Lee Hangjun is arguably the only practitioner of South Korean avant-garde cinema since the 2000s ... more Lee Hangjun is arguably the only practitioner of South Korean avant-garde cinema since the 2000s whose works have increasingly gained attention not only at the local level but also in international experimental film cultures and contemporary art venues. His multiprojection films have been handled and distributed by Light Cone. His works—based on the various artisanal methods of expanded cinema, including manual and chemical processing of film stocks, improvisational realtime manipulation of projectors or filmstrips, and collaborations with avant-garde musicians—have been presented in Korea, Canada, the UK, France, and Belgium. These numerous presentations during the last few years have not simply included venues for the screening of avant-garde films but also galleries. Given that they are intended to highlight the presence of the cinematic apparatus, spectators, and the projectionist within different contexts of performance and viewing, Lee’s projects are also seen as pertaining to expanded cinema’s prolonged association with “liveness, ‘immediacy,’ an emphasis on ‘primary experience,’ and the directness of viewing.”
『인문예술잡지 F』 제9호. 2013년 봄호
"일반적으로
게이트는 ‘공간으로 진입하기 위한 통로’이다. 영사기 속 게이트는 필름 스트립(film strip)의 연속된 프레임이... more 『인문예술잡지 F』 제9호. 2013년 봄호 "일반적으로 게이트는 ‘공간으로 진입하기 위한 통로’이다. 영사기 속 게이트는 필름 스트립(film strip)의 연속된 프레임이 한 프레임씩 안정적으로 넘어가도록 고정시켜주고, 프레임의 경계를 형성한다. 스크린에 영사되는 이미지의 경계, 다시 말해 이미지의 범위와 비율이 게이트에 의해 결정된다. 영사기 속 게이트에 이상이 있거나 혹은 게이트를 제거할 때 발생하는 기계적 오류를 우리는 “필름이 흐른다.”라고 한다. 영사기 게이트는 극장에서 영화 공간으로 관객의 의식이 진입하는 통로 역할을 하며, 우리가 볼 수 있는 것과 없는 것, 또는 보아야 할 것과 보지 말아야 할 것을 규정한다. 호르헤 로렌소의 말처럼 ‹필름 누아르›에서 프레임의 경계는 결국 관객에 의해 결정되는 것이다."
To begin with, as we understand from a remote place like Seoul, there have been two different con... more To begin with, as we understand from a remote place like Seoul, there have been two different conceptions of materiality in the Western experimental film history: materiality of cinema and of film. The former has been represented by the practitioners of the so-called the " Expanded Cinema " and the latter by the tradition of the " Handmade " film. Whereas for the Expanded Cinema, the materiality or the " medium-specificity " includes not only the film material but also the entire condition and environment in which the cinematic experience is situated (i.e.: screen, projector, audience and theatre); for the Handmade film, it is the whole filmic process prior to the screening in front of the audience (i.e.: hand-processing and optical-printing). The two practices share in the materialist turn that opens up the radical possibilities of aesthetic (and even political) interventions into a process previously considered seamless and transparent. What can be called to attention through the materialist turn includes the aesthetic-institutional process in the projection-spectator relation and the (non-) representational process in film-making. Moreover, these interventions bring their own temporalities back to those processes, and this returning emancipates the temporalities from their subordination to the cinema-as-commodity. Hangjun Lee is a film-based artist whose practice is concerned with Handmade Film and Experimental Cinema. Given these interests, Lee questions the linkage between materiality and temporality. This was his preoccupation around 2006, the time at which he started to collaborate with Chulki Hong, the noise improviser. The improvisational nature of their audiovisual performances opened means of detouring from the conventional editing techniques. Their collaboration also afforded critical investigations into the performativity of the practices in both the darkroom and the screening room, as well as in the private recording/practicing studio, and public performance spaces for the improvising musician. In fact, it was a kind of common interest shared by both us from the outset. In our collaboration, we avoid sacrificing/ concealing/minimizing one form of performativity (the performative nature and temporality of compositional process) for the sake of the other (i.e. those in improvisational and executional process). In the field of experimental music and sound, this kind of approach has been comprehensively called " cracking " or " hacking ". The concepts are finely formulated in the coinage of " Cracked Everyday Electronics " (by Voice Crack) or more generally " Handmade Electronic Music " (by Nicolas Collins). 1 And this was a pure but perhaps necessary coincidence. the original title of the work of our collaboration and, retrospectively, of the set of our working principles at the same time, " The Cracked Share " was named by Lee after Georges Bataille's masterwork, The Accursed Share, with the substitution of the adjective with " Cracked " as a synonym for 'reticulated' in the photographic image.
On one of the 4th of Julys, i.e., Independence Day, sometime around the mid 2000s, during my stay... more On one of the 4th of Julys, i.e., Independence Day, sometime around the mid 2000s, during my stay in the U.S., I went to a local park at night to see fireworks with my families and friends. The park was packed with people, either sitting in their portable chairs or simply lying on the grass, and they were enjoying the show. Often lasting for thirty minutes, the fireworks finally reached its climax and started shooting up everything into the air with blasting sound. Then, all of a sudden, a baby caught people’s attention as he began crying hysterically. As it turned out, he cried as he was terrified by the fireworks’ blinding explosions as well as the huge noise. As we know from the stories by those who suffer from PTSD, say, veterans who came back from war fronts or rape victims haunted by voices reminiscent of rapists, however, the baby cried less because he was a baby than because he had a hard time telling if it was a show or a real event (e.g. a series of explosions or machine gun firing during air raid). I came to ruminate on this dormant episode and mull over its implications intensely after I watched/listened to Phantom School Army [Phantom hereafter]. South Korea’s trailblazing avantgarde filmmaker and performer Hangjun Lee’s most recent work to date, Phantom is a remarkable work of art as it blinds, if momentarily, viewers with a series of flashes while bombarding audiences with noise-induced sound blast. What’s more striking is that this literally vertiginous audiovisual performance work addresses Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), one of South Korea’s dark historical traumas whose immediate aftermath (the number of casualties overall is estimated to reach 10,000) and long-term repercussions in effectively establishing the ‘red scare’ or anticommunism proved vital, or rather, lethal to many lives as well as the egalitarian imaginary in post-war South Korea. To those who knew Lee’s work solely from the perspective of putatively ‘pure’ experimental vein, however “materialist” it aspires to be, this engagement with such a historic event could come as a surprise. Conversely, for those whom ‘experimental cinema’ means nothing less than a vacuous audiovisual acrobatics in the name of the so-called ‘aesthetic experiments’, the abovementioned description of Phantom alone serves to discredit its practical value: in what sense does this non-narrative performative film work relate to the actual historical event? Is this not another proof of artwork’s irrelevance to the so-called ‘real’ world? Hence the following questions: how do these elements relate to one another? How does a performative film work reconcile its performative aesthetic dimension with the heavyweight historical trauma without sacrificing either pole?
Lee Hangjun is arguably the only practitioner of South Korean avant-garde cinema since the 2000s ... more Lee Hangjun is arguably the only practitioner of South Korean avant-garde cinema since the 2000s whose works have increasingly gained attention not only at the local level but also in international experimental film cultures and contemporary art venues. His multiprojection films have been handled and distributed by Light Cone. His works—based on the various artisanal methods of expanded cinema, including manual and chemical processing of film stocks, improvisational realtime manipulation of projectors or filmstrips, and collaborations with avant-garde musicians—have been presented in Korea, Canada, the UK, France, and Belgium. These numerous presentations during the last few years have not simply included venues for the screening of avant-garde films but also galleries. Given that they are intended to highlight the presence of the cinematic apparatus, spectators, and the projectionist within different contexts of performance and viewing, Lee’s projects are also seen as pertaining to expanded cinema’s prolonged association with “liveness, ‘immediacy,’ an emphasis on ‘primary experience,’ and the directness of viewing.”
『인문예술잡지 F』 제9호. 2013년 봄호
"일반적으로
게이트는 ‘공간으로 진입하기 위한 통로’이다. 영사기 속 게이트는 필름 스트립(film strip)의 연속된 프레임이... more 『인문예술잡지 F』 제9호. 2013년 봄호 "일반적으로 게이트는 ‘공간으로 진입하기 위한 통로’이다. 영사기 속 게이트는 필름 스트립(film strip)의 연속된 프레임이 한 프레임씩 안정적으로 넘어가도록 고정시켜주고, 프레임의 경계를 형성한다. 스크린에 영사되는 이미지의 경계, 다시 말해 이미지의 범위와 비율이 게이트에 의해 결정된다. 영사기 속 게이트에 이상이 있거나 혹은 게이트를 제거할 때 발생하는 기계적 오류를 우리는 “필름이 흐른다.”라고 한다. 영사기 게이트는 극장에서 영화 공간으로 관객의 의식이 진입하는 통로 역할을 하며, 우리가 볼 수 있는 것과 없는 것, 또는 보아야 할 것과 보지 말아야 할 것을 규정한다. 호르헤 로렌소의 말처럼 ‹필름 누아르›에서 프레임의 경계는 결국 관객에 의해 결정되는 것이다."
To begin with, as we understand from a remote place like Seoul, there have been two different con... more To begin with, as we understand from a remote place like Seoul, there have been two different conceptions of materiality in the Western experimental film history: materiality of cinema and of film. The former has been represented by the practitioners of the so-called the " Expanded Cinema " and the latter by the tradition of the " Handmade " film. Whereas for the Expanded Cinema, the materiality or the " medium-specificity " includes not only the film material but also the entire condition and environment in which the cinematic experience is situated (i.e.: screen, projector, audience and theatre); for the Handmade film, it is the whole filmic process prior to the screening in front of the audience (i.e.: hand-processing and optical-printing). The two practices share in the materialist turn that opens up the radical possibilities of aesthetic (and even political) interventions into a process previously considered seamless and transparent. What can be called to attention through the materialist turn includes the aesthetic-institutional process in the projection-spectator relation and the (non-) representational process in film-making. Moreover, these interventions bring their own temporalities back to those processes, and this returning emancipates the temporalities from their subordination to the cinema-as-commodity. Hangjun Lee is a film-based artist whose practice is concerned with Handmade Film and Experimental Cinema. Given these interests, Lee questions the linkage between materiality and temporality. This was his preoccupation around 2006, the time at which he started to collaborate with Chulki Hong, the noise improviser. The improvisational nature of their audiovisual performances opened means of detouring from the conventional editing techniques. Their collaboration also afforded critical investigations into the performativity of the practices in both the darkroom and the screening room, as well as in the private recording/practicing studio, and public performance spaces for the improvising musician. In fact, it was a kind of common interest shared by both us from the outset. In our collaboration, we avoid sacrificing/ concealing/minimizing one form of performativity (the performative nature and temporality of compositional process) for the sake of the other (i.e. those in improvisational and executional process). In the field of experimental music and sound, this kind of approach has been comprehensively called " cracking " or " hacking ". The concepts are finely formulated in the coinage of " Cracked Everyday Electronics " (by Voice Crack) or more generally " Handmade Electronic Music " (by Nicolas Collins). 1 And this was a pure but perhaps necessary coincidence. the original title of the work of our collaboration and, retrospectively, of the set of our working principles at the same time, " The Cracked Share " was named by Lee after Georges Bataille's masterwork, The Accursed Share, with the substitution of the adjective with " Cracked " as a synonym for 'reticulated' in the photographic image.
On one of the 4th of Julys, i.e., Independence Day, sometime around the mid 2000s, during my stay... more On one of the 4th of Julys, i.e., Independence Day, sometime around the mid 2000s, during my stay in the U.S., I went to a local park at night to see fireworks with my families and friends. The park was packed with people, either sitting in their portable chairs or simply lying on the grass, and they were enjoying the show. Often lasting for thirty minutes, the fireworks finally reached its climax and started shooting up everything into the air with blasting sound. Then, all of a sudden, a baby caught people’s attention as he began crying hysterically. As it turned out, he cried as he was terrified by the fireworks’ blinding explosions as well as the huge noise. As we know from the stories by those who suffer from PTSD, say, veterans who came back from war fronts or rape victims haunted by voices reminiscent of rapists, however, the baby cried less because he was a baby than because he had a hard time telling if it was a show or a real event (e.g. a series of explosions or machine gun firing during air raid). I came to ruminate on this dormant episode and mull over its implications intensely after I watched/listened to Phantom School Army [Phantom hereafter]. South Korea’s trailblazing avantgarde filmmaker and performer Hangjun Lee’s most recent work to date, Phantom is a remarkable work of art as it blinds, if momentarily, viewers with a series of flashes while bombarding audiences with noise-induced sound blast. What’s more striking is that this literally vertiginous audiovisual performance work addresses Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), one of South Korea’s dark historical traumas whose immediate aftermath (the number of casualties overall is estimated to reach 10,000) and long-term repercussions in effectively establishing the ‘red scare’ or anticommunism proved vital, or rather, lethal to many lives as well as the egalitarian imaginary in post-war South Korea. To those who knew Lee’s work solely from the perspective of putatively ‘pure’ experimental vein, however “materialist” it aspires to be, this engagement with such a historic event could come as a surprise. Conversely, for those whom ‘experimental cinema’ means nothing less than a vacuous audiovisual acrobatics in the name of the so-called ‘aesthetic experiments’, the abovementioned description of Phantom alone serves to discredit its practical value: in what sense does this non-narrative performative film work relate to the actual historical event? Is this not another proof of artwork’s irrelevance to the so-called ‘real’ world? Hence the following questions: how do these elements relate to one another? How does a performative film work reconcile its performative aesthetic dimension with the heavyweight historical trauma without sacrificing either pole?
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Papers by Lee Hangjun
methods of expanded cinema, including manual and chemical processing of film stocks, improvisational realtime manipulation of projectors or filmstrips, and collaborations with avant-garde musicians—have been
presented in Korea, Canada, the UK, France, and Belgium. These numerous presentations during the last few years have not simply included venues for the screening of avant-garde films but also galleries. Given that they are intended to highlight the presence of the cinematic apparatus, spectators, and the projectionist within different contexts of performance and viewing,
Lee’s projects are also seen as pertaining to expanded cinema’s prolonged association with “liveness, ‘immediacy,’ an emphasis on ‘primary experience,’ and the directness of viewing.”
"일반적으로
게이트는 ‘공간으로 진입하기 위한 통로’이다. 영사기 속 게이트는 필름 스트립(film strip)의 연속된 프레임이 한 프레임씩 안정적으로 넘어가도록 고정시켜주고, 프레임의 경계를 형성한다. 스크린에 영사되는 이미지의 경계, 다시 말해 이미지의 범위와 비율이 게이트에 의해 결정된다. 영사기 속 게이트에 이상이 있거나 혹은 게이트를 제거할 때 발생하는 기계적 오류를 우리는 “필름이 흐른다.”라고 한다. 영사기 게이트는 극장에서 영화 공간으로 관객의 의식이 진입하는 통로 역할을 하며, 우리가 볼 수 있는 것과 없는 것, 또는 보아야 할 것과 보지 말아야 할 것을 규정한다. 호르헤 로렌소의 말처럼 ‹필름 누아르›에서 프레임의 경계는 결국 관객에 의해 결정되는 것이다."
Drafts by Lee Hangjun
I came to ruminate on this dormant episode and mull over its implications intensely after I watched/listened to Phantom School Army [Phantom hereafter]. South Korea’s trailblazing avantgarde filmmaker and performer Hangjun Lee’s most recent work to date, Phantom is a remarkable work of art as it blinds, if momentarily, viewers with a series of flashes while bombarding audiences with noise-induced sound blast. What’s more striking is that this literally vertiginous audiovisual performance work addresses Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), one of South Korea’s dark historical traumas whose immediate aftermath (the number of casualties overall is estimated to reach 10,000) and long-term repercussions in effectively establishing the ‘red scare’ or anticommunism proved vital, or rather, lethal to many lives as well as the egalitarian imaginary in post-war South Korea.
To those who knew Lee’s work solely from the perspective of putatively ‘pure’ experimental vein, however “materialist” it aspires to be, this engagement with such a historic event could come as a surprise. Conversely, for those whom ‘experimental cinema’ means nothing less than a vacuous audiovisual acrobatics in the name of the so-called ‘aesthetic experiments’, the abovementioned description of Phantom alone serves to discredit its practical value: in what sense does this non-narrative performative film work relate to the actual historical event? Is this not another proof of artwork’s irrelevance to the so-called ‘real’ world?
Hence the following questions: how do these elements relate to one another? How does a performative film work reconcile its performative aesthetic dimension with the heavyweight historical trauma without sacrificing either pole?
methods of expanded cinema, including manual and chemical processing of film stocks, improvisational realtime manipulation of projectors or filmstrips, and collaborations with avant-garde musicians—have been
presented in Korea, Canada, the UK, France, and Belgium. These numerous presentations during the last few years have not simply included venues for the screening of avant-garde films but also galleries. Given that they are intended to highlight the presence of the cinematic apparatus, spectators, and the projectionist within different contexts of performance and viewing,
Lee’s projects are also seen as pertaining to expanded cinema’s prolonged association with “liveness, ‘immediacy,’ an emphasis on ‘primary experience,’ and the directness of viewing.”
"일반적으로
게이트는 ‘공간으로 진입하기 위한 통로’이다. 영사기 속 게이트는 필름 스트립(film strip)의 연속된 프레임이 한 프레임씩 안정적으로 넘어가도록 고정시켜주고, 프레임의 경계를 형성한다. 스크린에 영사되는 이미지의 경계, 다시 말해 이미지의 범위와 비율이 게이트에 의해 결정된다. 영사기 속 게이트에 이상이 있거나 혹은 게이트를 제거할 때 발생하는 기계적 오류를 우리는 “필름이 흐른다.”라고 한다. 영사기 게이트는 극장에서 영화 공간으로 관객의 의식이 진입하는 통로 역할을 하며, 우리가 볼 수 있는 것과 없는 것, 또는 보아야 할 것과 보지 말아야 할 것을 규정한다. 호르헤 로렌소의 말처럼 ‹필름 누아르›에서 프레임의 경계는 결국 관객에 의해 결정되는 것이다."
I came to ruminate on this dormant episode and mull over its implications intensely after I watched/listened to Phantom School Army [Phantom hereafter]. South Korea’s trailblazing avantgarde filmmaker and performer Hangjun Lee’s most recent work to date, Phantom is a remarkable work of art as it blinds, if momentarily, viewers with a series of flashes while bombarding audiences with noise-induced sound blast. What’s more striking is that this literally vertiginous audiovisual performance work addresses Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), one of South Korea’s dark historical traumas whose immediate aftermath (the number of casualties overall is estimated to reach 10,000) and long-term repercussions in effectively establishing the ‘red scare’ or anticommunism proved vital, or rather, lethal to many lives as well as the egalitarian imaginary in post-war South Korea.
To those who knew Lee’s work solely from the perspective of putatively ‘pure’ experimental vein, however “materialist” it aspires to be, this engagement with such a historic event could come as a surprise. Conversely, for those whom ‘experimental cinema’ means nothing less than a vacuous audiovisual acrobatics in the name of the so-called ‘aesthetic experiments’, the abovementioned description of Phantom alone serves to discredit its practical value: in what sense does this non-narrative performative film work relate to the actual historical event? Is this not another proof of artwork’s irrelevance to the so-called ‘real’ world?
Hence the following questions: how do these elements relate to one another? How does a performative film work reconcile its performative aesthetic dimension with the heavyweight historical trauma without sacrificing either pole?