Part 1

 

Solo Exhibition

Kim Kyoung-Ho

Magic Bullet Broadcasting Network

Jul 5 – Sep 1, 2013  Art Space Pool, Seoul

 

Jul 7 (Sun) 4 pm, Conversation with the Artist & Frank Smith

 

Artist Kyungho Kim is a video journal producer and photographer who has work experience as a news producing technology director at the Iranian Cable News Broadcasting System in Seoul. In this exhibition, he deals with the politics of image representation intervened during the Iran-Korea news producing process that he has experienced at Press TV for the past 3 years, the Iranian broadcasting system based in Korea. He also deals with the imaginary scene of inter-cultural negotiation taking place in the new media surroundings. 

 

The process of producing news between the Iranian headquarter and the Korean branch office generally consists of the headquarter designating the specific cases and report orientation, the Korean branch covering the case on site and completing the video edit and transmitting the file. Upon receiving this file, the Iranian headquarter subsequently reedits and transmits the final version to be broadcast directly via global channel without any confirmation of the Korean branch. The artist used to verify minor omissions and changes during the process, between the on-site produced file and the final version.

 

Each channel of the artist’s multichannel video installation work presented in the exhibition displays the on-site file and final version juxtaposed on a single screen. The display order of images is changed and the frame is slightly cut, making the time out of step, and finally the voices of anchors are out of joint. They talk about the same incident but maybe due to the slight difference between the general narrative layout for Iranian and Korean viewers, the display order of images are arranged differently and the detail of awomen in a mini-skirt in the background would be cut since it is a cultural taboo in Islamic countries. 

 

It is interesting to trace the minute difference in details between the two files shown on each screen but by displaying several short news clips simultaneously, the artist stresses the jungle of huge images and big sounds where the differences are buried inside, rather than emphasizing on the comparative cultural differences.

 

To come to think of it, in this process of video journalism refracted in several levels, there are relatively more complex and multiple relations than the politics of binary oppositional representation, the bilateral projection of each party, Korea and Iran, in a closed circuit. First of all, when a specific order is sent for a certain coverage among many cases, there exists a desire springing from Iran to show a certain aspect of Korea. At the same time, the news producing team in Korea covers certain aspects of Korea which ‘Iran would probably not know yet’, adding its desire to display the ‘genuine’ face of Korea which would not be broadcast on domestic public TV. The variable factor that complicates the situation even more is the foreign journalists working in branch offices in Korea who are willing to see the negotiation between the two interesting Asian countries, Korea and Iran. They are known to call for the ‘objective’ ideal of journalism in their editing process. After many difficulties, once the file is transmitted to Iran, it adds its desire to re-fabricate according to the global code of Iran’s pro-North Korea, anti-U.S. tendency, since it is a state to which world aid is restricted, along with North Korea. From this viewpoint, even though it is understood that two countries, Korea and Iran, are editing each other, in reality, virtual editors around the globe as well as North Korea, United States and any third country observing Asia are all participating in the editing process. The result: disjunctive speech created by the interventions of South Korea, Iran, North Korea, United States and the global editors or texts that are not entirely representation of facts or fiction, amorphous texts.

 

With relatum as complex and ambiguous as this, shouldn’t we understand news production as some kind of imaginary text of game-like reality rather than objective coverage or political text? Who is Asia? Who on earth are the global introduced into the inter-cultural negotiation sites? Whose news are the news that we view believing as being foreign news on the TV everyday?