[GUT (Korea Shamanism)]
I decided to create this project [Gut], inspired by the fantastic nature of shamanism and the movement that the artist creates during a performance, and the waves of the fabrics. A shaman is a mediator. The story of comforting both the dead and the alive resides in a gut. In a festival-like atmosphere, the splendid performance expressing people’s wishes seems to bring comfort to people like the main character of a movie does. I felt that seungmu performed in a gut, which delivers a human voice to the gods (spirits), is a performance that contains an audiovisual message. Therefore, the most significant characteristic of gut is the movement of a shaman (mediator) during a performance. They dance in long, colorful costumes, and here, I focused on the [movement] of fabrics. In this project, I intend to embody a splendidly dancing shaman and the movement of the fabrics of costumes.
Among the signature items adopted in guts, a talisman is a piece of paper that contains people’s wishes to defeat disasters. I felt as if the combination of the red Chinese characters and pictures in the talisman came to life. Accordingly, the movement of the talisman was embodied and visualized by video graphics.
In addition, videography was selected to express the movements and graphically visualize them. Various colors continue to form curved lines and change shapes and colors.Even today, people believe in fortune-telling and use shamanistic activities to foretell the future. Various online programs have been replacing traditional shamanism, such as fortune-telling programs based on big data algorithms using artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, even with the advancement of technology, gut continues to be performed in Korea. It still exists as a kind of performance that carefully listens to people’s wishes and as a medium to comfort them.