Art Publishing/Editing

Yeji Hong (DCW 2021)

1. Editing as a Form of Engineering 

For the art critic and director of Rasun Press Hanbum Lee, art publishing and editing are rooted in critical writing and cannot exist without criticism. Lee understands editing in art writing as a form of “engineering” since he's been experiencing that editing and publishing play an important role in identifying and solving art-related problems. Rather than finding the solutions in works of art alone, one must consider the unique relationship between art and society. He expressed his wish that a variety of engineering is emerged as people understand different approaches are possible depending on what is considered as an issue in art and how to solve it. For this seminar, Lee guided the discussion to focus on the “functions of editing” rather than on the professional identity of the editor, stating that it is possible to present the unique traits of art in the all-inclusive cultural medium of "book" through the process of editing. He shared his cases to demonstrate how he developed the critical perspective in various publications.

Lee found his start in art publishing as the editor of the video art criticism magazine Okulo. The magazine questioned and analyzed the artistic practices and problems of the time. While working on Okulo, Lee started to think about the meaning of criticism and its status in art, beginning to see the art scene and system from multiple angles and to feel its dynamics through practices of criticism. Lee believes that criticism is the practice of investigating a subject and the process of eventually “getting to know” the subject by perceiving it from all angles. We could understand that his practices which are critically archiving and editing the magazine as being charmed by the process of knowing, are a way to deal with, respond to, and intervene in art. Lee later worked as an editor at mediabus, where he learned about the overall process of designing and producing art books. The process of editing a publication, including the post-publication stages of distribution and sales, is essentially the process of “designing the life of a thing called a book”. This is why it is important to think about the life cycle of the book from its initial planning stages. However, at the same time that they should consider every part of the life cycle, editors should also allow publications, as things, to exist beyond their control. 

Editing without thinking critically produces results that are trite and irrelevant to the subject. Critical thinking underlies the practice of giving shape to one’s subject of study. This requires an accurate understanding of the subject and the ability to select the most appropriate structures and arrangements for it. Therefore, Lee invests the most time in understanding a subject, only beginning to edit a publication when he has a full view of its characteristics. In the first stage of the process of understanding, he aims to take all aspects of the subject into account, and in the editing stage, he chooses which of those aspects he will reproduce. In short, it is important to first accept the fact that it is impossible to reproduce all aspects of a subject. In the seminar, Lee also compared the practices of curators and editors, saying that curators design temporary yet multilayered spaces while editors design spaces formed by pages and the external places that the books will eventually reach. When art is made into a book, editors must decide on the content strata—including artworks, projects, text, exhibitions, and systems (museums)—and create a detailed layout for each section.

2. Rasun Press Publications  

Lee introduced books published by Rasun Press one by one, explaining the concept and the focus in editing each project. For Minha Park’s Dust Devil and the Secret Lake (2020) and Youngzoo Im’s Myself and Human (2021), he searched for ways to convey critical messages about high-tech science by using images and text written through three-dimensional thinking. Interestingly, he classified the books into different categories—young adult fiction and tech criticism, respectively—when assigning their ISBN numbers after considering the motive of each project. It demonstrates the careful deliberation Lee takes when making editing decisions, considering how the final product should approach a specific group of readers and with what nuance and gestures. He also introduced How to Move the House (2020) and The Ghost House (2019) as well as Rasun Press’s collaborations with the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and Hezuk Press. Through these case studies, we were able to learn how questioning and experimenting with conventional custom in art publishing can yield interesting results and spawn knowledge that is contextually different from that produced by exhibitions and artworks themselves. From a curatorial perspective, the seminar was a chance to evaluate the effectiveness of art publishing and editing via the notions of “making a room for books” and “connecting to critical thinking.”