• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.81
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• pp.5-44
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• 2024

This paper is an experience and observation report on the activities of Jeonju citizens, who are 'kleine leutes'. Text or Born-digital materials such as diaries, group chat rooms, memos, and interviews showing citizens' contemporary and daily history (Alltagsgeschichite) were used for this purpose. These civic groups are reading groups we can find easily and they also enjoy walking, hiking, and movies, and so to speak ordinary local people are their members. One team read Choi Myung-hee's "Honbul" for about a year and a half, while another team read several books under the theme of "commons," and enjoyed exploring, exhibiting, or watching movies together. The main text is composed of three parts. First, I looked at the methods and perspectives to examine the daily life of local people. To this end, the views of Detlev Peukert and Alf Lüdtke, who captured the prospects and the possibilities of theories of daily history, and James C. Scott, who provided insight into infra-politics, were reviewed. This work was to find the perspective and method of daily history research that could observe the activities of Jeonju citizens. Second, we looked at the experience of the "Honbool" meeting. The reading of "Honbool" which took place during the period of confrontation with Covid19 began in connection with its intense locality. As the criticism of "a great writer born in our local land" relieved the uncomfortable feelings, the members' critical mind was revealed after Volume3 of "Honbool" and stood out after Volume6. It seemed to show the characteristics of the self-consciousness (Eigensinn) of citizens who choose dynamics rather than being stuck to a specific form of empathy (Betroffenheit). I think it showed the difficulty and hope to face in the description and research of local history at the same time. Third, I observed citizens who gathered on the subject of public land. This meeting showed the actuality and accumulation process of the infra-political capabilities of citizens in Jeonju. Reading-commons did not suffer from 'heart trouble' as a local citizen compared to "Honbool". Rather, the difficulty of related books was an obstacle, and the difficulty was easily resolved. As the meeting progressed, awareness of the commons became more sophisticated and issues and discussions were independently shared with each other, and a wealth of hidden transcripts were accumulated through its practice and problem consciousness. It is difficult to think about modern daily life apart from the capitalist era. More fundamentally, it is here and now in everyday life that humans enjoy or suffer from. All history passes through my body here and now. This is the universality of daily history. It depends on the ability of citizens to create daily history to experience and at the same time maintain the distance of criticism.

• Journal of Science of Art and Design
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• v.10
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• pp.5-50
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• 2006

The terminology "human body" simply means a physical body but also more often, as an object in art works, carries symbolic concepts incorporating the whole history of human lives. Human body has been employed as an artistic object capturing physical body, delivering artist's idea expressing life indicators from different standpoints of times and places. This point of view about human body in art works has in fact rather short history since 1960's when modern thinking paradigm focusing upon rationality and reasoning has begun declining and on the contrary when the body used to be the servant of the mind and soul for a long time has begun attracting artist's attention as a real entity from the viewpoint of dichotomy. During the 1960's, frequent performances in Pop art and of Fluxus showed that the human body has been an important media for artistic communication after importance of body performances had been raised in Action painting in 1940's. The human body became a more determined media in body art works that had got into stride after Yves Kline's conceptual works applying body and its traces. These kinds of art works have continued and consolidated into the Feminism came into blossom in 1980's and into fragmentated and disembodied body art trend in 1990's. Through development of trends in body works, human body now might well be regarded as a clue provide from individual identity with implication over the world. This thesis is to analyse in semiotic way main works of Kiki Smith who is a representative artist devoting to Feminism and proposing extended significance of human body. In the analysis process of works done by two great artists with histrorical background of art trend in order to find and open an significance horizon of human body, semiotics and bodism are therefore perceived as pertinent and applied as basic tools. The first stage of analysis is to get the significances emerged in between expression part and contextual parts, which are separated structually from the most basic level. The study deals with body works furthermore in the way of structual cohesion of the expression and the context from the view of A J. Greimas' Structural Semantics and tried to build up a basic frame for the extended significances of human body. This thesis is, on the other hand, to attempt to contribute for extension of disembodied and fragmentated body discussed in the structural semantic frame earlier by Julia Kriesteva who delivers abjection concepts and phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty who enables to overview relationship between the body and the world from the viewpoint of Bodism, further into interpretation level. The other works are Kiki smith's that showed epics about death in mid-1980's, detailed humbleness of vulnerable human body exposed to dichotomy and fragmentation in 1990's and religion and mythology incorporating wouln healing in 2000's and henceforth. Through the analysis of Kiki Smith's representative work 'Pee body', it is verified and confirmed that fragmentated body showed beyond boundary gap of the human body and ultimately tends to imply human healing owing to divine maternity. Bodily symbols in Kiki Smith's are extended to the universal world to imply human life and death on the one hand and religion and mythology of human wound and divine healing one the other hand. This thesis through these process and results of analysis is in a broad context, to emphasize that human body as objectified text has a key indicator role to understand world as well as semiotic extension in art works in late 20th century so that we might confirm bodily symbol as a cultural context constitutes a section of contemporary visual arts.