Happening & Performance

투명풍선과 누드 해프닝

정강자와 청년작가연립전 작가들 및 관객, 8:30-10:00 pm, 1968. 5.30, 쎄씨봉 음악감상실

한국 최초의 누드 해프닝이 정강자와 강국진 및 ‘청년작가연립전’ 작가들에 의해 1960-70년대 포크송 가수들의 데뷔 무대였던 쎄씨봉 음악감상실에서 시연되었다. 둔탁한 타악기 음악 리듬에 맞추어 정강자가 상반신을 벗은 채 어두운 무대 위에 나타나 의자에 앉는다. 강국진과 정찬승을 비롯한 청년작가연립전 작가들은 끈끈한 투명풍선을 불어 정강자의 몸에 붙인다. 투명풍선을 잔뜩 붙인 정강자가 의자에서 일어서면 작가들은 갑자기 달려들어 투명풍선을 터트려 부순다.
여기서 섬세하고 여린 투명풍선으로 장식된 여인의 몸은 전형적인 ‘미’의 스테레오타입을 상징하나, 거친 폭력 앞에 부서져 적나라하게 노출됨으로써 그 ‘미’는 파괴된다. 그것은 음악과 빛이 동반되었으며 작가들과 관객이 함께 참여한 퍼포먼스였다.¹
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¹ 김미경, 『한국의 실험미술』(시공사, 2003), pp. 92-94 참조.

Transparent balloon and Nude Happening

Kangja Jung, ‘Chungnyun jakka yeunlipjun’ artists and the spectators, 8:30-10:00 pm, 30 May 1968, ‘C’est si bon’ music hall, Seoul, Korea

 

The first ‘Nude happening’ was performed by Kangja Jung and ‘Chungnyun jakka yeunlipjun’ artists at ‘C’est si bon’ music hall, a place that staged student fork singer’s debut in the 1960s-70s. When she appeared to sit on the dark stage to the instrumental percussion rhythm, Kukjin Kang and a number of artists inflated transparent balloons made of sticky chemical paste and attached them to her body. As she stood, the artists Kukjin Kang and Sunhee Shim, Chanseung Jung and Munja Kim and spectators sprang at her, slap-busted the balloons.
Here, the stereotypic concept of ‘beauty’, once displaying a fragile woman figure ornamented with lucid balloons, faces a brutal exposure after devoured into sticky bits to be splashing, adhered to the body. The figure itself is then the symbol of destroyed stereo typicality.
Media inevitably got boisterous about the first groundbreaking ‘art with nudity’  but this was after Yves Klein’s Les anthrophométres de l'epoque bleu was known to Koreans plus no art critiquing to give academic analysis of the meaning of such unprecedented form of art.
It was decidedly the Korea’s first happening in Feminist context that allowed body and performance, light and music, and performer and audience to come together. ¹

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¹ Mikyung Kim, Experimental Art in Korea (Sigong Sa : Seoul, Korea, 2003), pp. 92-94