Songhee Noh
RAS(Random Access Space), 2024. Single channel video, color, sound, 12min.

Noh Songhee (b. 1992) has been engaging in video work collaborating with various institutions based on archival materials since 2020, driven by an interest in the interplay between the immaterial and material realms. She structures and juxtaposes digitized history in a way that reveals unique shifts in perspective, thereby recreating and presenting new scenes.

Focusing on the period surrounding the Korean Pavilion's establishment at the Venice Biennale (1993-1995), the artist delves into Nam June Paik's covert operations and related circumstances, collecting digitized video, photographic, and documentary materials. Noh arranges these elements on grid panels divided into a 3:2 ratio and then intersects them once again within the architectural blueprints and elevations of the Korean Pavilion, designed through the collaboration of architects Seok Chul Kim and Franco Mancuso. The panels, incorporated into the blueprints, include twelve in the floor plans and six in the elevations. The lines within these plans form 36 'Random Access Panels' that allow free traversal, whether read vertically or horizontally. In RAS, Noh reflects on the intersections between analog and digital, culture and language—essentially, the diverse aspects of life that Nam June Paik navigated, thereby mirroring the trajectory of Paik's life within her work.

Paik Jongkwan
Waiting and Breathing, 2024, Single channel video, color, sound, 8min.

Paik Jongkwan (b. 1982) creates video works that capture and recontextualize images and sounds through a distinctive approach of archiving and research. Rooted in an examination of the act of observing and its perspectives, his work intricately organizes scenes across multiple dimensions. This approach offers viewers a chance to experience an entirely different concept of time through scenes that emerge inevitably from chance.

Focusing his exploration on the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Paik delves into over three decades of its history. In his creative and exhibition processes, Paik observes the diverse occupation of space—from curators, artists, handlers, guides, and spectators to a cat nestled among steel frames and the shifting shadows of trees under the ever-changing Mediterranean sun. Beginning with a record from a visitor to the Korean Pavilion in 2013, who felt their experience was akin to 'waiting, breathing, and being part of a kind of transformative state,' the work Waiting and Breathing contemplates the anticipation of future exhibitions and artworks, grounded in a transformative history. It also seeks to envision a perspective where all images of the 'Korean Pavilion,' though entangled, support and exist independently of one another, illustrating their interconnected existence.