---

“Seismographs” is a concept that artist Jinjoo Kim employs in her recent work. It was also the title of her solo exhibition Seismographs (2020, Hapjungjigu). Kim says she plans to continue her work on this concept for the time being.

---

Yet, the manner in which Kim deals with this term functions like a riddle. I can be convinced of this reasoning if I take clues from her previous solo exhibition. She does not seem to be particularly interested in describing the general characteristics or forms of the seismograph—an instrument for measuring earthquakes. The exhibition features photographs that have captured records of earthquakes and other seismographic events. Kim found these documents in the library of the American University of Beirut, and transcribes them with her own hands. The exhibition itself did not give a full of explanation of this process. There is no clear reason about why the artist chose these earthquake records from Beirut instead of any other place, and what it means when it’s transcribed in her own hand.

---

Exhibition view of Seismographs(2020, Hapjungjigu, Seoul). Tracing Lee Observatory’s Seismographs. On the wall of the Hapjeongjigu exhibition hall. drawing, installation, tracing on carbon paper, drawing, variable size. Photograph: Hong Chul-ki. Image courtesy of Kim Jin-joo, Hapjeongjigu.

---

Exhibition view of Seismographs(2020, Hapjungjigu, Seoul). Photograph: Hong Chul-ki. Image courtesy of Kim Jin-joo, Hapjeongjigu.

(Left) Factory Dust Gesture (2017), video, HD, color, 11 min 48 sec. Data provided by Suwon research institute.

(Right-wall) Tracing Lee Observatory’s Seismographs (2019), photography of performance. Photography, archival pigment print, 76x57cm(each).

(Right-floor) As If, They Were Promises (Passage of Proposed Time in Dongsong) (2015) (This work was re-produced in a seesaw form in 2020). Video, color, sound, 7m12sec; phone; gold-colored calligraphy on a full-length mirror. Voice: Kim Jin-joo. Calligraphy: Kwak Sang-yeol. Woodworking: Kwon Dong-hyun, Kwon Se-jeong.

---

From the plural form of the word “seismographs,” we might get a hint to this riddle. A seismograph is a tool that sensitively responds to the changes of the world. And Kim may have intended to list the cases of such reactions in a metonymical manner. It is possible that the artist discovered and photographed the records in a library in Beirut by chance around the time she was thinking about the motif of a seismograph. Then she just drew them because she had a pencil and paper in her bag. At the moment that the records, first created by seismographs, were transferred through the artist’s hand, they lost their meaning as an accurate record and became a totally different product. This may be a metaphor Kim made herself for her own art world, one that exists as a response that is sometimes sensitive and sometimes desperate, towards the world surrounding her.

---

Kim borrowed this word from a text written by Aby Warburg—Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America (1923) that was originally in the form of a lecture. Warburg gave this talk on North American Indian tribalism, while staying in the Bellevue sanatorium. In this text, he mentions the meaning the lecture possesses. Warburg argues that it is necessary to devote his whole life to the research in order to conduct anthropological research on the tribal rituals of North American Indians properly because of their cultural and linguistic complexities and multiplicities. Emphasizing the point that his research is somehow intuitional and precipitate in reactions, he writes as follows ¹⁾

---

But now, in March 1923, in Kreuzlingen, in a closed institution, where I have the sensation of being a seismograph assembled from the wooden pieces of a plant that has been transplanted from the East into the fertile northern German plains and onto which an Italian branch was grafted, I let the signs that I receive come out of me, because in this epoch of chaotic decline even the weakest has the duty to strengthen the will to cosmic order. ²⁾

---

Warburg, who began his academic journey as an art historian, became the founder of iconology and built the foundation for Visual Studies, was always interested in the heterogeneous origin of culture. His research on North American Indians’ tribal rituals is part of this interest. In this lecture, he crosses various images of European culture with those found in North American Indian culture. Warburg states that this research gave an insight to “see so clearly the identity, or rather the indestructibility of primitive man who remains the same in all times.”³⁾ The metaphor of a seismograph can be understood in a similar context. He compares a crude and stateless seismograph as a device that verifies the intersection between cultures and captures it most sensitively to himself, a researcher.

---

Every Day in Seonyu-ri (2017). Regional research project, photo, part of a publication. North-Gyeonggi village archive project of Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation. Image courtesy of Kim Jin-joo

---

It seems Jinjoo Kim’s work has always been engaged in “the shakiest” reactions or records towards these “chaotic and wrecked times.” She constantly thinks about ways of staging the words of those in the margins who wander without reaching their destination, or attempts to reveal this impossibility. Kim revealed the voices of small communities in Gunsan seeking to survive, surrounded by fantasies of development (Promise: Means without End, 2011); she recorded the testimonies of the women called “Yanggongju”4 who lived in a military camptown in Seonyu-ri, Paju, who had to suffer from the stigma of American soldiers and local residents (Every Day in Seonyu-ri, 2017); Kim also imagined and imitated simple and repetitive movements of workers who worked at a TV factory in Suwon, which is currently abandoned; and showcased video documentation and collected materials (Factory Dust Gesture, 2017). Her works mostly start from research on social and historical materials about particular areas or figures and focuses on the weakest and the most vulnerable voices and gestures associated with them.

---

Factory Dust Gesture(2017), still cut, HD, color, 11 min 48 sec. Data provided by Suwon research institute.

---

Kim is an artist who is serious about the concepts that explain her activities. The artist name “ps” that she used in the early days of her career and she occasionally uses now is such an example. As we know, “ps” is an abbreviation for postscript, referring to a passage added at the end of a letter. Although this is a passage left behind, like a foreign substance after communication ends, it may contain content that reflects more sincerity and intimacy towards others than the main body in a letter and explain concisely the activities of the artist who pays attention to the words of others in the margins. The concept of a “promise” appearing often in her work is also interesting. A promise in Kim’s work has an ambivalent meaning — it is not only a fantasy suggested by great power, but on the other hand it is a tool desperately necessary for preserving the last humanity in the margins.

---

For Kim, who has continued to delve into work using concepts as a stepping stone, another new bridge has been cut. This is why I am curious about her future progress.

---

[Footnote]

¹⁾ Aby Warburg, Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America, translated by Namshi Kim, Itta, 2021, p.158.
²⁾ Ibid., pp.158-159. ↩
³⁾ Ibid., p.156
⁴⁾ Yanggongju(양공주) colloquially translates as ‘the foreigner’s whore.’

---

※ This content was first published in 『2021 SeMA Nanji Residency Program Catalogue』, and re-published here with the consent of SeMA Nanji Residency.