The conversation is presented here as both an alternative form of exhibition review and as an invitation – no, encouragement -- for our visitors to initiate similar extended dialogues on the InLiquid message forum. We hope readers will continue this "review" of Lee Bul's work by responding with their own commentary.

Richard:
I have a few thoughts about the Lee Bul installation that we saw at the Fabric Workshop last month. Before I discuss my thoughts about her current work, the "Live Forever" capsules, I wanted to relate to you some of my research into her earlier works.

Lee Bul’s early transgressive performances involved a masquerade costume that she wore in public, in Korea and Japan. The strange octopus-like tendrils emanating from her body were both grotesque and sexual in character. They challenged both standards of beauty and the notion of the importance of the secrecy of sexuality in a patriarchal culture. The monster-like nature of her appearance also referenced the pop culture phenomenon of Pokemon. After these works, she began to explore the concept of the Cyborg. These sculptures seemed to point in a more spectacular way to how various media forms have fed back to us what our future will look like. While referencing traditional plaster or marble sculpture in appearance, they have the look of futuristic. They are not as surprising or confrontational as her earlier work.

The latest work, the three plastic sound Karaoke capsules in a room with three video screens, seems to further her impersonal, spectacular vision. With reflection, I am still not sure whether they are straightforward unimaginative science fiction or a satire on how we as a culture think the future will be. As straightforward works of art, they seem to exemplify everything I find alarmingly stupid about future-oriented thought. The reliance and fetishism of technology to solve our problems and provide us with guidance and inspiration is such a short sighted, patriarchal idea. Good science fiction speaks volumes of the problems of rampant technology and how the absence of a connection with nature will doom our planet. Lee Bul’s fantasy world was devoid of nature, and the technology created was entertaining in only the most limited way.

What interests me about the work was how it bridged the gap between high art and entertainment. Yet it seems to reverse the communal act of Karaoke, by having the singing participant isolated from the group. To reinforce our isolation seems to be a cynical, irresponsible artistic gesture.

Melissa:
I don't know about her earlier work so my comments may seem naive or uninformed, but this whole stereotypical projection of future based design begs introspection. The reaching out in tendril like fashion you mentioned from an earlier piece turns in on itself. Unfortunately, rather than opening in upon vistas "yet unimagined" (and maybe this is the ultimate point....that we can't imagine it and therefore can't create it) we find overplayed replayed repeated and secluded, or enclosed from the outer environ. This naturally summons the subconscious, those memories, habits, and patterns we play out repeat and get caught in until they are worn out or "broken," which is what we encountered in our participation in the exhibit, that the Karaoke vehicle we entered was no longer functional as it was intended to be. Its funny, we waited so long to get in there and were disappointed to find it didn't work anymore....which is something you inevitably find any time you pierce the surface of your own "shell" psyche with the intention of changing or improving or just getting to know yourself.

Richard:
I do think it is important to consider what the videos on the wall of the room of Lee Bul's installation were trying to do. One was a couple dancing, somewhat artistically choppy and almost rhythmic. Another was the view inside a car of the windshield looking at the road, the car was speeding down an urban highway. I don't recall what the third one was. I think of these images as akin to white noise, a kind of sound to help you sleep. But importantly, these images I feel prevent introspection, instead providing a kind of optical sewer, a plethora of images that lead nowhere. I think that was the point of the images, to prevent personal introspection, to prevent analysis of the piece, while you were in it. Possibly, to keep one’s "suspension of disbelief" going. To keep the mindless quality of nostalgia going, these images produced a kind of visual pablum. A sad use of technology indeed.

To consider the whole phenomenon of Karaoke is too large for our discussion. Especially since this experience is probably culturally coded, different for Americans and Asians. I have never actually been in a Karaoke bar, or done Karaoke at a party. I think it is very popular in Japan. So it is impossible for me to compare Lee Bul's privatized Karaoke machines with a public performance. The closest parallel is that I do like singing with popular songs in my car while I am driving. But the larger issue of Americans solo commuting to work is ecologically and socially devastating. Again, except for the momentary personal pleasure of hearing my own voice singing a song, I can't find much positive about Lee Bul's "Live Forever" installation.

Melissa:
So I am sitting in the temple and I think, what if there are no words and no screen (showing us the same images and lyrics we all are familiar with) but just the individual voices of the individuals encased in the whatcha macallits....I know I enjoyed making sounds and hearing them pass through the reverberation echo thingy, OK maybe I enjoyed it too much, but I think I would have enjoyed it even more if every one else could hear. Truly a cacophony of individual voice expressions. That's not to say that the exhibit was lacking this....that its pondering has come up as a result tells me it was a success.

But why three?

And why does what's going on inside auditorily have to be projected outside in written words? And what about the chosen imagery? It was interesting (oh god the "interesting" thing!!! No no -- not that word) and boring at the same time....maybe we sat in there too long. If we were alone going in there and it was empty of others the experience would have been radically altered. I felt like the videos were "techy," passed through various filters and distortions and movements; as I am a video artist I know how alluringly "fun" that can be, also distracting though. However, let's assume she has some intention here....the dancing one for instance, dancing spinning is an altered state-inducing experience the camera as well here or the movements created through computer editing allow a three dimensional and multi-perspective approach. So we are in a car traveling forward but we are also spinning and dancing but seeing the whole thing from a location outside ourselves. Which brings me back to something else that has come up and that is the spectacle. Inside the Karaoke machine we are secluded but also on display as there are windows, portals to the interior. Maybe the videos themselves draw you away from introspection as they are exterior illusions for viewing pleasure yet are you saying they repelled you in their lack of criticality? And if they have no seeming purpose then why view them at all, or include them for that matter, which brings me back to the no screen thing, but maybe you don't want to go there. So garbage, why view that, don't want to see it, better to look inside the car at what transpires there. How can we really know the point unless we include Lee in this conversation, that would be enlightening indeed.

Richard:
I think it would be interesting to include Lee Bul in our discussion, but don't really know how. Maybe I will try her web site at leebul.com. I don't really understand your no screen idea. Could you explain it further? I like what you said about putting the individual on display (the spectacle) by having a window into the cubicle in which people outside can see them. Moreover, they are at the wheel of a sporty car, ooo-lala. What could be more thrilling?! The whole car showroom feel was disturbing, but was it a good disturbance of not expecting a car showroom to be an art site? Or a bad disturbance of trying to push a consumer' buttons by introducing the appeal of new car buying, at this point in history, [as being] one of the more destructive enterprises that many of us participate in? I am inclined to feel that it is a negative attribute to be linked to a car showroom. I didn't see any critique of the environmentally destructive end of technology in Lee Bul's work. As to the videos, I was neither attracted nor repelled by them. They excited no emotion other then boredom. I am critical of them because they did not work as an experience of movement. Maybe the car's movement and the dancer's movement were supposed to parallel each other, but I did not feel it worked. There is so much visual detritus, I don't see the need for more. Do you think the ultimate fact that the technology didn't work was intentional or accidental? I mean, in the end, do you think the work is a pointed satire of our desires for everlasting peace, or a straight attempt at recreation?

Melissa:
Makes me think of the spectacle of dancing and people watching from around, also watching from the dance floor as they themselves are dancing around. Seeing people singing when they are driving usually evokes a smile or laugh, looking out while you are driving and singing as the outside loses importance because you are wrapped up in the ecstasy of song/music. So now I am thinking this work is really all about the inner experience of the viewer, the inner experience of the subject and not the objects themselves at all, but the inner experience of us all as we are engaged in listening, singing, or dancing to music in these different locations....when do we really feel comfortable losing ourselves in music? Does being watched hinder our ability to express our inner feeling in response to the music we feel/hear? What are acceptable or appropriate expressions of that? The ecstasy of dance is diverted into "popular dance" steps, we don't feel as self-conscious because everyone dances the same way, knows the same moves....I'd like to hear your comment on this in particular. I am thinking it is about escapism, [and] as for the screen....all the concepts, notions, past ideas, memories, judgments, and (oooh) CRITIQUES we project upon the world. Art seems to me at this point something else to project upon, I am thinking it is better if there is nothing to project upon....hence no screen. But the screen is more than the screen in actuality, you understand. The screen is really everything we think about and anything that moves or doesn't move, what we react to. what we see and think is "out there," apart from us, what we think and feel and think is "in here" part of us and our experience. Our own minds are screens, which brings me to something else I will not get into unless maybe we get Lee involved and it comes to that. Makes it kind of a cosmic joke on us, or am I just projecting? ha. If it does not strike you as relevant, which, correct me if I am wrong, you seem to be saying for you it was irrelevant, then why even critique it? The critique then becomes dissatisfaction expressing dissatisfaction, and I see us both having done that in a way.....you were dissatisfied with the whole piece and I am dissatisfied by art work as "screen," and the "projectors" as so many viewers.

Richard:
It seems the more we discuss Lee Bul's work, the more we discuss ourselves. Which I think is an interesting starting point for a dialogue. As to your point about the acceptability of our public or private dance, I feel the whole piece was too acceptable, too mainstreamed, too conscious of itself as putting people on display in an appropriate way. In a sense, that is part of my criticism of this piece, that all this time and money was expended, for what? More of the same!

I do disagree to some extent with your last point which I read as a deconstruction of the whole genre of criticism. I think we can better explore the relevance of a work by a critical dialog. It’s important for us, and possibly starts others thinking about the relevance of the experience of Lee Bul's installation.

Melissa:
We are always only ever talking about ourselves anyway....But I don't see how you got that from what I wrote....I was talking about the "screen." You are critical of my critical eye. Critically critical of my critically critical criticism I guess it’s hard to recognize in that form/formless.

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