Access a slow-looking exercise related to this work.

Transcript
Marilee Talkington: The installation "Newspapers: After 1st of June 1974" is the aftermath of a monthlong performance by the artist Sung Neung Kyung in 1974, created by cutting sections of printed text out of the Korean newspaper Dong-a ilbo. During the performance, using a razor blade, Sung precisely excised blocks of Korean text, removing the articles and news content from the daily paper, leaving only the images and advertisements. After each performance, he then attached the skeletal framework of four papers on wall-mounted panels, placing the cut sections and the skeletons of the previous day’s papers into two acrylic boxes.

Our gallery features four wooden wall-mounted panels measuring just over 2 feet high by 2 1/2 feet wide. A single bifold newspaper page is affixed to each panel, with the seam open down the center. The paper is aging, appearing brittle and yellowing. The bottom third of each newspaper is almost entirely intact, where most of the advertisements are grouped on each page. Scattered throughout the rest of the paper are thin blank margins framing empty rectangles and squares in various shapes and sizes, stacked haphazardly yet fitting together neatly like a Tetris board. A few small blocks with images are peppered among the blank sections, stand-alones without the context of their articles.

The images visible show a variety of products and promotions. On the far-left panel, a beverage advertisement zooms in on a hand holding a bottle. The second panel features an adult holding a fishing pole and bucket, walking with a child. The third panel includes a textual advertisement for the YMCA. The fourth and far-right panel features an image of a catcher and umpire from a baseball game on the left and a series of promotional posters for films on the right.

On the ground in front of the panels are two translucent acrylic boxes, about 2 feet high by 3 feet wide by 2 feet deep. The clear acrylic box on the left contains the skeletal remains of Sung’s previously cut newspaper pages, layered horizontally. The pages are stacked about an inch high, leaving most of the box empty. They lie neatly aligned on the side, where they are mostly intact—the bottom third containing advertisements while the thin margins of the excised sections cluster and tangle together. Their edges are brittle and crumbling, in contrast to a lighter-colored blank paper standing vertically against the side of the box. The left edge of the paper is perforated and frayed as if it was pulled out of a notebook, and it has large red Korean lettering down the center.

The second box is a translucent, dark blue color and contains the cut sections from Sung’s daily papers. The small paper squares are a few centimeters to a few inches wide and cut at various angles. They are gathered in a mound, ascending almost a foot high at the center of the box—the old newspaper yellowing and brittle like a pile of dried leaves.

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