Swing Skirt
“Swing Skirt” is literally a skirt that can be used as a swing. It is known that the act of swinging provides a sense of stability, like a baby’s cradle, a hammock, and a swing. The work derives from a research about the influence of swinging on nervous people. Although the body is constantly responsive to stress levels, people often underestimate this fact. Mostly, people neglect physical stress, while anxiety takes its place in their heads without being consciously noticed. The skirt shows this excitement visually as it is responsive to heartbeats. The lights on the skirt reveal how the pulse changes by regaining easiness through swinging back and forth in the skirt. The “Swing Skirt” can be used anywhere where it can be hung. Swing Skirt from soomi park on Vimeo. While the three parts of the exhibition course promise a linear process of getting aware, sharing and finally releasing anxieties, the interactive processes involved are designed in a way that a certain tension becomes part of the experience. The reason for that lies in the nature of the anxieties, namely the fact that anxieties are part of quiet intimate sphere. Soomi Park’s works all explore ways of the turning them outward, making them communicable and ultimately approachable. The Analog Turns set up induces visitors to intervene into the process of being exposed to anxieties by using the turn table, in Personal Camp it is speaking and listening process and with the Swing Skirt stress levels become visible through LEDs and therefore part of viewers’ sensual experience. The tension between inside and outside is always a tension between intimacy and voyeurism, negotiating the relation between the private or public sphere of anxiety. Thus it is no coincidence that the bodily dimension is an integral part of the concept and the installation. The exhibition has to be experienced on a sensual level, in the case of the Swing Skirt the pulse rate picked up by a sensor even becomes part of the work. "Anxiety E(A)nd” is another example of Soomi Park’s ability to create a work that observes socially relevant issues and is entertaining at the same time.
Swing Skirt_ All COPY RIGHT and Design by Soomi Park
Developed in Artist in Residence Program 2009 of Platoon Kusnthalle
Technical Help Credit to Sang-hyuk Hong
Photo shoot by dAN
Model by HeeHyun Park & Guenwon Park
Photo
Video
BETWEEN INTIMACY AND VOYEURISMThe exhibition "Anxiety E(A)nd" by new media artist Soomi Park explore the state of anxieties among young creatives in Korea. Inspired by a study that claims that 96% of the worries people have are not actually threatening and therefore usless, the artist conducted her own online research in which young people expressed their anxieties.
The exhibition consists of three parts that introduce the subject of anxieties and offer a way of dealing with them. The first piece, Analog Turns, is a closed space in which visitors face anxieties people expressed online. The setting is contradictory: while reading 100 people's anxieties visitors listen to comforting sounds, being left in an ambiguous atmosphere. The media setting promises a control over the input though. Being connected to a turntable, every visitors can be a 'DJ' manipulating the pace and rhythm in which the information is shown. The second piece, Personal Camp, is the answer to the question if there is a way to avoid wasting time with useless anxieties. Soomi Park proposed a fixed space and time for pouring all worries while listening to other people’s issues. The idea is to focus on one’s worries for a limited time, a ritualization of anxiety. The third piece, Swing Skirt is a tool to finally release tension. The skirt can be attached anywhere and enables the wearer to swing. LEDs on the skirt are connected to pulse sensor and visualize the pulse rate. Based on studies dealing with the effects of swinging motions on stress levels, it reminds visitors of the bodily dimension of psychological stress.
(via the catalog of "Anxiety E(A)nd” by Udo Lee/ Platoon Kusthalle)