Ordinary People - Park Jung Hyuk

Statements

Ordinary People

2011

Park Jung Hyuk


Ordinary people, 2011, Five-channel video installation interconnected with sound, Dimensions Variable ©Artist

This work, originally presented in Park Jung Hyuk’s third solo exhibition 《Ordinary People》 (August 20–September 30, 2011), consists of five sound-interlinked videos that play in random order. Each video is a dramatized montage created by splicing together scenes from more than fifty Eastern and Western films and television dramas.
 
Employing a form of found-footage technique, the five videos collectively reveal a full spectrum of human emotions. Within each one, there comes a moment when the atmosphere reaches a heightened peak: in some sequences, characters erupt in furious screams; in others, guns are fired, or dogs howl into the air. When a particular screen reaches this point of climax, the other screens—whose audio is comparatively weaker—symbolically “raise a white flag,” submitting to the dominant sound.
 
The hierarchy between images continuously shifts according to the dynamics of each video’s audio. By drawing on the narrative structure of most films and dramas—where everything ultimately exists to build toward a dramatic climax—the work indirectly exposes how relationships in real life also interfere with and influence one another.