Alternative Performers Association
2022, 4 air signs, fabric, ventilators, program switch, employee badge, each 100cm x 100cm x 300cm
In early 2000s Korea, stores celebrating their grand opening invariably featured female laborers, known as ‘narrator models’, dancing in revealing outfits. This seems to be an Asian version of the ‘Sandwich Man’ that appeared in 19th century England. While jobs that attract attention through women’s bodies and choreography still exist, the ‘dancing woman’, once considered a staple of grand openings, has disappeared along with societal perception changes. However, the ‘body’s form remains till the end in the shape of flailing air dancers. We still think of ‘humans’, the ‘narrator models’ we once saw, even when looking at a cross-shaped figure abstracted to the point of suggesting a body, fabric fluttering aimlessly in the wind. This air dancer device operates as a laboring body that can be owned for a nominal electricity fee and is capable of unpaid, repeatable work 24 hours a day. On one side, there’s a museum wanting to own the performance. The contemporary movements of museums and galleries wanting to collect and sell choreography and bodies seem perilous on one hand. They attempt to produce something that operates reminiscent of a past space-time that no longer exists, capable of unpaid, repeatable performance anytime. The scenes I create reveal contradictions arising from replacing non-human animals with humans or humans with non-human animals. Based on the images generated between these three axes, the artist collaborated with an air sign manufacturing company to establish a virtual Alternative Performers Association. What are the interests and perspectives entangled with devices and media referred to as ‘alternative performers’? Those who wish to own movement and bodies, artists with a functional desire to dynamically fill museum spaces, work based on the characteristics that attract the eye to the body, how can we highlight the legitimate discourse of erased humans or non-human animals within these interests? The movements of alternative performers, resembling 3D models on the surface, along with the movements of all other street air signs, pose the question, ‘What is the substitution for?’ How does the body in media operate, and for whom does it move? Going forward, Yoon Jungwon’s exhibition space performances will be outsourced to the Alternative Performers Association.
▲ The Materiality of the Alternative Performers Association
In the process of creating this work, I also considered the physicality and materiality of ‘Alternative Performers Association.’ The constantly moving bodies of these Alternative Performers, which generate a sense of presence, are composed of images that create the flow and resistance of fluids. Like 3D-modeled bodies often used in games or virtual reality, which sometimes reveal their empty interiors when errors occur, these images become membranes through which things flow, creating a sense of presence through their interaction. The dance of the fluid and the image membrane within these Alternative Performers can be similarly observed in the sense of presence generated by biological cells, plants, and small physical units.
I created a 3D model of the alternative performer and used fluid dynamics visualization code to obtain dynamic images of ‘flow’ and ‘resistance.’ Watching this video montage I created, I sense the numerous fluids flowing through me, the images and membranes interacting with them, and the life and universe they create.
