2021, Vol.62, No.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.81

pISSN : 1229-0246
https://journal.kci.go.kr/ksasa

This study focuses on the process of erasing and rewriting faces, and leaving traces at the vague boundary between humans and others. First, we analyze how faciality as a sign of the modern subject is disappearing. This analysis is to reveal that the expressions of faces are continuously overlaid, erased, replaced with something else, and mixed with others. Furthermore, the theme of “from human face to the face of things” explains that the process of the deconstruction of human faciality is an opportunity for the face of things to appear. Human identity does not return to humans with self-identity after going through a series of numerous relationships and slips with nonhuman things, but rather confirms the pre-existence of the nonhuman and the faces of things that are omnipresent like specters and remains. The relationship between human and nonhuman things paradoxically reveals the fact that things make humans human, and they make humans exist. This study ultimately allows us to reexamine the value of artistic expressions about nonhuman things that have been concealed, along with the new human figure that is coming before us. Philosophical questions about human identity are applied equally to questions about the definition of art or the properties of each art genre, and it leads to an aesthetics of things that have been abandoned, considered useless, and forgotten.

This research started with a problematic recognition of the following two contemporary situations. First, I paid attention to the phenomenon that the online media have shifted to a post-online condition due to the advance of ICT and social media and mobile network environments. Next, criticism can be raised about the contemporary tendency in which performance is complicated not only in academia and culture and art scenes, but also in the field of economy and labor. In particular, this thesis attempted to provide insight into the neoliberal economy and working conditions, the communication/relationships with contemporary media, and the tendency of performance to dominate in contemporary art. To this, I added a parallax view that refers to Derrida's critique of Rousseau. This is because there was a need for a basis to criticize the understanding and approach to our time from another perspective. In short, my argument was to reconsider the issues surrounding post-online, meritocracy, and post-truth, and the paradox of performativity, interpreting the criticism that Derrida reconstructed in Rousseau's texts, focusing on the concepts of ‘mediation’ and ‘supplement’. A public art project by M. L. Ukeles and street performances by TSI are examples for my research. Especially it is significant that her work honored the service workers under the pandemic situation. this research was able to criticize the paradoxical realization of contemporary performativity, the different characteristics of transparency and directness, and discrimination of social relationships that ignored mediation and supplement.

Ongon, the image of the spirit of shamanism that is now handed down through Siberian minorities, is a formative material that has been kept since ancient times. Ongon is a religious art that is conservative about change, and is the most specific evidence that can grasp the archetypes, cultural characteristics and formative identity of the region. Therefore, in this study, the shape of Ongon was analyzed by the method of perceptual psychology to understand its in-depth formative principle. In addition, I tried to infer the cause of Korea's unique aesthetic consciousness linked to Siberian shamanism through perceptions such as introjection, jamais vu, and Gestaltzerfall seen in Ongon's image. Ongon targets the souls of ancestors who cannot be seen and are vague according to the concept of ancestors of shamanism linked to animism. So, in the form, the method of expression of anthropomorphism was remarkable first, followed by the method of ambiguity, which was significantly less realistic. Ongon's ambiguity has a purpose opposite to good Gestalt's principle of morphology, which stably enhances visual comprehension. Such ambiguity raises anxiety and fear of the unknown form, which in this way made the supernatural agent perceive.