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Essay on the Discourse of ‘Technology Art’ Exhibition in 1990s

  • Journal of History of Modern Art
  • 2022, (51), pp.57-79
  • DOI : 10.17057/kahoma.2022..51.003
  • Publisher : 현대미술사학회
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Art > Arts in general > Art History
  • Received : November 5, 2021
  • Accepted : December 16, 2021
  • Published : June 30, 2022

Lee Eunjoo 1

1국립현대미술관

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the period when new media art based on cutting-edge technology became part of contemporary art, and examines the concept of technology art created within the artistic activities and exhibition discourse of the 1990s. It looks into the expansion of the middle zone, the boundary, pluralism, and hybrid cultures, which are not defined by dichotomous concepts such as technology and art, nature and technology, tradition and globalization, universality and specificity, center and periphery, and modernism and post-modernism. The artists and critics who developed the technology art discourse of the 1990s paid attention to the new phenomenon of visual perception arising in the art world. They tried to describe the aesthetic phenomenon in which ‘technology’ was used in art by referring to ‘technoart,’ ‘high-tech art,’ and ‘technology art’ instead of the singular term ‘technology.’ An artist who played a major role in revitalizing exchanges at home and abroad in line with Kim Young-sam’s government’s globalization policy was Nam June Paik. Thanks to the policy, along with Nam June Paik’s retrospective exhibitions like the 30th Anniversary of Video Art, technology-based art forms began to take root. In addition to The More, The Better in 1988, Nam June Paik produced Fractal Turtle Ship for the 1993 Daejeon International Exposition. In the same year, he served as commissioner for the Whitney Biennale and planned the Info Art Exhibition for the Gwangju Biennale. He greatly influenced Korea’s large-scale media art exhibitions of the 1990s. In the 1960s and 1970s, several artists produced video art and multi-media works in Korea, but they were not actively discussed within the realm of art discourse. In the 1990s, an increase in government-led international events resulted in a large number of media art exhibitions, and the artist and exhibition discourse surrounding technology art increased the aesthetic value of art that incorporates technology.

Citation status

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