Minhong Pyo: nothing here was ours 2021.
10.22.-11.30.
A note on what happened, what was happening, and what is happening when the viewer met / is meeting / meets the film in the exhibition space The Introduction and Initial Glimpses From my initial viewing of the film, I remembered neither the sublime scenery nor the splendid view featured outside the hotel room window. What left a mark in my memory were the records of obsessive observations of the room's nooks and crannies, partial scratches and notches left on the furniture, and curtains that betrayed the passage of time. This was why Pyo's film, especially with its peculiar tone, seemed blunt to me. Neither its narrative nor its portrayal of the space enticed or enthralled me. Even the glimpses of faraway mountains and deep forests, which were only briefly caught on the lens, left but a near surface-level impression of an image. The image that the film imprinted on me was far from what one would expect of spatial engrossment. Instead, the film presented a spread-out, uneven surface of an impression. Had the surface of this impression been smooth and even, it would have shown a visual lid placed over the visual presentation. What I was left with after my initial viewing was the surface impression of the image and partial, obsessive visual frames of uncertain subjects. If anyone asks me what I do remember about the film, I will have to answer that I confronted the absence of both the author and the audience (us, the viewers). This is not to say that I failed to see the presence of the author or the audience; I saw their footprints the way one might see the hand that turned on a faucet in the water that drips from its mouth, or feel the original writer while listening to a secondhand quote of an original statement. Right now, I do not have access to the film on-screen, the exhibition space it was featured in, or even phrases from the poetry books featured in the film. I also do not see the depths of the image or its total absence. All I see are the footprints left on the surface and what I have filled in certain parts without realizing it. Now would be the perfect moment to talk about the actual film I saw in the exhibition and the tangible absence I witnessed. Narrative Expansion: Between the Unknown and the Unknowable The film begins with the sound of turning pages, an expansion of the impression of an image. The viewer sees a semitransparent curtain, billowing and waving before a viridian forest. Unlike the anonymity the film forces upon the protagonist and the viewer, the film itself remains identifiable. What I remember from Pyo's nothing here was ours was the impression of an image draped over the screen and the obsessive portrayal of the hotel room's nooks and crannies. The definitive perspective denied to the protagonist is reinforced and forced on the viewer uncannily. The visual language of the representation, which is the portrayed scenery, encourages the viewer to reminisce about the scene depicted in the film and describes the environment of the hotel room that is invisible to the naked eye under normal circumstances. In addition, the linguistic lead helps us imagine the invisible, as both the language and expansion of the image create an impression on the screen, enabling the viewer to witness the detailed portrayal of the intended scene. After I finished the film, I was left mulling over a familiar phrase: "He can see everything with his eyes closed." The imagined narrative that follows the surface impression of an image is not a fabrication but the sum of the things built on the screen, hidden from our perception, as the film ran its course. The propulsive dynamism of the film's narrative expansion summons the preceding image using the subsequent image as a reference point. This dynamic is not exclusive to the understanding and perception of a specific, designated location of reality. Pyo's film features a crooked floor rug, a semitransparent curtain, and a foggy forest road. Each detail is not a component but an infective catalyst that summons another image. Therefore, it is only natural that we wonder about the direction the viewer is headed in the face of such a narrative expansion and its destination. Some would say the answer to this question lies in the very depth of the image, a discernment of its meaning and interpretation. If the viewer focuses only on what supposedly lies behind the image, he/she has only to concentrate on the poetry book found in the cabinet the protagonist opens and end his/her exploration by reading its passages. Perhaps a pilgrimage to the location of the film's creation would provide all the insights the viewer needs. The film's narrative expansion and the expansion of its image do not seek to direct our attention to an eventual destination or goal. It is supposed to clash with the viewer's lack of comprehension. In this exhibition, Pyo highlights the environment occupied by language, which is the language of the film itself. As a result, the viewer must confront alternative meanings, where the mingling of unknown insights and relationships takes priority over the known, established connections. Where the Things We Miss Lie: The Image's Surface The film's narrative expansion, however, is not a mere product of the synchronized reverberation of featured objects, but an emotional message toward things absent from the scene, serving as a catalyst that encourages the viewer to direct his/her attention to such and fill the empty space with imagination. Thus, the overall image portrayed through the film expands not only through its every frame but also in the attentive focus toward the table, bookcase, and bed leg, while the curtailed representation of the entire object forms through the presentation of its parts. In other words, the viewer can register the absence of the whole by looking at its components. Notably, the construction of the visual motif encompasses the film entirely, with the partial representation of whole objects serving as skeletons to build one's imagination around. The partial representation is therefore not an antithesis to the film's essence but a supporting frame of imagination for tangible objects. For instance, the viewer cannot discern the exact nature of the object that the bed leg supports; from the available information, one can just as easily imagine a table or any other flat object that lies above a supporting leg. The video footage creates both moving and still images, with the latter propped upon the former with the expansion of the residual presence of the whole object's absent representation. The furniture leg is undoubtedly a component of the whole as a watermark of a cup upon a table surface. Just as one can imagine the previous presence of someone else through watermarks, engraved letters, and even depression marks on the table, footprints serve as the deductive lead toward the existence of another being. Even when the footprint itself is a fabrication, it still retains a genuine narrative potential. By fabrication, I speak of not only the footprint's misrepresentation of the presence but also the disconnect between the two. Even when the sequential relationship between the presence and the footprint falters, the viewer is forced to contemplate the cause through the consequence in the conceptualization of the pair. Whether the imagined causality is ultimately accurate or not, considering potential misunderstanding and perceptual misalignment caused by dramatic presentations, the footprint's narrative builds on the imagined relationship and confluence between objects. By beholding the table watermark and half-open fridge in the film, the viewer cannot help but reconcile the absence of a protagonist. However, the equation of the conceptual absentee and the protagonist rests upon the film's sustained causal uncertainty confronting the viewer. The secret correlation and confluence of footprints on an image surface create a tangible unknown made of both chronological and spatial distances. Although the poetry book, film, and curated space create a sense of confluence, crevices between individual objects remain. The glimpses of other places and objects within the peripherals of each scene belong to a different location and time, but they serve as fillers for the crevices between individual objects, reverberating through place and time. This indicates that an image, sentence, and environment have unique boundaries. However, even when one connects the crevices of the unknown through narrative expansion, connection, and reverberation, individual components may leave their original location but retain their essence and crevice boundaries. Such crevices hold multiple nooks and crannies that could help all contacts reverberate in myriad directions. The corners, nooks, and crannies featured in the film, therefore, serve as enticing image surfaces, expanding in various directions in search of an eventual destination. Even the watermark left on the table by a cup embodies such dynamics. Absence as a Form of Amnesia Even when people speak of absences, they still believe in the continued existence of things that remain. In Pyo's film, the absence of the protagonist in the exhibition space entices the viewer to picture the very presence of the protagonist by tracing the remaining footprints left by their absence. The sentences written across the screen, letters engraved on the furniture, subtitles, and prose of poetry books all point toward a person's absence, which is the eventual portrayal of the protagonist's existence. In a way, the discussion of absence is the product of a type of amnesia. Although viewers of the film and its exhibition may try to trace the protagonist's existence through their absence, the words they left establish within the viewer's subconscious that the protagonist is a person who was, not a person who is. People are accustomed to making connections between beings, imagining a presence and an existence as they gauge upon the supporting architectures of a bridge or languages of a poetry book. In Pyo's film, the book's portrayed space and open pages encourage us to examine the deeper parts of our consciousness. Interestingly, the active employment of our imagination to reach that point in introspect is taken for granted. The printed letters on the book, images on the screen, and engraved letters expose the now invisible presence and firmly establish their existence to the viewer, suggesting an answer to actual reality. This answer is one of correspondence—a beginning. The End and Passing Impressions Inserting Chopin's "Prelude in E minor, Op. 28, No. 4" toward the end of the film signifies an interlude between the narrative expansion and the true end, a space between the exhibition space and one's memory. In the interim spaces between images and the metaphysical crevice separating experience from memory, Chopin's music cannot function as a regular curtain call. Like the scenery glimpsed through the semitransparent curtain, the viewer remains in place with one hand resting on the image's surface, a space to be divided and filled by the image's narrative expansion. This was the extent of the notes I left after reminiscing over the residual images. Notes often precede amnesia, sometimes in resistance to the fading of memory. However, they are incapable of completely preventing the slow disappearance of an impression and do not qualify as reliable, tangible records of what once was. An image comprises the visual experiences one finds in navigating connections or confluences; it is a compilation of the experience of seeing. As such, it is only natural that I write this note in search of what I have lost on the axis of the bipolar expansion of amnesia and memory on the surface impression of an image. w. Yuki Konno
Korean-English Translation of this text is supported by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Arts
Press release courtesy Gallery Chosun.
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