Mioon

Interview:  Mioon (MIN KIM & MOON CHOI)
Medium: New media, Installation, Moving Images, and Photography
Contact: mioon@naver.com
Homepage: http://www.mioon.net/

The EAST Bridge recently met Mioon, who was busy
preparing for their upcoming solo-exhibition at Gana Forum
Space starting from the 25^th of February. We discussed
Mioon’s present situation and works.

EB: Please give us a brief introduction of yourselves.
Mioon: ‘Mioon’ is a compound word of the participating
artists’ names, MIN KIM and MOON CHOI. We have worked
together in Germany and Korea since 2001. KIM studied
sculpture and fine art respectively in Korea and Germany,
while CHOI studied civil engineering and photography. We
first met in Germany as exchange students and had known
each other for several years before starting to work together.
The more we got to know each other, the more we realized
how many similar concerns we shared. At the start of our
cooperative work, KIM usually worked on sculpture, while
CHOI worked on photography and moving images. At the
present, we have expanded our working area into visual
images and interactive installations.

EB:Tell me some about the difference between the
viewing of a society versus a subject.
Mioon: It is basically an eye looking towards society.
We talked a lot about social systems in Germany and Korea
as overseas exchange students. Also, we often discussed
works that analyzed media and society like many other
collaborative groups. Our work usually addreses society in
general or the small society formed by the two of us
working together. 

EB:Please explain of your early works.
Mioon: We did a single channel visual project, titled
‘We’ in 2001. The project was shot in a small theater
containing just a hundred chairs. They seemed to be
a card section in an animated form We were referencing
the Korean group mentality and collectivism. At that point,
we tended to participate in events like film festivals rather
than exhibitions in galleries.

EB:We heard you would have a solo-exhibition coming
 up in February. Tell us about it.
Mioon: Right. The exhibition will be open at Gana Forum
Space from the 25^th of February.  We started working on
this idea last May, so we are finally looking forward to
finishing the project.  This exhibition also focuses on the
concept of the ‘crowd’ like the last one. The crowd in present
society has changed a lot from the past. In the past, the crowd
was closer to an actual crowd of people, while nowadays the
idea of a crowd often refers to the online or cyber-community. 
Internet surfuing is separate from physical space and time and
creates diverse discourses and criticisms, which are formed by
a series of clicks of the mouse and words appearing on the
screen. The title of the exhibition is “An Aside of Audiences.”
The space will be presented as a theater stage enclosed by
an audience on three sides. The play will show the image of
the present crowd socializing through a network that is
actually an aside.

EB:Do you have any difficulties during working as a team?
Mioon: It is not that difficult to settle an idea and work out a
concept. However, it sometimes takes time to modulate
between different styles of expression at the final step of
the process. It seems like we require a longer time to work
compared to other collaborative teams for we present our
work as a single person rather than dividing the work into
the two.

EB:Can you give us some thoughts about media art in Korea
from the perspective of a new media artist working in both
Korea and Germany?
Mioon: The history of the Korean art scene is very short. It is true
that the Korean art market has progressed very fast and has
diversified, but it also retains its other side at the same time.
In particular, Korean “Media Art” was advanced by a few artists
in the late 90s, but many young groups of artists joined the media
art movement in early 2000. At the present, it has declined again.
We hope to see them to pursue a certain harmony among the
individual subjects of their work, concepts, and materials rather
than merely creating the work as part of a trend.

EB:Please talk about the work, ‘Visible City’ shown in the
Kumho Museum of Art in 2007.
Mioon: It was a work completed during an exchange residency in
France last year. We had to prepare for exhibitions in three cities;
Germany, France and Korea.  Therefore, we used light materials like
snack boxes that made it possible to convey our ideas through the
proper scale. ‘Visible City’ exposes the desires of the consumer. We
made an artificial city that is representative of consumerism. The
audiences strolling between the buildings become unrealistically gigantic
when they are viewed through CCTV installed throughout the work.

EB:What are your plans for the year 2008?

Mioon: It won’t be much different from 2007. After our solo exhibition
and finishing the work for ‘Media City Seoul’ in September, we plan to
travel to Germany for a short term for a media exhibition held in May.
I guess, like most people, we are just striving for the wisdom to find
out what real happiness really is.