For the very humane Marionette

In his new work <Marionette>, Kyoungsoo Kim uses a small and weak marionette to show as a model of portrait of modern people and self-portrait.  As a doll controlled by fine threads, a marionette is an object which can be moved by powers of someone else only.  A marionette on a stage moves as if it is alive by the threads tied to its head, arms and legs.  As it is a doll in the firm the most similar to the human, movements of marionette brings ambiguity and oddity.  The reason that many artists are also drawn by marionettes and mannequin dolls, etc. is the exotic familiarity which comes from the ‘human appearance’ although they are not human.  From the ancient time to the modern time, dolls were alive not only for religious, cultural and ritual functions but also in play fields!  Dolls acts as intermediary among gods, art and humans and has played a role of controlling, representing or consoling humans.  In the new work of Kyoungsoo Kim, <Marionette>, the attempt to disclose the society and values of life through dolls is to have the old message delivered by the most familiar object of ours.

Among artists who use dolls as subject of their works, Emmy Hennings, Sophie Taeuber, Hannah Höch, Oskar Schlemmer, etc. can be selected and they mainly acted with marionettes made by themselves together with stage production and explored human desire and identity through dolls by making finer movements.  Human familiarity with those without life and unfamiliarity and dilemma caused by their movements projected internalized violence or death, thereby attempting to violate social taboo and conventions.  Kyoungsoo Kim also supervised acting of marionettes in the stage which he produced himself and by taking photos with lighting, he made photographic images which are full of confusions and melancholy.

Marionettes in photos sometimes look at the audience or sees the world within the photo.  Although their odd changes sometimes cause anxiety and horror, but sometimes, sympathetic and empathetic emotions make one identify with the marionettes.  Sometimes, on the other hand, the funny and odd appearance is grotesque and at the same time makes a strange world, where what used to feel familiar and comfortable suddenly becomes unfamiliar and terrifying, mixing time and space momentarily as if the marionettes on the stage are coming out to the real world.  Who and where are marionettes in photos (stages) looking at?  What do they desire and for what they battle?  And, why are they constricted in the small stage?  The stage where the marionettes who got their new lives through attention of audience can be a small edition of the current world.  It is even attracting attention of each other from the small stage (world) of the system which controls all of us like the big brother of George Owell.  The author, the human who controls marionettes, visualizes that one needs to look into himself and to look again at what the audience sees as the marionette looks at the audience through the doll, who is also his alter ego.  The author appears to be controlling the marionette actively but in reality, he is endlessly plying at a tug of war.  In the attention exchanged with the marionette, it is made as part of oneself or as a belonging, but it shows that the marionette on the stage confined in the invisible attention is actually himself.  The tricky trap in the photo of Kyoungsoo Kim is right this.  As the monitoring and controlling, desire and power of the big brother ties the arms and the legs of the small and weak marionette to move only on the stage, it draws that the stage of our lives can never be free in the invisible structural force, namely, the human limitations subjected by controlling attention.  However, the author implies that although “humane humans” cannot escape from it, if we cut the ‘threads’ connecting the body of ours (marionettes), the lighting will be turned off and the stage will also disappear, leaving the possibility of escaping still valid.

This world is full of grotesque which is beyond the scope of mystery, oddity and understanding like the stage where marionettes act.  Grotesque esthetics, which is originated from ‘grotta (cave)’ in Italian, can be said to be a methodology to recover the new human identity against the traditional esthetics and ethics by proposing a world where the actual order is destroyed in free fantasy.  It can be said “grotesque is an expression of unfamiliar or secluded world.  Namely, a familiar word suddenly becomes unfamiliar by looking through a new perspective.  Grotesque is a game played with a ridiculous thing.  Said again, an artist who pursues grotesque is deep absurdities in existence and kids half-jokingly and half in fear.  Grotesque is an attempt to throw out evil elements of the world by controlling them.”  As Phillip Thomson mentioned, the world of grotesque is imaginary and fantastic but is also a graceful world, full of humor imagination against the world of confusion.  In the 21st Century, which is wildly filed with war and genocide and destruction and violence, human seclusion and feeling of loss deepen more and more and modern people have become salves of anxiety and fatigue in the midst of competition for speed.  In the fierce competition to survive, existence becomes indistinct and life becomes more and more heartless.

Kyoungsoo Kim tells undramatized live stories of his real experience in the roles of an actor, producer and audience through the marionette.  The photos of Kyoungsoo Kim bring an image of the cave in the ancient Platon.  As if the phantom shining on the walls of the cave is real, the people living the very lives and the forms of absurd life in it has continued for terribly long.  As, although whether any reality exists outside the cave is unknown, desire of Icarus proves its existence without stopping its wings all the time even if it is a dangerous path which leads to death, Kyoungsoo Kim’s photos causes dreaming of a new world outside the stage.  His carnival senses attempts ‘light painting’ at the place of life of all marionette who dream of escaping from authority and unlimited changes and breakaway

​

Choi, Yeon Ha

photo critic and exhibition planner