New Way to Enjoy Arts in the Contactless Era

Project <COOKBOOK> explores art forms of the contactless era of ours. Kwanwoo Park and Sung-hwan Ahn are conceptual artists that have been reflecting on the identities of human and arts, focusing on the performativity of their work. By exploring various expressive ways of contemporary art which has lost the “physical co-presence” aspect due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the artists try to find a way for artists and the audience to develop a new relationship.

Integrating Arts for a Fundamental Approach to Our Sense of Self

Kwanwoo Park uses physical performance as his artistic medium to capture the direct and indirect experiences of our sense of identity as ourselves and from other’s point of view. Park allows the audience to explore their sense of identity by making them see the image of them exploring themselves or by making them behave in a certain way in a specific situation. Park makes the “You” and “I” in our self-awareness connect and also intentionally tries to break and reconstruct the awareness system us humans have. His approach is also his way of exploring the possible relationships between humans and post-humans which will be social entities in our future.

Sunghwan Ahn constantly asks questions about “self” and uses his body to explore the concept of “identity” from a third-person point of view. He then reproduces the objectified body of his using objects and installation work. Ahn’s work make him recognize as an object, removes the form of identity the artist and the audience define based on a body and allows us to reconsider the basis of “self”. Ahn’s experimental attitude comes from his design-based engineer-like mindset that makes him believe that we can construct our body and identity according specific conditions.

<COOKBOOK>, a Project that Requires and Dreams of Communication in the Field in this Pandemic

Kwanwoo Park and Sung-hwan Ahn who are trying to redefine our sense of identity using physical performance within the realm of conceptual art, focus on contemporary art and the relationships that arise from it. Their search for a way to create relationships is in line with their work which requires communication in the field. Breaking away from the boundaries of physical space and time for sharing their work, the two artists try develop relationships with their audience by sending them their work. The artists send everyday objects to the audience and the audience who agree to participate complete the work using their imaginations and preferred materials. The finished works are sent back to the artists who then reorganizes the works through a physical exhibition or on a virtual platform. By carrying out this process Park and Ahn have designed, the one-way relationship between supply and demand is removed and the status of the provider and receiver is reversed. The artists and audience who have participated in this process all get to give up their identity and are granted an opportunity to reconstruct a new identity.

The Art This Contactless Era of Ours Demands

Focusing on the contactless era brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic, conceptual artists Kwanwoo Park and Sung-hwan Ahn started this project to discover a way to share art with the audience. To deliver art which heavily relies on the physical presence of the audience, Park and Ahn have come up with a way to utilize the digital environment we’re living in and have taken art-audience relations to a new level. <COOKBOOK> reverses the roles of the artists and audience. Park and Ahn have created an online platform, a medium to deliver the audience and make the audience subscribe to a “Meal Kit” which contains a recipe and tools the audience can use. The audience becomes subscribers and also creators. Bringing art closer to the audience, Park and Ahn try to remove certain prejudices the audience have towards art and also explore a new possibility of sharing art in this pandemic.