Re: [-empyre-] Cunnilingus in North Korea

["James Barrett" <jim.barrett@humlab.umu.se>]

Putting my own bucks worth in:
It seems technology is marketed as a means of "making" culture in many
countries.  Sweden is also one to boast of being "the most broad banded
country in the world". Found on the net; Korea's broadband is at "51.7%
penetration" while Sweden's "broadband infrastructure has reached 85
percent of the population". This figure comes from "Invest in Sweden"
website (http://www.isa.se/templates/News____25769.aspx). Presumably there
is a difference between "penetration" and "infrastructure". I read this as
a desire to present a nation as able to provide for its citizens. Former
agrarian economies, both revolutionized by technology and "market reforms"
and now boasting of the digital potato crop.

What I would believe is a greater hindrance to those "from outside the
country can bring up half the Korean home pages" is the problem with
language. How many Korean homepages are in the national script and how
many are in English or any Latin script language? Maybe this explains the
reliance on visuals and the bandwidth's prerequisite kindness to this
indulgence.
I did a quick search on Rhizome.org and got 300 hits for Korea, not bad,
but only half as many as I got for Japan and for Australia (around 750
each)- There may not exactly be "no other artists around us who are
interested in it [internet]" but there seems to be lag as represented by
this database anyway.

Finally to the subject of "Cunnilingus in North Korea". I read this and
thought of FREE SEX.....NOW:

"From Charles Olson's "Projective Verse" (1950) with its call for
"objectism" ("the getting rid of the lyrical interference of the
individual as ego...for man is himself an object") to John Cage's remark
in Silence (1961) that "I'd never been interested in symbolism....I
preferred in taking things in themselves, not as standing for other
things" to Frank O'Hora's praise for Jasper Johns' "meticulous and sensual
painted rituals of imagery" which "express a profound boredom with the
symbols of an oversymbolic society" (1962); and David Antin's definition,
in the mid-seventies, of poetry as "the language art", a form of discourse
which, rather than "saying one thing and meaning something else," returns
to the literal but with the recognition that "phenomenological reality is
itself discovered and constructed by poets", the question o how to create
poetry in a post-Symbolist age has been a primary concern. It is
interesting that even Robert Lowell, whose roots are deep in the Symbolist
tradition, could declare in the Afterforward to Notebook 1967-68: "I lean
heavily on the rational, but am devoted to surrealism....it is a natural
way to write our fictions," and Lowell's last book, "Day by Day" (1977)
can be said to follow Rimbaud's dictum of "saying" what is "says"
"littéralement at dans tous les sens."

Marjorie Perloff "The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage" (1999)
pp34-35

>From the same text, Gertrude Stein on "dining at the Y":
"Cunning shawl, cunning shawl to be steady." ("Tender Buttons" 1914 p487)


James


> Hi Paul,
>
> "Can you comment on how national cultural agendas have influenced your
> work
> (in contrast say to the influence of the contemporary political situation
> -or- the western art world)?"
>
> We can't say we pay much attention to any national cultural agenda. Do you
> mean the fact that Korea isthe most broadbanded country in the world ? We
> began to make Net art with a 56K modem. We've only had broadband for the
> past year and a half.
>
> Paradoxically, the 56K modem was a determining factor in our work: no
> images. Broadband has spoiled Korean Web designers. They have no
> discipline.
> No one outside the country can bring up half the Korean home pages.
>
> Korea is also 99.999% PC country. We're the only Mac users here.
>
> We began to make Net art not because the Korean government and Korean big
> business pushed computers and the Internet (which it has been doing), but
> because everything is big in Korea. Korea is a small country with big
> ambitions. We wanted to make something small -- not for aesthetic but for
> practical, economic reasons, because it seemed cheaper: no studio, no
> materials except for a computer, a dial-up connection, a Flash program and
> a
> Web domain.
>
> The Internet seemed to present the biggest bang for our buck. We still
> believe this. The Internet has been good to us.
>
> The Korean national cultural agenda is uninterested in artistic uses of
> the
> Internet. That may be, come to think of it, why the Internet appeals to
> us:
> because there are no other artists around us who are interested in it.
>
> Young-hae and Marc
>
>
>
> On 5/9/05 3:59 PM, "Paul Brown" <paul@paul-brown.com> wrote:
>
>>> Did the Korean flag influence any of your public work?
>>>
>>> Young-hae and Marc
>>
>> Only as much as the trigrams (or their structure) have had a major
>> influence on all my work.  So only indirectly.  But the flag did
>> intrigue
>> me and indicates that Korea has (or maybe had) a fairly close
>> identification with a Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist ideology.
>>
>> Can you comment on how national cultural agendas have influenced your
>> work (in contrast say to the influence of the contemporary political
>> situation -or- the western artworld)?
>
>
>
>
>
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> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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>


-- 
Doctoral Student, Umeå University
Department of Modern Languages/English
+46 (0)90 786 6584
HUMlab.Umeå University.SE-901 87.Umeå.Sweden
Blog: http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com
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