Proposal Draft
Guided by Lao Tzu’s concept of living like water —to adapt and flow naturally— and by Buddhist teachings on śūnyatā (emptiness) as explored in The Heart Sutra, I centre my work on the concept of the ‘void’ as a space of potential. Through this logic, I aim to investigate the interconnected conditions required to safeguard and circulate intangible elements like memory and time. Utilising evanescent materials my work will seek to cast traces of absence and capture states of flux in materiality. I seek to primarily create installations that nurture both materials and meaning with a sense of care, offering up a place to be like water.
The concept of living like water and processing absences in life guides my practice, reflecting an approach that adapts and flows naturally. I will expand on these ideas by exploring the material and immaterial aspects of memory, trauma and spirituality. Drawing from Han: the deep sorrow, unresolved grief and emotional pain that is deeply embedded in Korean collective experiences from historical or personal trauma, I seek to create spaces that serve as vessels to externalise suppressed memories. Han sympathises with the emotional weight of absence with unresolved memories and perceptual responses. By incorporating fluctuating materials, I aim to challenge the fundamental nature of Han and memory that embodies resilience and potential for transformation.
Parallel to my studio practice, my research will investigate the intersection of Korean philosophical concepts of ‘Han’ and ‘Jeong’, alongside the Buddhist teachings on the void and the Daoist notion of Qi, offering a holistic framework for the tangible and intangible dimensions of memory, absence and circulation. By exploring how these concepts manifest in personal and collective experiences, I will examine how they can inform artistic practices that seek to create a sanctuary. Alongside this, I aim to situate the practice within a Western contemporary art paradigm — seeking ways to complicate positionality.
Han is a poly-faceted Korean concept of emotions, signifying deep senses of unresolved sorrow, grief or emotional pain. Having a Korean background, I often witnessed and felt the need for an appropriate channel to process this emotional undercurrent. Constructing sanctuaries as outlets, spaces where Han is acknowledged and processed, reflecting the tension between sorrow and release. The concept of Han would reverberate through the materiality of the vessels, which are often both fragile and strong, holding traces of past trauma yet holding adaptability and strength for containment and transformation.
Jeong is a sense of deep emotional connection, affection or care, often built through long- term relationships. My focus would fall on care, intimacy, and the creation of spaces for emotional reflection with care. Jeong will become real in my haptic and engaging installations, where viewers are encouraged to engage on physical and emotional levels with the materials and foster a sense of connection to the past and to one another. By integrating these concepts, my project will seek a balance between the sorrow of loss and memory through connection and care, creating sanctuaries where both Han and Jeong coexist and complement each other.
I will also aim to draw from the Daoist concept of Qi, the life force that flows through all living things and the environment—to reinforce the vitality of circulation and balance within my installations. While incorporating Qi into my work, I will investigate how energy and fragments of memory could achieve a balanced circulation in physical and psychological spaces, echoing the Buddhist teaching about the constant flux of self. It would thereby encompass a cyclical flow of Qi by utilising the Daoist five elements, water, wood, fire, metal and earth in dynamic installations. This allows viewers to re-consider the fundamental concept of living like water, moving fluidly through the spaces and embracing the natural flux of life and memory. There are also ways yet to be explored as to how Western philosophical frameworks might synthesise these notions.
The concept of transitional objects
transitional objects as “a symbol of the mother that is intermediate between internal and external reality for the infant” (Passman, 1987, p. 825).
Transitional objects and transitional space mediate the emotional transition from dependence on the caregiver to independence. It allows the child to externalise difficult emotions such as separation anxiety and loss by projecting those feelings onto objects.
The Need for Transitional Objects in Emotional Development
In What Alive Means: On Winnicott’s "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena," it is highlighted that transitional objects help children bridge the emotional gap between complete dependence on the caregiver and emerging independence. Winnicott describes these objects as an essential part of a child’s emotional toolkit, which help the child externalize internal feelings of loss or anxiety. These objects serve as emotional regulators and anchors. Through the use of symbolic representation in the form of transitional objects or spaces, the individual is able to reflect on these fragmented memories in a way that is less overwhelming.
The visual description of dream jars
“The walls on either side of [the bfg’s home] were lined with shelves, and on the shelves there stood row upon row of glass jars. There were jars everywhere. They were piled up in the corners. They filled every nook and cranny of the cave.”
“Sophie peered into the jar and there, sure enough, she saw the faint translucent outline of something about the size of a hen's egg.
There was just a touch of colour in it, a pale sea-green, soft and shimmering and very beautiful. There it lay, this small oblong sea-green jellyish thing, at the bottom of the jar, quite peaceful, but pulsing gently, the whole of it moving in and out ever so slightly, as though it were breathing.”
“‘But you told me dreams were invisible.'
They is always invisible until they is captured,' the BFG told her.
'After that they is losing a little of their invisibility. We is seeing this one very clearly:'”
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“ The silvery light was coming from the basin’s contents”
“He could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was a bright whitish silver, and it was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind, and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid- or like wind made solid.”
J. K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 8 October 2019, Bloomsbury children’s book 355pg
Bluet
But Nelson doesn’t want to live perpetually in blue; her grief is not bottomless: “It would help to be told that there is no bottom, save, as they say, wherever and whenever you stop digging.” Her grief begins to lose its colour, and the mountain of collected blues becomes just a “pile of thin blue gels scattered on the stage long after the show has come and gone”. In her dark excavation of grief, she has collected messages of great wisdom and powerful beauty. “Love is not consolation,” she says, citing Simone Weil. “It is light.”
Void, Emptiness
“void exists before light.” Old Testament Genesis 1:1-3
“Beat the mud to make an earthenware. However, it can serve as a bowl because there is an empty part inside with nothing. However, because there is an empty space with nothing, it can be used as a room. For that reason, it is useful to not have benefits.” Lao-tzu Moral Sutra Chapter 11
“The greatest straight line will look like a curve, and the greatest square has no corners. The greatest image has no shape" Lao Tzu
- One of the best lines is to become one with nature, and Asians used curves when designing gardens based on ideas such as Lao-tzu. Influenced by such oriental concepts, the Picturelesque Garden Designer's Tomb has built an aquiferous pavilion in the garden, breaking geometric straight lines and introducing natural curves, and creating more than 10,000 empty spaces in the garden. Designed in 1793, the early Stow Garden was a design whose boundaries with nature were clearly defined by artificial straight lines and geometric axes.
Memories
Notes on 마틴 제이 저, 전영백 외 역 『눈의 폄하: 20세기 프랑스 철학의 시각과 반시각』, 서광사, 2019, p. 264.
Space is directly connected to the body's memory. And the place where the sensory experience that the body experiences is most permeated is the house. The house is a place where you realize that the touch of the body remembers the space. Seo Do-ho's house, which has been explored consistently for more than 20 years, goes through the process of recalling the traces of irreversible physical spaces. His Seoul home is only possible after he leaves there, and his New York studio is also a space that can be produced when he moves to another place. The reproduction of the space always takes place belatedly. In other words, it is possible when the subject no longer exists in the space. The memory of space is a paradox that the absence is collateral. Therefore, the reproduction of the place is bound to occur 延期 in time
강신주. 매달린 절벽에서 손을 뗄 수 있는가? 동녘 출판사, 30 June 2014.
Liberation in Buddhism refers to a state of peace and happiness by abandoning an obsession with the self, that is, an old self-consciousness. Therefore, living as a master rather than a slave is nirvana, and enlightenment is nothing much, but living as a master. If you became the protagonist of your life, you have already become a Buddha, so we attach '’公” to the owner of respect.
Monk Munmun, "You should not step on stairs or ladders, and you should take your hands off hanging cliffs." To rely on something means that we are at our mercy. You must speak, act, and get out of it. No matter how helpful it may be, if it is external, at some point we must abandon it. This is because enlightenment is about living a life as a master by oneself.
Freeing from temporality, all the temporary things.. which is everything?
Why do people seek for superstition, religion
Conditionalisation of Coincidence
Finding patterns and rules, survival mechanism
Provides a sense of control and meaning.
Confusion from abstract and physical concepts
the material world and the spiritual world
confirmatory flatness
ex)Pigeon Experiment
-America's Most Superstitious Job-Fisherman
Strengthening the sense of control
It reduces human helplessness and feels connected to the world
My work through the connection
Relationship between Buddhism and quantum physics
There is no fixed self, but if the previous self is not an acting condition, there is no next self. Therefore, although it is selfless, only temporary self that can be experienced temporarily and phenomenally is felt.
Constantly changing depending on what and when I relate to..a free existence that can be anything, the empty state, nothingness, an infinite possibility.
It makes me reconsider our relationship between time and space
capturing the contradicting qualities of the concept, materiality
questioning our understanding of reality and self
the idea of selflessness in nature
being present, my essence is formed.
My presence creates the essence.
What is time and space in the modern physics perspective?
Capturing the state of in-betweenness or the state that can be read as both polar opposite ways : this is what allows me to reflect and reevaluate my presence and my past
The most important point is that breaking the patterns that have been created
That is what my time gets limited by the past and can’t freely flow and fully embrace and digest the present moment. Remind myself to let it be, at be free from a fixed self.
slumped in the memories that stop us from living present, move on.
Fades of memories are what allow us to flow.
Emptying vessel, space with unfixed state
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상냥한 지옥
너와 너가 모여 너를 만든다
너와 너와 너가 모여 나를 만든다
못과 나무와 입김이 모여 책상을 만든다
햇살과 고양이 등뼈가 낮잠의 폭포를 만든다
이슬과 우렁이가 별의 밥을 만든다
공포와 갈망이 할 일 많은 신을 만든다
너와 너와 너가 만나면 너와 다른 너가 된다
별 하나에 너와 별 하나에 너처럼 끊임없이 다른 너가 된다
너와 너는 나를 합성하고
나와 나는 너를 합성한다
너는 나에 의존해 너가 되고 나는 너에 의존해 내가 된다
어제는 죽음에 의존해 오늘의 붉고 투명한 꽃술이 된다
마그마는 중력에 의존해 지구의 심장이 된다
눈물은 웃음에 의존해 낡았으나 해맑은 아침이 되고
즐거운 합성의 고요한 훌쩍임
반짝이는 새들의 웃음
모든 것이 영원한 천국은 얼마나 지루하겠니
불변이 없으므로
붙들릴 게 없다
소유할 게 없으므로
자유다 안녕!
마지막이란 없다는 것
심지어 나의 죽음 앞에서도
고마워 상냥한 내 지옥, 오늘도 안녕히
詩 김선우
:“How boring is heaven where everything lasts forever
because there is no change
have nothing to hold on to
I don't have anything to own
It's free. Bye
There's no last thing
Even in the face of my death
Thank you, my sweet hell. Goodbye today”
Water
“Great virtue is like water. Water nourishes all things gently and does not compete with anything, content to be in a low place not sought by people. Water is therefore closest to Dao.”
“Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” Lao Tzu The seven Virtue of water
“In this world, there is nothing softer or thinner than water. But to compel the hard and unyielding, it has no equal. That the weak overcomes the strong, that the hard gives way to the gentle - this everyone knows. Yet no one asks accordingly.
Have patience. Wait until the mud settles and the water is clear. Remain unmoving until right action arises by itself.
Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Be still and allow the mud to settle. Only by working within the laws that govern the flow of water will happiness be achieved.”
Rock from Suggam Valley
The name "宿" in Jeongseon, Gangwon-do, originated from the story of Macguk, an ancient small country based in Chuncheon. It is said that Macguk's Galwang used to sleep well under a large rock to avoid a long war, so it was named by combining the Chinese characters "Jalsuk" and "Bawi Rock".
Time
“Time is perhaps the most enigmatic, the most paradoxical, elusive and ‘unreal’ of any form of material existence … time is neither fully ‘present’, a thing in itself, nor is it a pure abstraction, a metaphysical assumption that can be ignored in everyday practice.”
“The barrier between fiction and reality is broken. There’s an instant of empathy. You and he are in the same predicament. We are all prisoners of time.”
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Further research on
Deterioration,
affected by an element that I only have partial control over
preservation of taxidermy in liquid
ethyl alcohol is usually used in 70 per cent solution
Storing materials underwater to stabilise and preserve them
-phosphorus
사현법생해문- 사물에 의탁해서 진리인 법이 그대로 드러나는 원리:
The principle that the truth is revealed according to the object