Installation view of 《Staging》. Photo: Euirock Lee. © Space ISU
Space ISU, the cultural arts space of ISU Group, presents the
30th anniversary exhibition 《Staging》 through July 20.
Moving beyond conventional modes of commemoration that simply
look back on the past, the exhibition foregrounds the idea that a corporation
exists as a dynamic entity—one in which diverse relationships and elements are
interconnected and continuously evolving.
The exhibition title draws on the thinking of French scholar
Bruno Latour and his Actor-Network Theory (ANT). “Staging,” which refers to
theatrical mise-en-scène, is a term Latour uses to describe the specific
conditions through which entities and facts come to appear before us.
Installation view of 《Staging》. Photo: Euirock Lee. © Space ISU
For him, existence is not something newly discovered, but
something that emerges within situations shaped by multiple actors and
conditions. Connecting this idea to the medium of exhibition-making, 《Staging》 materializes
a visible stage in which actors and the networks they form are brought into
view. The project, which engages with the 30-year history of ISU Group, was
developed through a collaborative work by Kim Taedong and Yona Lee.
The artists examined various sites within ISU Group and
collected objects and records used by its members, taking these as both the
point of departure and the material basis for their work.
Installation view of 《Staging》. Photo: Euirock Lee. © Space ISU
The form of commemoration enacted by 《Staging》, featuring
works by Kim Taedong and Yona Lee, is less about solidifying a fixed structure
and timeline, and more about viewing the corporation—built over time—as an
ever-evolving network. Within this framework, the exhibition foregrounds the
processes through which human and non-human actors encounter one another and
generate change.
As the exhibition unfolds, the works and their viewers
continually confront and transform one another, becoming connected to the
broader network of the corporation composed of diverse actors, and opening onto
the possibility of forming unexpected relationships.
