The Possibility of the Half

2012 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

13:32 minutes

Minouk Lim

location: Seoul, South Korea
year born: 1968
gender: female
nationality: Korean

The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground. As both frames progresses, a montage of large crowds of mourners are depicted in slow motion interwoven with a variety of images including bomb explosions, fireworks, vacant stores, sunsets and sunrises, beachside landscapes, and infrared shots. At midpoint, life in the year 4012 is foreshadowed down to living insects and the video concludes back in the year 2012 as a burning inferno. A melancholic soundtrack of a stringed orchestra number plays in the background. In this video work Lim appropriates various televised footage from the aftermath of two different historical events: the death of former President of South Korea Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) and the death of former dictator of North Korea Kim Jong-il (1941–2011). By combining these undistinguishable footage from separate eras in each channel, Lim extracts the political divide that underlies the two events and focuses on the universality of their anguish. The Possibility of the Half is the first in a series of works that center on broadcast TV. The video in its original installation form restages a broadcast network studio, this simulated newsroom addresses the integrity of journalism amidst today’s fake news phenomena. In recent years, the pervasiveness of fake news and the manipulative power of the media to shape public knowledge and thus collective memory has prompted a subversive tactic in which Lim incorporates reportage in her work.


Loss, grief, trauma, death, and memory are consistent themes that Minouk Lim addresses through her sculptures, installations, performances, and videos. Lim’s provocative body of work is a response to and reconciliation of traumatic historical events in Korea from the late 1940s to the present day, including the undocumented massacres that occurred during the Korean War of the late 1940s and 50s, the protest for workers rights in the 1970s during the economic expansion of South Korea, and the ever-present fear of nuclear obliteration that clouds the entire Korean peninsula. For Lim, the collective experience is personal and her research confronts forgotten pasts and unlawful persecutions and in many instances, involves direct contact and establishing meaningful relationships with victims of torture, wrongfully accused North Korean spies, and civil rights organization employees.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

A Malaysian under lockdown reviews Singapore Art Week 2021
© » ARTS EQUATOR

A Malaysian under lockdown reviews Singapore Art Week 2021 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints January 27, 2021 By Ellen Lee (2,500 words, 9-minute read) Looking through the 35-page programme booklet for the 9th edition of Singapore Art Week (SAW), I was fully struck by my Malaysian-ness...

Inside Michael Davis’s Art-Filled Home in the UAE - via The National
© » LARRY'S LIST

An eclectic mix of quirky, collectible and antique pieces take pride of place in this four-bedroom Jumeirah villa...

SF Art Book Pop-up
© » KADIST

Saturday, January 24, 2-7pm On the occassion of the upcoming LA Art book fair , nine Bay Area booksellers, artists, and independent publishers will convene for one day at Kadist to showcase their latest art books, catalogs, periodicals, and zines...

Lynn Hershman Leeson
© » KADIST

Lynn Hershman Leeson Women Artists in KADIST’s and Videobrasil’s Collections An Online Video Exhibition streaming at videobrasil.online from September 27–November 28, 2021 From early on, the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson (1941, Cleveland, USA) anticipated the impact of technological developments on our lives and has explored how women’s identities are coded and decoded by them...

SEA STATE 6: Capsize
© » KADIST

Charles Lim

2014

In SEA STATE 6 Charles Lim takes the viewer down the Jurong Rock Caverns in Singapore, a massive underground infrastructure for oil and fuel storage, built to support the commercial operations of oil traders, petrochemical ventures and manufacturing industries in the area...

A Very Important Napkin Signed By Lionel Messi Could Fetch $379,000
© » ARTNET

The serviette formed a binding contract between the footballer and FC Barcelona...

Discussion and visit of Nicolás Paris's project "room for us" with Luis Pérez-Oramas.
© » KADIST

November 7, 2013, at 7 p.m Luis Pérez-Oramas was born in 1960 in Caracas, Venezuela, and currently lives in New York...

Araf
© » KADIST

Didem Pekün

2018

The black-and-white projection, Araf by Didem Pekün, begins, as a lithe man stands high up in the middle of the grand, rebuilt 16th-century Ottoman bridge in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina...

How NFTs Are Giving Everyone the Chance to Be an Art Collector - via The National
© » LARRY'S LIST

New ownership schemes allow investors to buy digital portions of paintings and share in the profits when it sells...

Back Up Your NFT Art or It Could Disappear
© » ARTNOME

Back Up Your NFT Art or It Could Disappear — Artnome Menu Blog Exploring art through data using the Artnome database...

Paul Lepetit — Not so Blue
© » SLASH PARIS

Paul Lepetit — Not so Blue — Les Bains-Douches d'Alençon — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Paul Lepetit — Not so Blue — Les Bains-Douches d'Alençon — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Paul Lepetit — Not so Blue Exposition Techniques mixtes Paul Lepetit Courtesy de l’artiste Paul Lepetit Not so Blue Encore 12 jours : 24 novembre → 23 décembre 2023 L’exposition Not so Blue de Paul Lepetit aux Bains-Douches d’Alençon est présentée dans le cadre de « maintenant et demain 2023 » programme de résidence et exposition mis en place par le Conseil Départemental de l’Orne et Les Bains-Douches...

AO ON-SITE – MIAMI BEACH: UNTITLED ART FAIR, DECEMBER 6TH-10TH, 2023
© » ARTOBSERVED

Photo from Untitled website Untitled Art Fair revisited its Miami Beach location, again on the beach just off Ocean Drive...

Discover the Secrets of Drawing Realistic Portraits (Now on Pre-Sale!)
© » MODERN MET ART

Learn How to Draw Realistic Portraits in This Online Class Home / Classes / Academy Discover the Secrets of Drawing Realistic Portraits (Now on Pre-Sale!) By Jessica Stewart on December 5, 2023 Have you ever seen a realistic portrait and wished that you knew how to create something similar? Thanks to My Modern Met Academy's new course, Realistic Portrait Drawing Made Easy , you'll discover all the tips, tricks, and techniques to produce a portrait that looks incredibly real...

On Landscape: Artist and Curator video
© » KADIST

Drinks at 6pm, talk at 7pm What is the mirror effect between landscape and technology, and how do different perspectives and approaches affect our mental images of landscapes? On the occasion of the collaborative exhibition Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible? at YBCA, co-curators Betti-Sue Hertz, Ruijun Shen, and Xiaoyu Weng invite some of the artists in the exhibition to reflect on their individual relationships with and conceptions of landscape....

Afternoon visit, Ola and I playing nipple (Photo by Sodiq)
© » KADIST

Sabelo Mlangeni

2019

The Royal House of Allure is a name of a safe house on mainland Lagos where members of the queer community in need of boarding, due to various circumstances, live together...

End of Season Party
© » KADIST

For the final event in our three part Summer music series, we’ve invited DJ Young Neil (artist Tim Lee) to San Francisco to set up a whiskey bar and DJ a three-hour set of Rap music to both celebrate our season, and to thank all our friends and neighbors who have helped make it possible...

Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...

let this be us
© » KADIST

Richard T. Walker

2012

let this be us is a single-channel video by Richard T...

After Reality
© » KADIST

Zhou Tao

2012

After Reality is a video by Zhou Tao, which was born out of his residency with the Kadist Foundation in Paris in 2012-13...

How Hong Kong’s Collectors Helped Form M+ Museum’s High-Profile Collection - via ARTnews
© » LARRY'S LIST

“The collection has to be in Hong Kong, and M+ is my best choice,” one collector said of his donation to M+....