1. It feels like something meaningful can be created if the present meets the past. It would be even more meaningful if the meeting takes place through a particular format. It is a virtue for an artist to assign meanings and formats to an object. When the job is done successfully, at last, an object becomes an independent entity.
However, the juxtaposition and enumeration of black and white photographs and color images, that penetrate the modern history of Korea and metaphor the present, respectively, cannot be independent by themselves. It is impossible for the present by itself to make a place, a building, or a monument meaningful. Things outside the boundary of the present should be premised. Past-tensed contexts, stories, and events should have been occurred, even though they had been forgotten.
Things we cannot recognize represent the world of oblivion and the absence of objects. Forgetting something sometimes means that one had wasted his time and life in vain. However, it is not always the case. Through the behavior of forgetting, or the effects similar to it, one can finally immerse himself in the objects and events in front of his eyes. This is indeed similar to the problem of flow that artists deal with. The dialectics between memory and oblivion, and meaning and absence of meaning are the examples. The mysterious dialectic movement between the images that occupy different time and space is the key factor in constructing the present.
Meanwhile, in the world of images, the past does not exist in real. It is rather constructed in the present. In order for the present to be the present in its entirety, the past and the future should be constructed. Thus, the coined word ‘historical present' expresses an impossible moment. The events that did not actually exist in the past and that would never happen in the future can be possible in the historical present.
The past viewed from the present time is not identical to the present that existed back then. They are only similar to each other. Things that have already been happened and are similar to the present are the ‘historical present,' a challenge for people who deal with images. Thus, the ‘historical present' can be re-written as ‘every history is contemporary history (Benedetto Croce).' The meanings and images of the past are projections of the present, and would eventually work as a mechanism to construct the present in turn. Sungseok Ahn turns the severance of external time into the problem of internal.
2. To pay attention to an object is to separate it from other surrounding objects. In order to achieve this, high delicacy and careful attitude are required. One needs to exclude the unselected objects from consciousness, and send them to unconsciousness. This process is completed automatically between the two states. However, it does not mean that the selected and unselected objects are not related to each other. It only means that the relationship is accomplished not in consciousness but in unconscious level.
In order to render an object something meaningful, no matter whether it is the present, the past, or the relationship between the two, the movement of ‘the absence of meaning' should take part simultaneously. In order to pay attention to an object, the object should exist in advance.
“I consider the dialogues between cultures as one big misunderstanding (Ellen Bage).” However, this does not apply only to the dialogues between cultures. Although an object is identical in its appearance, if it exists in different time periods, then the dialogue between the present and the past can also become a big misunderstanding. Culture is interlocked with life, and the lives in two different periods are more different than the degree of similarity between them. Thus, Ahn's works represent the process of creating meanings through the mutual calling of the present and the past. At the same time, they imply that ‘encounter' and ‘relationship' are essentially the misunderstandings.
“There is no way to deduce identity from similarity in language (Bertrand Russell).” A secret ritual is required for an event where identity and similarity meet. The two objects living in different time can be same materials but they are different objects. The distance between them is as far as that of the stars in galaxy, and the spirit should be in charge for filling this gap. For an artist, objects exist as images and forms. “Artists reasons with forms (Gilles Deleuze).” Images and forms do not merely attempt to restore the history, the past, and the memories of them.
by Noam Kim (Guest Curator)
