Image courtesy of Ilmin Museum of Art / Installation view of Folded
‘If I Ought to Sing, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution’ will be on show at the Ilmin Museum of Art until Oct. 2. Time is described as ‘flowing’ or ‘going’ because we perceive time as a line that moves forward. Oh Min explores the attributes of time based on sound, video, and performance. The exhibition’s title is a slight twist on the words of Emma Goldman, a feminist and anarchist activist. A colleague approached Goldman, who was dancing, admonishing her over dancing as a frivolous act, particularly for an activist fighting for a great cause. Emma Goldman responded, ‘If I can’t to dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution’. The reason ‘dance’ was changed to ‘sing’ in the title is that the artist fosters a particular interest in sound, and the reason for electing this quote by Goldman is that the exhibition focuses on ‘a state without hierarchy’. The exhibition consists of the lecture performance video Post-Texture and a three-channel video Folded. In the history of music, texture refers to the organisation of melodies, and in tunes that sound harmonious, there is a sound that occupies the centre. The artist continued their explanation by naming the music that has lost its centre as ‘posttexture’. Folded erases the hierarchy between sounds by filling the space with sounds of moving objects rather than elegant melodies, and filming a situation on a multi-angle screen, allowing time to be perceived as a ‘mass’ rather than as a line that flows in one direction. The exhibition can be summarised through the keywords ‘time’, ‘sound’, and ‘non-hierarchical’, but it is structured as if it is a single mass in which no single element dominates. This means that the workʼs intentions and the exhibitionʼs composition are intimately connected. by Park Jiyoun