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Intercultural medium literature digital Interview with YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES by Hyun-Joo Yoo
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YOO:
Please present YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (YHC HI).
Your known profile in Germany is that Korean Young-hae Chang
works with Marc Voge -- French? -- in Seoul. YHC HI: Marc is
American. YOO:
When and why did you form YHCHI? YHC HI: We formed our
company in 1999, for practical reasons -- Net art is
relatively cheap to make, and you don't need a studio for
all your unsold works. YOO:
"YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES" sounds interesting. Why
did you choose that name?
YHC HI: It's pretty
evident. YHC for Young-Hae and HI for Marc. We changed Marc
into "HEAVY INDUSTRIES," because Koreans love big companies
and Marc doesn't mind being objectified and capitalized on.
YOO:
I thought the name HI was a statement against software in
its relation to digital media. YHC HI: Nope, never
occurred to us. We live in a country -- South Korea -- that
loves its big, powerful companies. We wanted to get some of
that love. YOO:
YHCHI is known even in German digital literature circles. Do
you do most of your work in Europe? YHC HI: No, not
really, but we're happy that quite a few European art and
literature institutions are interested in our work. And
Germany in particular has given us several opportunities to
show our work. It's flattering. YOO:
How did you come about presenting your work in "p0es1s", the
digital literature exhibition in Berlin? YHC HI: It happened
like most of our other participations -- an organizer, in
this case Friedrich W. Block, e-mails us, and a
collaboration begins. He translated CUNNILINGUS IN NORTH
KOREA into German. YOO:
Have you participated in any similar type of digital
exhibition in Korea? YHC HI: No. Have you
ever heard of one? YOO:
Yes, there are some exhibitions, as far as I know, but
within a very little cirle… YHC HI: Since Korea
isn't very interested in literature, it follows that it
isn't excited by literary innovation. There's this
assumption outside Korea that the country with the highest
percentage -- 75% of the population -- of broadband
penetration should somehow have an intense interest in
digital art and literature. It's just not the case.
YOO:
How would you define the work of YHCHI? Digital poetry or
more, digital art? Or something completely new? YHC HI: Actually, we
wouldn't pin it down. No use making it easy on guys like
you. YOO:
O.K., but for now, let's consider your work as digital
poetry for the purpose of answering the following
questions. YHC HI: O.K.,
fine. YOO:
First, about the way you work. Making digital literature is
a lot like making a movie these days. There are specialized
roles for text, music, technique. The author seems to become
the director or the organizer of the project. Does this
description fit YHCHI? YHC HI: No, not
really. Our style is more, say, organic, or rather,
disorganized, if not messy. It's not a pretty sight.
YOO:
How do you make a text? How do you choose a
subject? YHC HI: We make a
text out of bits and pieces of images and sounds. Subjects
are never lacking. Some are suggested to us or commissioned
by exhibition organizers, others we come up with out of a
certain urgency, others are an effort not to conform to
expectations, and still others appear out of nowhere, like a
gift from Heaven. YOO:
YHCHI is known for its beautiful jazz. How do you put
text and music together? Which comes
first? YHC HI: Sometimes the
music comes first, sometimes the text -- but you expected
that answer, we're sure. The truth is that any two things
when put together take on a synthetic meaning. There's
nothing inevitable about our text and music combinations. We
try to make this point by changing the music that goes along
with certain texts. YOO:
The songs that you use are very
professional… YHC HI: We invite you
to click YOO:
Many of your pieces are done in different language versions.
Which language is your first language? YHC HI: English,
these days, although some of our first pieces were in
Korean, still others in Japanese or even Swedish.
YOO:
One of the originalities of YHCHI's work is that different
language versions are more than just a translation of the
original. You seem to be very attuned to these different
languages. YHC HI: Not as much
as you suggest. We work with English, Korean, and French,
but need help with translators for the others. It's hard to
fit a different language into the same musical and rhythmic
mold as the original piece, so we often compose different
music to go with the translation. That creates a different
feeling for the text in question, but not one that we're
consciously pursuing. YOO:
Your piece YHC HI: No, not
really, although we're pleased you noticed the differences.
YOO:
To take a concrete example, in the German version of
SAMSUNG, the words "LICHT," "FEUER," and "KUSS" in a scene
with the phrase "SAMSUNG, LICHT MEINES LEBENS, FEUER IN
MEINEN LENDEN; KUSS AUF MEINEN LIPPENN" are emphasized. In
the Korean and English versions, on the other hand, they
seem less so.
YHC HI: That's
interesting -- no, we weren't aware. We can only thank our
German translator here in Seoul. That said, we think that in
Korean and English the phrase from which you quote,
"SAMSUNG, LIGHT OF MY LIFE, FIRE IN MY LOINS, KISS ON MY
LIPS," still packs a punch. After all, we were only citing
from memory the famous Nabokov beginning of
"Lolita" YOO:
In all the language versions of SAMSUNG you use the Korean
word "ahjuma" to denote a certain kind of Korean woman. In
general, "ahjuma" is used both disparagingly and
affectionately. And in your text? YHC HI: We use it to
denote a Korean woman who is married and conventional, which
includes just about all Korean women from a certain age on.
YOO:
If you hear about a digial poem, you associate it
immediately with a combination of the moving images and
text, one that is often animated in a Flash program. But YHC
HI only uses pure text, also in Flash. YHC HI: In the
beginning of Net art, we were struck by how ineffective Net
artists were in communicating information -- words, images,
sound. This was in the mid-90s, when few people had
broadband. Typically, Net art was an image with some words
that took an eternity to download and appear in the browser.
Music? Forget it, it was too heavy. And when it came to
streaming media such as Flash and QuickTime, the image
became tiny. We wanted to use streaming
media and audio -- to use the Internet to the maximum --
probably because we wanted Net art to be as entertaining as
TV. The relationship is there and can't be avoided. As for
Net art's interactivity, we thought it was laughable, not
unlike channel surfing. By eliminating the image and just
using text, plus the small miracle of mp3, we were able to
create Flash pieces of from YOO:
Your work, which ues only word as a material for expression,
resembles the concrete poems popular in the last
centry. YHC HI: We're
familiar with French concrete poetry beginning with some of
the typographical liberties of Apollinaire, if we recall
correctly. The comparison seems inappropriate. We've never
found much enjoyment or meaning in concrete poetry. A better
comparison might be with Mallarmé's "Un Coup de
Dés." YOO:
In the June, 2001 issue of the Web magazine
"dichtung-digital," the well-known concrete poet Reinhard
Doehl, who also creates digital poetry with Johannes Auer,
praised your work in an interview, saying that it has played
a decisive role in understanding the text in a world invaded
by animated words. I myself see your work evolving from a
flashier initial style to one that emphasizes a more sober
text presentation. Is there a reason for
this? YHC HI: Thank you,
that's very flattering. We have a lot of respect for their
work. The evolution in our work that you describe is indeed
there. We like to think that we're moving into a more mature
period. And with maturity comes calm. Unless it's just
advancing age and a stiffness that prevents us from brusque
movements? Another reason for less razzle dazzle may be that
we've been making our own music for the past few years now,
and our drumming is unfortunately not as brilliant, complex,
and explosive as the drumming of
YOO:
Concrete poems rearrange words and letters to make
images. Does your work try to use words differently from the
printed page? YHC HI: It doesn't
have to try, it's done for us by a software program (Flash)
and a medium (the Web) that imposes this difference. To be
precise, our role was to make the decision to adopt them and
adapt language to fit them. YOO: There is an
important cinematic element in your Flash work. And in the
piece YHC HI: We suppose
that you're referring first to the cinematic-like countdown
at the beginning of our Flash pieces. We mentioned that
we've tried to make our work resemble TV in its
entertainment value. How close we can get to the grandness
and intimacy of movies, to its spectacle and emotion, is a
different story. We'd like to, but that may depend on us
leaving the environment of the Web and creating something in
real space. One of our recent installations, for a show
called "4 from Korea," at the East Asian Art Museum, in
Berlin, is an experiment with the large scale of cinema, but
without sacrificing the particularities of the Web --
interactivity, immediacy. We include a couple of
installation shots. Photo 1, 2: "4 from Korea",
the museum of eastern Asian art, Berlin
(09.23.-11.20.2005) YOO:
Digital cinema lacks, according to Pech or Roloff, the
zwischenraum. This erases cinema as a medium and prevents us
from reflecting on it. If this kind of reflection is
possible, where can it be
found? YHC HI: Are you
saying that digital media invite less thoughtfulness than
analog media? YOO:
Yes, that's right. YHC HI: We agree,
more or less. Life is faster today. That's the first point
about digital media. The second point is that there's a
tsunami of digital information on the Web, which, for us, at
least, is demoralizing, when you consider that in the days
of analog media there was already enough information for a
lifetime of thought. As for digital art, well, it's the
opposite of digital media. There's very little digital art
compared to analog art. And the encouraging thing is that
if, like analog art, 99.9% of digital art is dismissible,
then there's nothing really to worry about. YOO:
In his interview, Reinhard Doehl mentioned that it's a pity
that YHCHI doesn't use interactivity. Why don't
you? YHC HI: Because we
don't know how. (By the way, we're pretty sure that nothing
is too bad in art and literature. They're happy worlds that
make do with anything and everything.) YOO:
Unlike Doehl, I think that the absence of interactivity
in your work is one of its most interesting traits.
Enthusiasm for the interactive hypertext comes most of all
from the equation choice equals fantasy. What do you think
of that? YHC HI: Well, for us,
choice doesn't equal fantasy. Or rather, you could argue
that a lack of choice equals fantasy. After all, it's
societal strictures and problems without evident solutions
that inspire our longings and musings. People equate choice
with democracy, but no one ever said that art and literature
were democracies. We would like our own work to exert a
dictatorial stranglehold on the reader. YOO:
Dictatorial, the word could be fitting for the next
question. In your work, there's only an interaction -- the
back button, leaving one with the thought that the essence
of digital media is really a powerless
spectator. YHC HI: Well, we
think there's something more essential than the back button.
The spectator is far from powerless. She is still the one
who decides whether or not she will watch the piece, or
having clicked on it, whether she'll click away from it.
That's the same power that she has when she considers any
other art and literature. Clicking away is one of the
essences of the Internet. It's no different from deleting.
It's rejection, it's saying "no." That's ultimate power.
YOO:
What does YHCHI have in store for us in the near future?
More of the same? YHC HI: Yes. We're
never going to change. Life is easier that way. It's like
opening the bedroom closet in the morning and finding just
one set of clothing to wear that day and every following
day. There's no decision to make. One computer program, one
recipe. Simplicity is a virtue. (Unless we change, or close
up shop, which is O.K., too.) YOO:
Do you see any opportunity or danger in the digitalization
of literature?
YHC HI: It's hard to
see how literature can be any more endangered than it
already has been by book burning, book banning, censorship,
blacklists, and so on, all of which happened before the
digital age. Not to mention dwindling readership. Philip
Roth said somewhere that there are 20,000 serious readers in
the U.S. In the same vein, there are very few readers of
poetry of any ilk, let alone digital. How digital poetry
fares is probably of no consequence to anyone but its
writers and their mothers. YOO:
At last, we come to the point about content: Probably
one of the most noticeable themes in your writing is
sex. YHC HI: Uh,
thanks. YOO:
Is there a strategic reason for
this? YHC HI: Well, um,
let's see. Because sex is beautiful? Because the human body
is beautiful? But wait a minute. Except for CUNNILINGUS IN
NORTH KOREA and SAMSUNG MEANS TO COME, there isn't much sex
in our work. There are about 60 other pieces on our Web
site. Could you be overreacting? Seeing something that you
want to see? YOO:
It's hard to ignore something like CUNNILINGUS IN NORTH
KOREA, don't you think? It doesn't go unnoticed in Germany,
where it's made a name for you. Perhaps you're the ones who
are seeing something we failed to see. YHC HI: Uh, thanks
again, but we were just as blind as anyone. "The Dear Leader
[the head of state in North Korea Jong-Il Kim]"
brought it to our attention. For us, CUNNILINGUS is a
humanistic work. We wanted to help put a human face on North
Korea, so we accepted the Dear Leader's offer to
collaborate. YOO:
I understood. It means, you combined your text and music
with existing text from "the Dear Leader". Whereas
CUNNILINGUS IN NORTH KOREA combines sex with
totalitarianism, SAMSUNG MEANS TO COME describes a world of
sex and economic hegemony. YHC HI: We suppose
that's one way of seeing those pieces. To us, SAMSUNG MEANS
TO COME is a paean to a dominant and attractive lifestyle in
South Korea. YOO:
Could it be more concrete? All artists say something
directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously in
their work. How aware are you of what you're saying in your
work? YHC HI: Not very
aware. We're not inclined to do the work of the literary or
art critic. We stick to our job, which is to create
something that otherwise wouldn't have existed, then marvel
at what we've done and hope others do, too. YOO:
For instance, I see like that: There are a lot of Korean
situations in your work, but there is also a media
understanding of Europe - besides, you guys stayed a long
time in France. You're the first ones to make digital
literature in Korea. This combination allows Korean readers
to step back from their ordinary lives. It also brings
together two worlds. In SAMSUNG, there is something
recognizable for European readers and something to be
culturally translated. Yet the atmosphere of the piece is
strange. On the other hand, Korean readers may see the
context clearly but the form as strange. YHC HI: That's a nice
analysis. We embrace it fully. YOO:
I have a question on it. SAMSUNG implies that the big Korean
conglomerates control the economy and, consequently,
penetrate into our lives ultimately. We are powerless to
resist them. On the other hand, here in Germany, "Samsung"
is just another global company. Its image isn't oppressive.
Do you think that Germans can see what we Koreans see in a
work like SAMSUNG?
YHC HI: Well, again,
maybe you're supposing that what you see in SAMSUNG is what
other Koreans see. From what we see, though, no one in Korea
is oppressed by Samsung or by any other big Korean
corporation. On the contrary, Koreans love Samsung and the
other big corporations. Could it be just the opposite, that
you're thinking like a European? YOO: (laughs) Thanks
for answering my questions. May you meet with ever greater
success. One final question. You make the strange statement
in the p0es1e catalog that there's a computer chip by
Samsung implanted in one of your abdomens. Can this possibly
be true? YHC HI: Yes, but are
you sure you read this in the P0es1e catalog? For those of
you who don't know what the question is referring to, we
invite you to click on |