Seminar Ⅹ - Geumhyung Jeong (Artist)

Geumhyung Jeong, the host of the workshop, took on the role of bystander more than an orchestrator. She had us take turns in freely altering the arrangement of objects easily found in an office storage room. Before deciding how to move, we deliberated over each object’s position, arrangement, and relative orientation. Despite the moves being arbitrary, we were conscious of the sculptural quality of the objects and their combined mass. In retrospect, Jeong’s intent may have been to allow us to assiduously observe the objects and their positioning over a prolonged period, thereby discovering certain internal and external patterns within. The process of repeatedly rearranging a limited number of objects eventually led us to points of creative limit, at each of which we tried to make a breakthrough by imitating, varying, and tweaking one another’s decisions—making irregular moves while still abiding by the framework set by the artist. I understood this workshop as Jeong’s performance theory itself.

- Seunga You (DCW 2023)

Artist Geumhyung Jeong challenged the existing frame of the Doosan Curator Workshop and invited us to participate in an exercise that precedes her works. The seminar room at Doosan Gallery was temporarily repurposed to serve as a studio to accommodate this special form of workshop. Jeong presented us with hints as to the kind of relationship she forges with her work tools—movement, course of movement, touch, and scenario—as she encouraged us to use our bodies. This workshop enabled the three participating curators, who had only experienced Jeong’s works through text or as viewers at exhibitions, to physically internalize her art-making process. While forming active and passive gestures within the frame of conditions proposed by the artist and repeatedly manipulating the tools to physically sense the variations of their arrangement, it felt as if I were digesting the essence of the artist’s practice. 
The workshop, structured to circulate the relationship sequentially forged between the provided tools and our bodies, ultimately provided an insight into our mutual understanding of each other and our positionalities. It almost felt like a rehearsal of sorts in which the three curators, who would eventually collaborate on the exhibitions at the end of the ten workshops, became acquainted with one another. 

- Sangyeop Rhii (DCW 2023)

Geumhyung Jeong’s workshop was the first in the series to encourage the direct use of our bodies. Pushing the desks in the seminar room aside, we made room for a stage and brought out a ladder, broom set, pull cart, garbage bag, and a safety helmet from the office storage. The workshop took on a deceptively simple structure in which participants took turns to rearrange the objects. As the number of objects was limited, so was the range of possible arrangements. By placing my own body as an additional object on the stage, I myself could intervene in the sequence of events. Participants would either follow the rules of the stage as imposed by the artist, or attempt to actively modify the scene, at times even disrupting the system itself. The new rules set in the process of repeating certain patterns opened new chapters in the changing sequence of events. Such an unfolding of actions allowed us to tangibly grasp the concept of a “structure obtained without external intervention” as applied to the artist’s past exhibitions and performances. 
The exercise on the three-dimensional stage was followed by a tabletop game called Rulemaking. Participants were presented with a flat plane with randomly placed objects and were asked to take turns moving the objects around while identifying a pattern. Continuing to follow or disrupt the implied pattern, they revealed the imagined rules in their minds explicitly at times and clandestine at others. 
This workshop was meaningful in that it allowed us to understand the operative system behind Jeong’s performances by interacting with, observing, and analyzing other participants, all while the artist remained a bystander. Moreover, it was the most fun I had in a while.

- Jieon Lee (DCW 2023)