Yang Man-Ki’s recent works present a new and important direction in using unfamiliar technology. In the early stages of his work, he makes images containing digital aesthetics. In contrast, his finished work is very analog and involves labor-intensive, handcrafted processes.
Viewers gain access to mechanical pipes and respond to sensual tremors, as well as to the image and sound traveling through five vacuum Braun tubes with a diameter of 7.5mm.
According to the artist’s remarks, Communication Project is a poetic study on denial, fabrication, fear, and love—emotional responses resulting from psychic trauma and its aftermath.
This work attempts to express these vicious cycles through sound and image, by observing and overcoming various types of established facts that may occur in relation to psychic trauma. The structure of the work is designed to analyze and examine the dynamics of memory. In addition, the work enables viewers to experience an imaginary and impossible sense of bodily position through distortion, storage, and access.
Communication Project, 2002. video installation, DVD player, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist
