7th seminar – Kim Shinjae (producer/curator)

The production process that determines a work’s conditions and environment only becomes part of the work when the final product is placed in a specific location, beyond the creator’s hands. In terms of art, “production” involves breaking through the given time and financial conditions, to engage in the process of creation and formation. During this intense process, the creator comes across multiple assistants whose roles change according to the circumstances. Also within the production process,  are concerns related to distribution even after the work leaves its designated place. I believe that the best way to maintain and endure the long, arduous production process, is by specifying each person’s role. This leads to discussions on credits and benefits—for which documentation is essential—should we want our  promises to be effective. 

– Miji Lee (DCW 2022)

Methods and situations that we are familiar with, are the results of our forerunners’ endeavors. Good examples and systems are established through trial and error, and other challenging processes. In this seminar, a pioneering producer/curator working on the boundaries of art and film and video production, explained how some of the fascinating video artworks I had seen in exhibitions were produced, and how the industry operates. Discussions about the role of video production in art were particularly relevant to me. I’ve held vague questions about such boundaries while watching pieces that experiment with movies, moving images, and the media. I gained a more detailed understanding of how themes, expression methods, and the flow of the video change according to the production crew’s field of expertise. It prompted me to think once more about the definition of credits and collaboration, which I have always been interested in. I learned that even the roles of creators, such as artists, curators, and producers, change for each project, and how multiple roles can be respected in collaboration without causing conflict.

– Min Ah Lee (DCW 2022)

I thought about unnamed acts. In giving an action a name, we validate or find justification for it. How then, does a nameless movement account for its own motion, and from where does it find its pretext? Film, art, and performing arts are no longer strictly divided in the current industry, where each field goes by several names. In the field of art, a producer  is an unfamiliar profession which lacks a precise definition. However, this does not only apply to “producers.” The same can be said of “curators.” Today, the single term “curator” is intersected by numerous names: curator as author,  curator as administrator, curator as critic, and so on. Various activities all starting from a single word. Actions that do not fall under a single name. Countless art laborers exist in that unbridgeable space. Rather than confining oneself within the frame of a name, it’s important to pay attention to the movement omitted from that frame. The name may follow thereafter. We must take cues from the history of art and keep searching for scenes that do not fit to a form—in short, create form from content.

– Minjoo Lee (DCW 2022)