Now, the art world of Korea seems to be in serious difficulties. Enormous changes have occurred for the last 10 years. These include, first, the expansion of the art market, second, the progression of informational exchanges and cultural hybridism in the name of globalism and, the rapid growth of the mass culture, preconditioned by the development of informationalization. These have transformed our visual environment into an unprecedented phase of the history, which ultimately affected the conventional status of art.

Even though these changes have been inevitable, in some respects, they had a positive influence upon the existing art system and the customs, in terms that they provided an opportunity for self-reformation. The Korean art world, however, did not seem to take this chance; it rather lost its way or blindly followed such trends in a lethargic manner. In addition, the educational system, public sponsorship, galleries and journals are pretending to ignore these phenomena while adhering to the conservative practice, in one hand. On the other hand, they admit and lead the flow of changes only for an immediate profit.

These preposterous reactions to the overall transformation in the Korean art world have turned the market growth into subjection to market, globalism and information-oriented trend into the reinforcement of the center/periphery structure, and the change of visual environment into fetishism of environment itself. Also, this seems to result in a loss of the essential function of art such as aesthetic, moral, public contributions which used to be the roots of artistic vitality. We are deeply disappointed with the inability of the existing art system that has driven the Korean art world into the present situation.

We have experienced the irresolute reaction of the existing art system to these dramatic changes for the past 10 years. Reflecting ourselves, we have believed that we should take this deadlock as an opportunity to promote the true value of our culture and to make another change driven by the inner energy of the art world. And we believe that 'democracy in art', 'art for life and mass culture', 'vital and alternative art based on the flexible and meaningful identity of artists' should be constituted for the real change, in advance. This is the reason why we are running the 'Alternative Space' with the help of a group of artists, critics, curators, and other art-related people. This is nothing more than a beginning and only a part of the whole which should be supplemented by plenty of new trials. We hope our little effort can meet the expectations of art-related people who trust the artistic potentiality.

The most urgent task of ours is to set up a stronghold for art specialists in order to produce an alternative art. Therefore, we expect 'alternative space pool' to be a place of mutual education through discussion and exchange of ideas, and of an alternative discourse of art. And we hope alternative space pool' to be a starting-point where we could grope for the possibility of art on the basis of the aesthetics and ethics which coincide with the present state of the world. Our projects include;

(1) Symposiums for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of art
(2) Curating and supporting exhibitions for promotion of alternative art
(3) In-depth educational programs which meet the demands of art-related people
(4) Supporting meetings of progressive art people
(5) Publishing journal of communication media for the sake of true discourse

Some of the projects above are beyond our capacity, but we promise that we will take all of these into practice one by one. Other programs will be initiated in the near future, in order to raise fund or for other purposes. However, the utmost urgent tasks at the present are those mentioned above, which also comprise the basic principals of the whole projects and meet the ultimate goal of 'alternative space pool'.