단단한 판이 아니다. 오히려 이는 김수자가 영상 속에서 그려낸 물의 표면 그 자체다. 나아가, 마음은 절대 안정적인 것이 아니다. 가장 오래되고 널리 존경받는 불교 경전 중 하나인 『법구경』 은 마음을 “흔들리고 불안하며, 지키기 어렵고도 억제하기 힘든 존재”로 묘사한다. 또한, “마음은 변덕스럽고 가벼워, 원하는 곳이라면 어디든 상념을 좇아 날아간다”고 말한다.[1] 그러나 여러 종교가 통찰하듯, 인간의 가장 큰 문제는 곧 구원의 가장 강력한 수단이 될 수 있다. 마음과 신체는 훈련될 수 있다. 힌두교는 개인의 자아를 더 큰 자아인 아트만(atman)에 비유하는데, 이는 모든 것의 존재이자 본질로서 브라만(Brahman)이라는 궁극적이고 형언할 수 없는 실재를 드러낸다. 기독교에서는 개인적 자아를 그리스도 안에 감춰진 존재로 말하며, 그리스도가 곧 자아의 참된 측면이 된다고 본다(골로새서 3장 3절). 또한 신약의 다른 구절에서는 구원받은 이들을 “하나님의 성품에 참여하는 사람”(베드로후서 1장 4절)이라고 묘사한다.

• 물론 세계의 종교를 하나의 맛으로 녹여내 스튜로 만들어서는 안 된다. 다만 모든 종교가 결국 동일한 주제, 즉 인간이 자기중심성, 고통, 그리고 필멸성과 씨름한다는 사실을 다루므로 서로 다른 종교 전통 사이에서 어느 정도 유사성이 발견되는 것이 놀랍지는 않다. 앞서 언급된 모든 종교에서, 언젠가 죽는 육체에 자리하는 인간의 자아는 구원에 대한 갈망이 시작되는 장소이자, 매우 다른 방식으로나마 그것이 실현되는 곳이기도 하다. 많은 기독교인에게 있어 몸과 마음이란 고통을 그리스도 안 하나님의 현존을 본받는 방식으로 전환하는 것이다. 힌두교에서의 몸과 마음은 요가, 식이 규범, 기도와 의례적 봉헌 등을 통해 신체를 훈련함으로써 고통의 원인을 줄이는 데 관여한다. 『법구경』에 따르면, “욕망의 집착에서 벗어나 평온한 자기 절제력을 지니고, 선악을 초월한 자는 깨어 있으며 두려움이 없다.” 이렇게 불교의 엄격한 수행은 육체의 나약함에 휘둘리지 않도록 마음을 단련하고, 두려움, 욕망, 분노, 무지에서 비롯되는 숱한 집착을 해체하여 자기중심적 자아의 환상을 거두어내는 것에서 출발한다.

• 위 세 종교에 대한 간단한 비교만으로도 우리는 김수자의 비디오, 나아가 종교의 여러 측면을 탐구하거나 예술과 종교 간 유사성을 다루는 오늘날의 수많은 예술 작품을 성찰해볼 수 있다. 서로 다른 종교를 비교할 때와 비슷하게, 중요한 점은 예술을 종교로, 혹은 종교를 예술로 환원하는 일이 아니라 두 영역이 어떤 방식으로 유사하게 작동하는지, 그리고 그것이 요즘의 예술 실천에서 어떤 의미가 있는지 묻는 것이다. 예술은 종교를 대체하는가? 이러한 주장은 새롭지 않다. 19세기 초 독일 철학자 아르투어 쇼펜하우어(Arthur Schopenhauer)는 인간을 고통에서 해방시킬 수 있는 두 가지 초월의 길을 제시했다. 하나는 미적 관조, 다른 하나는 금욕적 삶이었다. 둘 다 그가 ‘의지’라고 부른 것, 즉 우주 만물을 움직이는 맹목적인 충동을 내려놓는 방식이었다. 이 두 가지를 구별해 제시함으로써, 쇼펜하우어는 추후 예술과 종교를 평행하되 동일하지는 않은 실천 영역으로 사유할 기반을 마련하였다.

• 그가 주장하기로, 미적 관조란 의지에 대해 ‘아니’라고 말하는 방식, 곧 의지에서 벗어난 순수한 인식 주체가 되는 길이다. 이는 예술 작품이나 자연의 대상을 의지의 영향력 너머에서 바라보며 사물의 본질, 즉 시간을 초월해 현상 속에 드러난 존재만을 보는 시선이다. 아름다움이란 바로 이 초월적 실재를 경험하는 것이다. 쇼펜하우어는 미적 경험이 작동하는 방식을 다음과 같이 상세히 설명했는데, 이 대목은 길게 인용할 만한 가치가 있다.

• ”사람들이 정신의 힘이 고양됨에 따라 사물에 대한 일상적인 고찰 방식을 포기하고 […] 또한 추상적인 사유, 이성의 개념, 의식을 받아들이지 않고, 이 모든 것 대신에 자기 정신의 모든 힘을 직관에 바치고 이러한 직관에 완전히 사로잡혀, 그것이 풍경, 나무, 암석, 건물 또는 그것이 무엇이든지 간에 이러한 현재의 자연적인 대상에 대한 고요한 관조를 통해 의식 전체를 채운다면, 즉 의미 있는 독일어의 표현에 따르자면, 사람들이 이러한 대상들에 완전히 빠져서, 즉 바로 자신의 개체, 자신의 의지를 잊어버리고 오로지 순수한 주관으로서만, 객관을 비추는 맑은 거울로서만 존재한다면, 대상을 지각하는 그 누구도 없이 대상만이 거기에 있는 것처럼 되고, 따라서 사람들이 더 이상 직관으로부터 직관하는 사람을 구분할 수 없고, 의식 전체가 하나의 유일한 직관적인 상에 의해 완전히 채워지고 받아들여지면서, 양자는 하나가 되어 버린다. 따라서 그런 식으로 대상이 어떤 것에 대한 모든 관계에서 벗어나면, 즉 주관이 의지에 대한 모든 관계에서 벗어나게 되면, 인식되는 것은 더 이상 개별 사물 자체가 아니라 이념, 즉 영원한 형식, 이러한 단계에서의 의지의 직접적인 객관성이다. 그리고 이를 통해 동시에 이러한 직관 속에서 파악되는 것은 더 이상 개체가 아니라 순수하고 의지가 없고 고통이 없으며, 시간과 무관한 인식주관이다.”[2]

• 쇼펜하우어는 이어서 바이런(George Gordon Byron)의 『차일드 해럴드의 순례(Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)』에 언급된 풍경과 영혼의 일체성 체험기와 『우파니샤드(Upanishads)』에서 브라만이 선언한 “이 모든 피조물은 나이고, 나 이외에는 다른 어떤 것도 존재하지 않는다”라는 구절을 인용했다.[3] 『우파니샤드』나 베단타(Vedanta)는 절대자 브라만을 만물의 기원으로서 모든 현상의 이면에 존재하는 불멸의 영혼(아트만)이라고 제시한다. 바로 이 현실이 쇼펜하우어가 미적 경험으로써 달성되는 의식 상태와 동일시한 것이었다. 그러나 예술은 의지를 부정하는 출가자의 방식만큼 영구적이지는 않다. 결국 예술은 종교와 동등하지 않으며, 종교의 일시적인 형태에 불과했다.

• 불교의 특정 종파들은 예술 실천에 중요한 위치를 부여해 왔으며, 회화, 도예, 서예, 꽃꽂이, 원예, 다도 등의 활동을 수행의 명상적 형태로 간주한다. 무언가를 만들고 행하는 것은 마음을 집착에서 벗어나게 하고, 『법구경』이 언급한 산만한 방해 없이 당장의 과업에 온전히 집중하도록 훈련시키는 몰입 활동이 될 수 있다. 그러나 이러한 창조적 명상의 목적을 오해해서는 안 된다. 이는 단순히 ‘예술’을 만드는 또 다른 방식이 아니다. 불교를 고요한 미학이나 유쾌할 정도로 역설적인 재담으로만 바라보려는 이들에 의해 이는 종종 낭만화된다. 이러한 환상 속 불교는 실제 수행의 시험대에 결코 부응하지 못한다. 실천의 중심부에서 불교뿐만 아니라 그 어떤 종교의 겉모습만을 훑어내는 것은 상업과 손잡은 예술이 너무나도 능숙하게 해내는 일이다. 예술가, 큐레이터, 미술사학자들은 때때로 종교를 미학화하는 데 기꺼이 빠져든다. 마치 예술이 경건한 실천이라는 무관한 식물로부터 꺾어낼 꽃인 양, 예술이 종교와 깔끔히 분리될 수 있다는 전제 아래 움직이기 때문이다.

• 김수자의 비디오 속 열 번의 침묵 속에서 우리가 마주하는 건 바로 이것인가? 불교나 힌두교, 혹은 이름 모를 노동자의 일상으로부터 우리 생활 속 시장에서 세계 관광 산업의 한 상품처럼 취급할 만한 보편적 핵심을 골라내라는 요구인가? 작가는 예술이라는 자유주의적 미명 아래 생활세계의 그림 같은 외피를 벗겨내고, 그와 무관한 내부를 흘러가는 강물에 내던지라고 권하는가? 지칠 줄 모르고 탐욕을 부리는 소비자들의 자아 구성을 위해서라면 무엇이든 상품화되는 초자본주의 시대에, 이들은 중대한 질문이 된다. 정녕 성스러운 것은 없는가? 시장이 대답한 바로는, 그 무엇도 신성하지 않다.

• 엘리자베스 브라운(Elizabeth Brown)의 도록 에세이에 따르면, 강가에 있는 인물은 빨래하는 여인이 아니라 작가 자신이다.[4] 또한, 작가는 수년간의 바느질 경험을 바탕으로 <바늘여인>에도 출연했다. 따라서 이 영상들은 민족지학적 기록이 아니다. 김수자가 브라운에게 말했듯이, <빨래하는 여인>은 탁한 강 물결 위로 흘러가는 힌두교 장례 의식의 흔적을 바라보며 인간의 운명을 고찰하는 모습을 보여주는 작업이다. 작가는 예술 작품을 말 그대로 자신을 타인의 위치에 투사하는 방식으로 구성하며, 관객이 자신의 뒤를 따르도록 한다. 이를 통해 그는 힌두교나 불교가 진단한 인간의 상황이 예술 실천의 엄밀함 속에서도 유효하다는 믿음을 지킨다. 작가는 이 둘을 구분하는 경계가 모호해졌다고 생각한 듯하다. 김수자가 참여한 는 웹사이트에 나와 있듯 불교를 종교로 이해할 필요 없이 마음의 과학으로 보는 프로젝트였는데, 그 원칙은 불교도가 아니더라도 예술 작품에 생산적으로 적용해볼 수 있는 내용이었다.[5]

• 인간 의식에 대한 불교의 분석이 만약 예술 실천과 놀랍도록 유사한 예리한 통찰을 낳는다면, 예술가들이 불교도, 혹은 힌두교도, 기독교도, 조로아스터교도처럼 행동하는 것은 문화를 표면적으로 차용한 것에 불과한가? 쇼펜하우어 철학에 대한 간략한 탐구가 시사하듯, 예술의 독립적인 계시력과 예술적 천재성의 자율성을 확립하려는 현대적 프로젝트는 미적 경험이 인간 의식 기저의 구조에서 비롯된다는 점에서 종교적 경험과 유사하게 체화되는 작용이라고 단호히 주장한다. 예술과 마찬가지로, 종교는 그 본연의 방식으로 존재하는데 이는 인간 활동으로서 구축된 심신의 본성 때문이다. 그러나 쇼펜하우어는 예술을 종교로 보지 않았다. 그는 예술을 삶을 설명하는 방식이나 그 고통의 치료제가 아니라, 위안으로 간주했다. 예술은 세계를 무관심하게, 미적으로 바라본 결과에 불과하다. 따라서 예술은 종교보다 무언가를 더욱 정확히 파악한다고 주장할 수 없으며, 그 반대도 마찬가지다. 그들은 그저 다른 방식으로 바라볼 뿐이다.

• 위 내용이 어느 정도 일리가 있더라도, 김수자는 자신의 영상에서 힌두교도나 불교도처럼 행동하지 않는다. 그는 한국에서 태어났지만 실제로 불교적 신앙 생활을 하지는 않는다. 앞서 언급한 바와 같이, 이 영상은 스스로를 한 점의 고요한 회화적 존재로 깎아내림으로써 안개 낀 호수 앞 사색에 잠긴 시인이 나오는 한국 및 중국 수묵화를 떠올리게 한다. 그러나 귀족 출신 시인을 평범한 노동자로 바꿔놓기도 하는데, 이는 아마 깨달음이란 시인이나 예술가만의 것이 아니라 모두의 것임을 말하기 위함일 테다. <빨래하는 여인>은 관객 그 누구라도 지속적인 응시 행위 속에 몰입할 수 있게 한다. 이 상태에서 의식은 지각의 대상으로 가득 차 보는 것에 대해 더 이상 생각하지 않고, 그 자체가 되어 생각하게 된다. 이는 쇼펜하우어가 이성적 지식 또는 이성의 기본 구조로 규정한 주체-객체 구분을 극복한 것이기도 하다. 모든 종교뿐만 아니라 해변을 거니는 이의 고정된 시선에서도 발견되는 이 몰입 상태 내에서, 자아와 그 작은 고통의 영역은 더없이 행복하게 사라져 버린다.

• 느리게 움직이는 이 시야에는 단 하나의 프레임만이 존재하는데, 이는 부유물과 잔잔한 소용돌이에 의해 끝없이 관통당한다. 우리의 마음은 화면 바깥의 세계, 즉 지나가는 사물과 반짝이다 사라지는 반사광을 통해 간신히 추측할 수 있는 세계로 향한다. 통제되지 않는 수준에서 인간의 의식이란 단지 이 하나의 프레임, 다시 말해 여러 사건이 뒤엉킨 혼돈 위에 덧씌워진 연약한 장치에 불과하다. 그러나 예술과 명상이 추구하는 응시의 수련은 관객을 멈춰 세우고 침묵 속에 머물게 함으로써, 인간의 작은 틀 속에서 형태를 갖추어 가는 세계를 발견하게 한다. 잘 알려진 설법에서 부처가 말했듯이, “한 길 정도의 이 덧없는 몸 안에서 나는 세계와 세계의 탄생, 세계의 소멸, 그리고 세계의 소멸로 이끄는 길을 본다.”[6] 고통의 도구는 고통을 끝내는 도구이기도 한 것이다.

• 수백만 명의 사람들에게 부처는 더 높은 단계의 환생을 이루고 궁극적 해탈을 향하는 데 도움을 주는 신성한 존재로 숭배되므로, 불교는 분명히 종교다. 그러나 다른 이들에게 불교적 명상은 본질적으로 마음의 과학일 뿐 종교가 아니다. 후자에겐 오히려 예술 창작과 감상이 비종교적 명상의 형태로 작용할 수 있다. 오늘날 많은 예술가가 원하는 바보다 예술과 삶을 더 엄격히 구분했을지라도, 쇼펜하우어는 예술이 삶을 바라보는 하나의 방식이라고 여겼다. 그런 의미에서 예술은 명상처럼 작동하는 특별한 형태의 의식이며, 우리로 하여금 삶을 단순하게 하고 두려움과 욕망이 우리를 붙잡아두는 힘을 완화하도록 가르친다. 이러한 예술은 우리를 구원하지 못한다. 이는 종교가 아니다. 그러나 명상과 같이, 명확히 바라보는 데에는 도움이 된다.

• 예술은 그 순간적 깨달음 속에서 오랫동안 지속되지 못할 수도 있다. 내가 지금까지 말하고자 한 바와 같이, 예술의 임무는 종교의 임무와 다르기 때문이다. 예술은 감각적인 사고, 즉 체화되거나 감각 중심적인 인지라고 불릴 수 있는 것이다. 예술은 지각의 영역을 가득히 채우는 감각 내에서 사고하며, 우리가 실로 모든 경험에 적용하는 생각과 감정의 층위를 변화 및 심화시키려 한다. 종교 역시 초월을 다루지만, 그 궁극적 목표는 우리를 이 세상에서든, 다음 세상에서든 그곳에 머물게 하는 데 있다. 이처럼 비슷한 내용을 고려할 때, 종교가 이 이유나 다른 여러 이유로 예술을 항상 활용해 왔다는 점이나 예술가가 자신의 창작과 종교 신자의 방식으로부터 흥미로운 유사점을 발견한다는 점은 놀랍지 않다. 그러나 그 두 가지는 서로 바뀔 수 있는 것이 아니다. 김수자는 우리를 믿도록 하려는 것이 아니라, 더 나은 관찰자로 만들려는 것이다.

• 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.