Q : You say it’s sound art, but we can also classify it as music. Then doesn’t it need excitement and joy?

A : Of course. I once held a rave party around 2005 at Aurasoma. We planned it ourselves, and it was a huge success. But we made a cool-headed judgment that we had run out of music that we could show after just one party. We felt that we needed time to develop it further, step by step, but our agency pulled the project out from beneath our feet because of commercial motives. All our musicians, compositions and concepts were gone. In the end, techno became a fixed genre and a cliché, and that type of music was ruined. It’s unfortunate that the history and context of techno music was not better preserved.

Q : Recently in the global arts community, there is a trend of displaying sound arts, and you created a lot of debate for being directly involved.

A : Maybe it’s because I started out from art, but I don’t think that there is currently a proper foundation to pursue sound arts in the arts arena. Take a museum, for example. There’s no place to install sound systems. And it is a stretch to use sound art as a type of exhibition. I may have been a bit too persistent and I do regret some things. The reason there was a heated debate is because I felt that there were some powers that wanted to use sound arts as a product; just like in the past when the critics took over electronic/techno music. The strangest thing is this: at the Plateau Museum in front of city hall, when you look at what they have written about artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, about the candy incident, you cannot help but question why these people who are knowledgeable about the aesthetics behind performances cannot think in the same way toward sound art.

Q : Then are you saying that there is a certain deception, a certain foreshadowing, and a certain device in your sound art work?

A : Even when I make a CD, I always have a narrative of strategy following the previous one, and I am a person who hopes that people will recognize my efforts. I do conceptual work, giving people hints here and there, hoping that they will find joy in searching for them. This may sound like I am working on art as well, but in short, it is ‘reading beneath the lines and expressing.’ But usually nobody knows. (laugh)

Q : That’s an unexpected surprise. In the future, I’ll be sure to think of the on-site music in a new light rather than thoughtlessly moving to the beat.

A : I once saw something called the Deoksugung Project, and another artist said that they had deliberately leaked the reference for the piece so that the audience and critics could see it. I think that kind of stimulated me.

Q : But you have a forte in terms of international exchanges and acoustical Esperanto communication as a Korean sound artist. Your work clearly resonated with the foreign audience and you have a lot in common with foreign sound artists, especially those important figures such as Zbigniew Karkowski. You two collaborated on a piece together and gave the audience a refreshing cultural shock.

A : Sato Yukie and Zbigniew Karkowski are big shots in the industry, but they are very humble and modest. (laugh). I get confused as well when I perform overseas. Domestically, it’s true that I hardly get any responses, but internationally, I often encounter big surprises. Once, during a performance in Sweden in 2008, I could not even decide whether my sounds were good or bad. It was a very strange feeling, and I even had some negative thoughts that people would revile my performance when I finished. But when I finished, I got an unexpectedly favorable response from the audience. As I found out, in Sweden, unlike Korea, the market is very advanced to a level where free jazz is quite popular.

Q : What kind of music or sound was it, the piece that you played?

A : It was the sound of clockwork. To be more precise, it was the sound of metal scraping on metal. Normally, in Korea the audience would wonder, “When are you going to start the performance?” But in Sweden, the audience simply responded, “Ahh… what a great sound.” (laugh).

Q : They are certainly different, the people in countries north of the Netherlands

A : Sure enough, Sweden was such a quiet country. Korea is the opposite; it is a country with endless sounds.

Q : We could say that it’s a prison of sounds.

A : Yes indeed. Maybe it’s because the sounds are lumped together and are overlapping that Koreans don’t want to consciously listen to sounds.

Q : We learned of a method of exchange in school that is nearly extinct these days, called the barter system. I feel like you are living in a world where we can barter arts.

A : By barter system, you mean the exchange of goods, right? I don’t think I intended to, but I think you are right. That’s quite amusing. A while back, I went to a private exhibition in Canada, and somebody posted information about me on their Facebook page, and someone I didn’t know wrote a comment on that posting. That person asked about my schedule, and whether I had time to drop by in the US. As it turned out, there was another artist that I knew in the US, and that person got in touch with him to suggest a performance in the US.

Q : That is some word-of-mouth, and some network! Very giving and welcoming. I bet dream-like events really do come true, right?

A : Yes, but we are all very poor. Even though we’re internationally renowned artists, none of us are rich. A sound is something that we cannot possess, and it’s more like a community experience.

In the 1960s, Fluxus was more a type of community for people to work together internationally, rather than a famous group. It was only until recently when art historians tried to canonize Fluxus into the field. Now it is being included in the pantheon of arts, and it is influencing its power on future trends and intelligence. All this is attributable to the community’s activities. In fact, if we go back in time, names such as the Left Bank and Peggy Guggenheim are all nouns of those communities. Originally, art is a domain in which all individual artists are like chessman on a chessboard, who are collectively combined to form a chain structure.

Q : The piece that you are working on is A Typist?

A : Yes, you pronounce it A - Typist. Originally, it was Beckett’s Typist but I changed the name as I changed the structure little by little. This piece is complex. A writer typing on a typewriter is in a way, overusing one’s body, and sounds break out according to the rhythm and line of movement of the writer. Basically it is using the resulting sound effects as acoustics. In terms of context, there is a bigger picture.

Q : What is the bigger picture?

A : Something like this: modern literature is shunned because in the end, it is ‘not friendly.’ Apart from the handful number of writers who are praised, most writers have to go through a desperate struggle, don’t they? I thought that was what literature and sound art had in common.

Q : I think you are a genius at collaboration.

A : Anyhow, I made a proposal. After the advent of the computer, the typewriter became obsolete, and I thought it was an interesting source of old media and I suggested that we make an instrument out of it. Then I told them, ‘now, write in front of an audience.’ Then the writers come back at me, saying ‘just make a good typewriter.’

Q : Oh…. Very interesting! Due to the time gap between old and new media, the old media gains momentum, in other words, it is a remediation. I see that you had an insight into media when you thought up the sound effects of the typewriter.

A : My original plan was to go on a tour with a troop of typists.

Q : As performers?

A : Yes, they would become performers. Writers would produce sounds, and the sound artists would write… it was a secret agreement, but there was a problem. An unexpected one.

Q : What was it?

A : The surprising truth that writers cannot write in front of people.

Q : Aha!

A : The ideal A Typist would be a 4-person Vagabond Moving Theater, and I thought we could go on international tours. I haven’t let go of that dream just yet, but I realize that I have to tend to the writers’ problems first. Writing in front of people is like being naked for them. So I can’t be greedy and ask for sounds produced by writing. Nevertheless, we did get some responses from the audience saying the typewriter sounds were very attractive and that they saw the appeal of the Beckett style. But of course I must admit that there were also negative responses.

Q : The way I heard it was, a colony of monkeys living on a faraway planet hammering away on the typewriter every night, and by pure coincidence, they make a miracle by writing Beckett’s play, and this miracle creates an auditory hallucination forming a sci-fi-like sound.

A : Frankly speaking, through A Typist, I tried to show the audience that the act of writing can be expressed as “feeling of using one’s body” and “resonance in the name of sound.” I didn’t go that far to think about a sci-fi–like hallucination, but I believe that there is a common thread in writing and creating sounds. So I wanted to capture those commonalities, and create tension amidst a chaotic clash of sounds, and so on.

Q : Did you work on A Typist with the international audience in mind?

Q : What you just said is conceptually very interesting. Normally, people talk about breaking the genre boundaries, but what you are saying is that you don’t want to break the boundaries, but rather, embrace them. I think the non-musician concept is noteworthy as well.

Q : There is always that fatal notion of having to take a leap, whether it be in concept or implementation.

Maybe we have a chance at breaking away from the paradigm of so-called South Korean arts; local arts that can be categorized into ‘well-made,’ ‘spectacle,’ ‘hard-core’ and ‘partying;’ through the ‘depth’ of most art genres, to open up a new chapter in sound art. Not to put a burden on Hankil RYU, but he is an artist who is well known internationally, having practiced 20th century Avant-garde and Neo-Avant-garde with many collaborations and acquaintances in the sound arts field for over a decade. It seems we were the ones who didn’t realize that we were picking on him and his work, but finally we have turned around to give him the praise that he deserves.