• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.47
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• pp.81-101
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• 2017

The present study argues that film director Lee Ae-rim animation works depict the world of the grotesque and not only are important sociocultural phenomena but also hold the significance of humor and subversion. The grotesque exhibits the intriguing characteristics of expressing a perspective critical of the existing society through the sensibilities of minorities and is used broadly as a term not only in the aesthetic sense but also designating sociocultural phenomena. Although discussed separately in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin's carnival grotesque and Mary Russo's uncanny grotesque, the grotesque fundamentally rejects existing order and conventions and is externalized through unique expressions, thus opening up a rich possibility for rejection, humor, satire, transformation, and deconstruction of and regarding the authority of the mainstream. Although they constitute a fictional medium, animation films are social products as well so that they are affected by society, culture, and history and stand as important texts that must be interpreted in terms of the relationships between humans' instinctive desires and society and between the overall culture and artistic media. However, the rarity of grotesque portrayals in South Korean animation films also proves that it is a society where even problems that are in themselves sensitive must be manifested ingeniously on a conventional level. South Korean society has a unique history of colonialism and national division and is simultaneously in the unique situation of a society that has undergone growth at a nearly unprecedented rate. Consequently, the society exhibits closed yet dynamic particularity where everyday tension and rigidity, wariness of others and extreme competition are intertwined in a complex manner. Intensively analyzed in the present discussions, director Lee's animation films and are characterized mainly by grotesque images, nonlinear narratives, and vivid depictions. In such a context, these works not only are artistic products of South Korean society but also rejections of a rigid society and share the significance of the aesthetics of the carnival grotesque, which consists of subversive expressions directed at a new world.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.5
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• pp.217-229
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• 2007

Many historical research and facet about modern art in Indonesia which formulating background of contemporary Indonesian Art. Indonesian art critic Sanento Yuliman states that Modern art has been rapidly developing in Indonesia since the Indonesian Independence in 1945. Modern Art is a part of the super culture of the Indonesian metropolitan and is closely related to the contact between the Indonesian and Western Cultures. Its birth was part of the nationalism project, when the Indonesian people consists of various ethnics were determined to become a new nation, the Indonesian nation, and they wished for a new culture, and therefore, a new art. The period 1960s, which was the beginning of the creation and development of the painters and the painters associations, was the first stage of the development of modern art in Indonesia. The second stage showed the important role of the higher education institutes for art. These institutes have developed since the 1950s and in the 1970s they were the main education institutes for painters and other artists. The artists awareness of the medium, forms or the organization of shapes were encouraged more intensely and these encouraged the exploring and experimental attitudes. Meanwhile, the information about the world's modern art, particularly Western Art; was widely and rapidly spread. The 1960s and 1970s were marked by the development of various abstractions and abstract art and the great number of explorations in various new media, like the experiment with collage, assemblage, mixed media. The works of the Neo Art Movement-group in the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s shows environmental art and installations, influenced by the elements of popular art, from the commercial world and mass media, as well as the involvement of art in the social and environmental affairs. The issues about the environment, frequently launched by the intellectuals in the period of economic development starting in the 1970s, echoed among the artists, and they were widened in the social, art and cultural circles. The Indonesian economic development following the important change in the 1970s has caused a change in the life of the middle and upper class society, as has the change in various aspects of a big city, particularly Jakarta. The new genre emerged in 1975 which indicates contemporary art in Indonesia, when a group of young artists organized a movement, which was widely known as the Indonesian New Art Movement. This movement criticized international style, universalism and the long standing debate on an east-west-dichotomy. As far as the actual practice of the arts was concerned the movement criticized the domination of the art of painting and saw this as a sign of stagnation in Indonesian art development. Based on this criticism 'the movement' introduced ready-mades and installations (Jim Supangkat). Takes almost two decades that the New Art Movement activists were establishing Indonesian Installation art genre as contemporary paradigm and influenced the 1980's gene ration like, FX Harsono, Dadang Christanto, Arahmaiani, Tisna Sanjaya, Diyanto, Andarmanik, entering the 1990's decade as "rebellion period" ; reject towards established aesthetic mainstream i.e. painting, sculpture, graphic art which are insufficient to express "new language" and artistic needs especially to mediate social politic and cultural situation. Installation Art which contains open possibilities of creation become a vehicle for aesthetic establishment rejection and social politics stagnant expression in 1990s. Installation art accommodates two major field; first, the rejection of aesthetic establishment has a consequences an artists quest for medium; deconstruction models and cross disciplines into multi and intermedia i.e. performance, music, video etc. Second aspect is artists' social politic intention for changes, both conclude as characteristics of Indonesian Installation Art and establishing the freedom of expression in contemporary Indonesian Art until today.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.

• Journal of Science of Art and Design
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• v.11
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• pp.109-152
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• 2007

This thesis started from accepting the criticism and concretely seeking the possibility of visual visuality, in particular, visual physicality or physical visuality through the expression revealed in painting space. This study aims at stressing the role of the body in visual perception and pictorial expression by it by examining the interaction between it and the body. First of all, this study explored perception and the position of the body in the great frame of the historical stream from modernism, through minimalism, through post-minimalism to later art in order to confirm the interaction between visual perception and the body or the change in the intervention of physicality in the stream of contemporary art, and connected them with a discourse on perception and the body. It raised as the grounds for it the discussions which provided the theoretical background about perception. It dealt with the scientific discussions on perceptual physicality by Gestalt psychology in perceptive psychology, and next the discussion of Rudolf Arnheim who exemplified Gestalt psychology mainly on the dimension of visual art. It is significant in explaining the perceptual activeness which is the same as that of M. Merleau-Ponty as a primary debater to solve the questions of perceptual physicality and physical visuality. M. Merleau-Ponty set forth ambiguous perception and the body as its background as the fundamental bases for perceiving the world rather than consciousness proved explicitly. As Hal Foster said, as minimalist phenomenological background they provided appropriate theoretical background to the late art rising against modernist logic. Next, after the 1970s Frank Stella showed a working method and a tendency entirely different from those in the previous period. For example, deconstruction of frame, decentralized spatial expression, dynamic and mixed expression, and allowing real space by overlapping were judged to swing to approval of perceptual physicality. Francis Bacon's painting structure, that is, figure, triptych, aplat and a method of production by accident were understood to well reflect M. Merleau-Ponty's chair logic of chiasme. This study tries to seek the possibility of pictorial expression from works aiming at defining the question of seeing in connection with physicality, the role of the body as the body accumulated and the linking with a real, daily life as the background of the body, and confirm the phase shift.