On Falling

Abstract

The author considers what would be his worst failure: not having fully understood how Korean artists see their work and how the audience communicates with their works of art. It would be to give up the search for what gives life to the works and the artists; it would be to give up and drop the subject. It would also be to stick to absolute relativism in the evaluation of the works, to abandon all aesthetic, cultural, ethical, and cognitive criteria, on the grounds of cultural difference. But failure would also be to become the cultural and aesthetic flâneur; having returned home, to adopt an overarching and universal perspective, transformed into a universal theorist of the intercultural, perhaps.

After all my visits to theaters, concert halls, exhibitions, and installations, I am sometimes tempted to draw conclusions about Korean culture and identity. I struggle nevertheless to stick to my position as observer-participant, more of an amazed observer than an active participant.

I don’t need to run around like my students, my colleagues, or all the residents of Seoul. Here, time offers itself to me, I don’t need to run after it. In my case, a fall would be unexpected, personal, almost voluntary. But the fall that lies in wait for Koreans every day, it threatens the whole nation. Perhaps this is merely an irrational fear of failure, a deadline to be kept or a decline to be avoided, but in any case, a fall awaits them. For me, this is a metaphor, for them, an obsession. Who, in a society of control and good manners, would not fear that after the fall they might no longer measure up?

I work on different kinds of fall. I consider what would be my worst failure. For me, failure would be not having understood how Korean artists see their work,how the audience communicates with their works of art. It would be to give up the search for what gives life to the works and the artists; it would be to give up and drop the subject. It would also be to stick to absolute relativism in the evaluation of the works, to abandon all aesthetic, cultural, ethical, and cognitive criteria, on the grounds of cultural difference. But failure would also be the cultural and aesthetic flâneur, having returned home, adopting an overarching and universal perspective, giving lessons, transformed into a universal theorist of the intercultural, perhaps. It would be, more than falling from rank and lowering my standards, letting myself down.