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Sneaky Snakes in Scenes of Incompetence: Suntag Noh’s Representation Strategy

Yeonha Choi 1

1중앙대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In his exhibition Sneaky Snakes in Scenes of Incompetence, Suntag Noh says “the division of Korean peninsula surrounds us like the air, and so as photography”. Since we can’t clearly understand the environment because we’re surrounded by it, his words can be interpreted to mean that ironically we can’t observe photographs as there are only so many. He displayed the reality of photography as if making a collection. ‘ Scenes of Incompetence’ alludes to the social environment that is only subjugated by structured politics, and the ‘sneaky snake’ seems like a metaphor for cameras, which have a short history but make quick cunning moves. The artist seems to make attempts at conveying the incompetent scenes of blindly chasing mere images of photographs rather than contemplating on the hidden political scenes. Through a series of photographic work, Suntag Noh dismantles the fundamentals of photographs and explores new possibilities of device. In Red House, he uses three curtains to make allusions to a ‘mirror’, which changes its forms depending on the subject’s viewpoint and degree of interpretation. In order to express ‘memory’ and ‘oblivion’, the artist describes the roles of photography as a form of memory arts in Forgetting Machines. Against the backdrop of ‘incompetent scenes’, the camera, which is the ‘sneaky snake’, diligently collects, thins out and categorizes pieces-images that have fallen out from the world. Our focus is directed to how Suntag Noh, who has been expressing the power of photograph ingeniously, puts forth the renewed possibilities of photographic devices.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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