Nomadism that appeared on Jeon Soocheon’s Moving Drawing
Jeon Soocheon’s Moving Drawing is a cross continental project carried out for 7days and 8 nights, from 14th to 21st of September 2005 along the Amtrak of United States. In the sense of art history, Moving Drawing falls under the term site-specific installation, emerged in the late 1960’s, as it relies on the railways of limited areas of United States. However, at the same time it holds characteristics of public art as ordinary audience can participate and experience the art work for certain period of time. Since the 1990’s, the concept of art headed towards new trend that cannot be described under frames of traditional modernism. This new work of art attempted art to return to reality and actively fuse with everyday life, and be re-produced by others into copies continuously; currently referred to as neo-conceptualism or global conceptualism. Jeon claims that Moving Drawing falls under a ‘new’ genre of postconceptualism, where existence of both discussion and interactive space is possible together at once. In Moving Drawing, as the audience can live inside the work (train), communication is emphasized by opening the relationship between artwork and audience, and relay of the work is featured on the internet; in this sense, the work falls under neo-conceptualism. The question of this article towards the work begins from this point. How will Moving Drawing be explained by the perspectives of ‘new’ conceptualism? On the reverse, how is Jeon’s Moving Drawing read by the perspectives of ‘new’ conceptualism? This article will reveal that Jeon focused on works introduced in the 1990’S, that encouraged audience participation and strategically used theory of Nicolas Bourriud who invented ‘relational aesthetics’ and ‘relational art’. Furthermore, as a result, the art tendency of the artist will be described as Nomadism. The term Nomadism originated from Nomad, who continuously moved in search of new life, referring to inclination of action where one endlessly searches for new identity free from specific norms or values. In ‘Difference and Repetition’ by French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze in 1968, the world of Nomad was described as ‘world of moving visual’, which continued to be used as philosophical term ‘Nomadism’. The term refers to continuous search of new things beyond traditional value and philosophy, and in an artistic sense, it refers to artists, with avant-garde spirit, exploring the new world by crossing between various academic fields. Despite artists working with various post-conceptual tendencies, research on them is lacking in the current art scene, and hence, this article is important and valuable attempt.