BRIDGING: A Grand Journey of Exploration of Seeing

By Madeleine McGirk

featuring Oum Jeong Soon, Artist & director of Another Way of Seeing

In thinking about the topic of ‘Bridging,’ I immediately remembered some of our sessions during ITAC 5 - the fifth International Teaching Artist Conference - led by the Korean Arts and Culture Education Service (KACES) in partnership with ITAC Collaborative. 

As many of you know, we had initially planned for the conference to happen in Seoul in 2020 but, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, our gathering moved online. Together, we digitally welcomed more than 2,000 teaching artists from around the world over those 3 days, with more than 60 sessions to attend (as well as keynotes, social spaces, digital art making rooms, and more). The theme of the conference was ‘Boundaries Into Pathways’ and we explored the different ways creative engagement can dismantle or address challenges/blockages. 

To me, this feels like another way of talking about “bridging”: how do utilize the arts to develop new routes and paths through historically hard to navigate or neglected spaces? How do we reach the other side?

In thinking about these questions, I approached our colleagues at KACES who, since ITAC5, have been developing the ITAC Korea Hub alongside us. They expertly guided our thinking in this area during ITAC5, so I knew they would be just the people to ask.

In response to my invitation, KACES suggested sharing the below interview from their webzine called 'arte365.’ It is a regular ongoing publication (published in Korean) and there are tons of interviews with teaching artists as well as articles and videos which speak to this topic. This one, which they have generously translated for us, explores Teaching Arist Oum Jeong Soon’s project, which is a “big picture” answering her childhood question of “what is seeing.” We think it touches on the interesting gaps which often appear when thinking about how you bridge preconceived perceptions, with other people’s lived realities.

I hope you enjoy this perspective as much as we did!

Introduction

#1. I don’t remember since when, but when I read the first part of the novel The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, I wonder if I as a grown-up would I be able to recognize a picture of a boa constrictor eating an elephant just by seeing the first drawing. I think I would need the help of the second drawing in the book.  

#2. There is an old saying of “a blind touching the elephant.” It is a story of a group of  blind men who attempt to learn what an elephant is, each touching a different part, disagreeing on their findings and believing what they’ve found out is true. The saying is often cited where a person acts like he knows everything when he doesn’t. It has a negative connotation, but if you think a little differently, you can think of it as a unique  elephant of your own created in your imagination using different senses (touch in this case), not the sight of the eyes.  

With images of the old saying and the beginning of The Little Prince overlapping in my  head, I thought it is us that gets in the way of our own imagination. Perhaps we are the ones who see the world from a biased perspective and draw the lines between disability and non-disability, between imagination and truth. 

The project Another Way of Seeing, which began in 1996 and celebrated its 25th  anniversary this year, strikes a blow to such a uniform perception of art. I met and  listened to the story of artist Oum Jeong Soon (founder and director of Another Way of Seeing) who created and has worked on a project that awakens people to understand in  their own way what the elephant in this world looks like. In fact, Oum was the first artist I  met and interacted with when I became a journalist for an art magazine. At that time, I  was fresh out of college with art history major and new to the art field, and I met her in a  welcome reception for new journalists and she shared lots of inspiring stories with us rookies. That’s probably why I was particularly keen on following and covering her  projects in my decade long journalist career. And perhaps the old “elephant” story was  etched in mind because of the Touching the Elephant work produced out of the Another Way of Seeing project. 

I met Oum in the Another Way of Seeing studio located at KOTE in Insa-dong. And I felt that her nomadic freedom of hopping from one place to another is now finding a balance  with scale and system.  

It's been such a long time. It seems that the project Another Way of Seeing has grown bigger while we haven’t met each other. First, please briefly tell us about the project. It's been a really long time. (Laugh) In a nutshell, Another Way of Seeing is an art project  that works with the visually impaired. It could be many different activities and forms including education, exhibitions and book publications. The project name is literally  translated as Our Eyes in English, but I put Another Way of Seeing as its English name because I believed that blindness and visual impairment was not a deficiency, but a  different way of looking at the world. In the end, such difference shapes “us” and “our eyes”. Historically, humans have interpreted not seeing or blindness in a wide variety of  ways, such as different, unique, and forward-looking. It was only after entering the 20th  century that it was viewed as a deficiency and disability, which turned into a negative  connotation. And I wanted to revisit the notion of “not seeing”.  

Interview

KACES: You we're on a roll as a painter. (Laugh) But then you started the Another Way of Seeing project instead of carrying on with your painting work.  

Oum Jeong Soon (OJS): Actually, I don't think my painting work and the 'Another Way of Seeing' project are two separate things. I think it is sort of a matter of balance. Let’s just say, I have a very wide spectrum when it comes to putting my ideas and thoughts into my work.  

I think it would be better to tell you about my childhood, first. I guess I was born sensitive to seeing and visual input. As a kid, when I told adults about what I saw, they didn't respond well. Maybe I saw it wrong, but anyways, I think I’ve got some sort of trauma since then. Let me share an anecdote with you. One day, I saw rust coming out of the faucet, and it was in orange color just like orange juice. I found it so funny and intriguing that I had to tell my friends. I called it orange juice, and they said I was lying. Those moments gradually turned into doubts about the abilities of the eyes in my adolescence. The question of “what is seeing” deepened inside me, and it was only natural for me to start learning visual art to get an answer to that question.  

After returning from studying in Germany, I worked day in and day out on producing my works, and showed them in exhibitions. I was appointed as a university professor, held  two solo exhibitions and participated in more than 10 group exhibitions in a year. I thought I could get an answer to my question by going through such a rigorous process. One day, while I was leading a busy, hectic life, I felt as if the line inside me had been  cut. It was a feeling of burnout. It was at that moment I realized that I needed a break. Then I got an opportunity to see some of the works done by blind people in Japan. I guess that was when the idea for this project occurred to me. 

KACES: I’ve encountered the Another Way of Seeing project a few times. What motivated you to take on this project?  

OJS: The trigger came when I participated in a Catholic project for the sight challenged while working as a professor. My university back than was located in Chungju in North 

Chungcheong Province, and I had a chance to visit Chungju Sung-mo (St. Mary’s) School, a school for the blind, to get some information and data for that project. There I had a very unique experience. It felt like something hit my head. I came across a question of  what is “not seeing” as opposed to “seeing” that I had long been pondering. I thought if I continued to dig into it I might be able to arrive at an answer to my question. A few things happened and the cathedral project stopped, and my real project began right there. As soon as I handed in my resignation at my university, I went to Sung-mo School and said that I would be staying there with the children from then on. At first, the school was skeptical and objected to my commitment, but I made my personal donation and started teaching students there while staying in a shabby shipping container. I was seeking to explore the fundamental question of “seeing” that whirled around my head. Initially I didn’t plan to stay long, but I ended up spending three years with the students in search of the answer to that question.  

Then one day, something happened that made me doubt “my eyes”. I was living in an apartment next to my school for the blind, and there were many students living there who went to my school. One night, I was getting ready to go home after working overtime till late, it was so dark I couldn’t see anything. It was a pitch-dark night. I was scared and worried, but a student who was there next to me said, “Don’t worry.” And he took my hand and started walking without hesitation toward the apartment. I realized that there is another kind of “seeing”, which is different from physical seeing. It was a whole new world, and there was an abundance to look into the idea of “seeing”.  

KACES: The key topic of this interview is to understand the realm of different senses of people with disabilities and to talk about the importance of working together and not teaching as a one-way street. I guess the story you just shared with us changed your mindset around  the approach to education. 

OJS: Correct. I realized that there’s so many different meanings to “seeing”. Those three years  of my life not just gave me an opportunity to uncover my question, but also taught me  that people without sight need the engagement with art and art activities. And that led me  to focus more on the project. At the 5th International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC 5) last year, I shared a story of “a painter who happened to be a leader”. In fact, my long time aspiration was to get an answer to the question I always had since I was a kid, and now the center of gravity of my work has shifted toward the artistic engagement of visually impaired people. I became a leader by chance, and somehow, I started the Another Way of Seeing project in earnest.  

KACES: Please explain about the process and content of the project.  

OJS: At first the circumstances were dire, but as the time passed, the curriculum and content became more substantial. Personally, I think if you do something, you should do it right. So, I focused on a couple of points. First, I brought together professional artists as teachers. They were artists who were able to convey the core message quickly and concretely. All teaching aids and materials were for professionals. These elements  together made the training more genuine. Students did not learn art just to kill time, but they were serious as they learned with talented teachers and professional materials. Lastly, we tried to make the training systematic. The fact that they didn’t have experience wasn’t a weakness. That meant they didn’t have any prejudice. Students were able to  accumulate new experiences through the curriculum. After a year-long project, we held an exhibition with the results of the course. During the first 10 years, we financed the activities ourselves, but now we receive a lot of financial support and the size of the  project is increasing. Of course, the more support we receive, the better (Laugh).  

As the program became systematic, we were able to come up with a curriculum to send people without sight to art colleges. A total of 3 students were admitted to art colleges. From 2009, we began the Touching The Elephant project. There are 12 schools for the  blind in Korea, and what we did was to go to one culturally marginalized school that is outside of the metropolitan area at a time and provide quality art education every year. Starting with Incheon Hyegwang School for the Blind in 2009, we taught at 8 schools over the period of 10 years. We let the students meet real elephants and allowed them to challenge themselves with big size works they never even imagined.  

Recently we are providing a class to a woman in her 30s who has lost her sight due to an accident. It is a painful experience to lose your sight in the middle of your life by an accident. But through this project, she was able to be healed, and as teachers we were also healed.

KACES: What do you think is the significance of this project? 

OJS: Visual art nowadays is not just about visual elements. It involves the five senses. Cy Twombly did works with symbols and signs based on his unique experience serving as a code talker. As such, we now create and enjoy art based on our diverse and new experiences, as well as, all five senses. The Another Way of Seeing project was one that confirmed the “shift in senses” that we are experiencing. It is also meaningful that we  were able to expand the horizon of visual art by allowing the visually impaired to experience art, which is different from just teaching the concept of art. After 25 years, I personally reflect on this project and think that it is a huge “process art” although initially I thought it was a project that was searching for “what is seeing”. A creative process art that needs to find the answer continuously in the future.  

KACES: What are the two books that you have on the table as we interview? The cyan (blue) book cover is in contrast with the magenta (red) cover. 

OJS: The book with the cyan cover is a book on the 10 years of <Touching an Elephant> project that took place between 2009 to 2019. The book introduces the project in various angles. The magenta book is Touching the Icon, which is a masterpiece (Laugh). It is a ‘braille texture artbook’ which contains 4 languages; image, Korean, English and braille. In the last decade, as smartphones became a part of our daily lives, the lives of the visually impaired also changed dramatically. Smartphones provide voice support function and others, which greatly help them access information. These people use smartphones as daily objects, but they don’t know how the icons of their mobile app look like, so they are curious. This book introduces just that. 13 information icons including icons for setting, phone call, message, KakaoTalk, weather, subway, music, and icons of SNS apps appear in protruding shapes, Korean, English and braille. The visually impaired are able to  read the basic screen arrangement of mobile apps, and study the mobile app icons that they are using. The pictures on the front and back covers are smartphones drawn by people with visual impairment. It is a meaningful book that helps them enlarge their views of the world. We plan to publish these kinds of books in the future as well.  

KACES: What are your future plans?  

OJS: I am going to work hard so that the Another Way of Seeing project is a continuous success. I also plan to pay more attention to project archiving of the past 25 years. Along  with this, I am also preparing a solo exhibition of paintings and artworks I am working on  alone. I think the exhibition will be held about 2 years from now. The most recent solo exhibition was in 2015, so almost 6 years have passed. The project and my paintings are  all processes that lead to answering the big question of “what is seeing”. In terms of proportion, The Another Way of Seeing project takes up the bigger portion, but I am continuously striving to find a balance between the two. I will continue investigating “seeing” in the future.  

Conclusion

To most people, their childhood experience and memories affect their entire life. Oum Jeong Soon’s project is a “big picture” answering her childhood question of “what is seeing”. Her inner question and a big social issue came together to create a synergy, which led to this project. A small “difference” resulted in equity and love contained in this big project. It may not be as visually grand and spectacular as the process art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, which was also a conceptual art and land art, but Oum’s project is in a different sense spectacular, as the layers of time add up to create a great process art.  After the interview, I left Insa-dong, leaving the artist to continue on with her photo shoot. The cloud in the sky looked like a hat. Actually, it looked more like a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.