Untitled 9870000 is the only extant video work produced by Choi Byung-So in the 1970s. The video captures the back of the artist, who erases a blackboard while drawing lines with white chalk, focusing on Choi’s subtle gestures on the blackboard. The artist said, “I draw with my body. This is because drawing with the body is more cut out for me than with the eyes, head, and chest. I’m often asked if I find the repetitive, everyday work boring, but my work is actually about enduring such boredom of the body. I stay glued to the chair all day long and erase newspapers endlessly.” This method of establishing different relationships with substance and changing its properties and concepts through such actions later developed into the repetitive and ascetic task of effacing newspapers with ballpoint pens and pencils, which have now become the artist’s representative series.
