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By introducing an analogue method which is disappearing at the time of digital to the work, it intends for the concept of ‘a disappearing thing’ to have a thread of connection on two sides of form and substance.
Above all, in a form becomes the image distorted gradually and gets abstract, and finally disappears by using an analogue method and repeating copies of a VHS Tape which pictured a scene of kissing man and woman. I show such a scene with eight monitors. That is to say, the second Tape is made out of the copy of the first one and the third Tape out of the copy of the second one, and so forth.
In substance, I also express the concept of a thing which is distorted and transformed and disappeared after all as a theme of impermanent human existence.
SoYoun Jeong
Controlling time, which video art can do better than any static medium, is what distinguishes Jeong’s work. Time is most metaphorically visible in Changing Images: Copy Using Analogical Method -Breathe. There Jeong focuses on an analogue technology that is disappearing fast in the digital era. When videotapes are copied repeatedly, their images progressively decompose and fade. Jeong begins by capturing footage of her dying grandparents, who undergo heavy breathing before the end of their lives. A clearly visible image of the dying grandparent in the first TV monitor gradually transforms into a coarse-surfaced depiction and finally flickering images and streaks. Colors lose their brilliance, and the descriptive image becomes abstract. At a time when everyone is able to share unlimited digital data, at will, through websites like youtube.com, Jeong harks back to the confining and cumbersome materiality of analogue that wears out just as people do. Breathe thus refers not only to a disappearing technology that once saw wide usage, but also disappearing human existence. It is Jeong’s way of delivering a dual “memento mori.” Breathe conveys the certainty of mortality of one from of technology and of all human lives.
Hyewon Yi (Amelie A. Wallace Gallery)
