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The Marionette: Intermedial Presence and B-Boy Culture in South Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2017

SEOKHUN CHOI
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Abstract

In this essay, I argue that human performers and technological media can work together as equal partners rather than as rivals competing for the audience's attention. Understanding presence in the ‘strong’ sense of the word – namely the actor's ability to draw the spectators’ undivided attention as opposed to the ‘weak’ sense of simply being present – I substantiate this claim with a model of intermedial presence in The Marionette, a popular Korean b-boy show that combines live dancing with video and black light. The show's central motif of puppetry puts the live dancers and the media elements in a highly integrated relationship while their distinct ontological identities are maintained. Understanding the show's intermedial dynamics in terms of collaboration and hypermediacy challenges the conventional binary between the live and the mediatized, as well as the assimilationist position that regards the two as fused in intermedial performance.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 132 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2017 

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References

NOTES

1 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, ‘Appearing as Embodied Mind: Defining a Weak, a Strong and a Radical Concept of Presence’, in Giannachi, Gabriella, Kaye, Nick and Shanks, Michael, eds., Archaeologies of Presence (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 103–18Google Scholar, here p. 108. In this essay, Fischer-Lichte only considers ‘live’ presence and excludes ‘mediatized presence effects’ from her discussion for she believes that the two phenomena are ‘due to different conditions’, a position with which I disagree. See ibid., p. 106.

2 See Chang, Jeff, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St Martin's, 2005), pp. 80–81 Google Scholar, here p. 117.

3 Ibid., p. 193.

4 Lee, Woojae, Hip-Hop: The Birth of a New Art (Seoul: Dodulsaegim, 2010), p. 58.Google Scholar

5 Jihyun Kwon, ‘Author Interview: Woosung Lee, “Do You Know B-Boys?”’, BookDB, 18 September 2008, at http://bookdb.co.kr/bdb/Interview.do?_method=InterviewDetail&sc.mreviewNo=19224, accessed 2 March 2016. Japan, the first Asian country to receive hip hop, also played an important role in the development of hip hop and b-boying in Korea.

6 According to a statistic released by OECD in 2011, Korea had the highest ratio of households with access to the Internet among forty OECD countries. Statistics Korea, ‘Ratio of Households with Internet Access and Computer’ at www.index.go.kr/potal/main/EachDtlPageDetail.do?idx_cd=1345, accessed 2 May 2016; Kim, Gigook, ‘The Popularity and Distinctiveness of Korea's B-Boy Crew’, Comparative Korean Studies, 20, 1 (2012), pp. 9–32 Google Scholar, here pp. 25–6.

7 Kim, ‘Popularity and Distinctiveness’, pp. 25–8.

8 In tandem with the improved public recognition of b-boys in Korea today, a gradual shortening of the army service period – from thirty months in the 1980s to the current twenty-one months – has contributed to the growing number of b-boys returning after their military service, although joining the army still means the end of a dancing career for the majority. In this regard, Expression Crew seems to be an exceptional case, since most of the current members are in their thirties and have maintained their b-boying careers through their military duty.

9 Lee, Hip-Hop, 69.

10 The annual average 30,000 approximates that of audiences attending all live performances in Korea. See Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS), ‘Performance Venues: Performance Records (Shows, Days, Times, and Audiences)’, at http://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=113&tblId=DT_113_STBL_1024544, accessed 5 February 2017. Lee was once approached by a few production companies with business offers, but he turned them down since he did not want them to ‘own’ the show which was his lifework. Kwon, ‘Author Interview’.

11 For the YouTube video clip of their performance, see World of Dance, ‘EXPRESSION CREW | 2nd Place – Upper Division | World of Dance South Korea Qualifier 2016 | #WODKOR16’, at https://youtu.be/1x6EVHyQ11w?list=PLaE0ZJ1WrZk_F7fF_NcwYakVCcQfaJ6xC, accessed 23 December 2016.

12 Yonji Kim, ‘Head of Expression Woosung Lee, the 1st Generation of Korean B-Boys’, Story of Seoul, at www.storyofseoul.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1306, accessed 10 April 2016.

13 Auslander, Philip, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 28.Google Scholar

14 Kwon, ‘Author Interview’.

15 The terms, ‘media combination’ and ‘intermedial reference’ (used later) are borrowed from Rajewsky, Irina O., ‘Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in the Current Debate about Intermediality’, in Elleström, Lars, ed., Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality (New York: Palgrave), pp. 51–68.Google Scholar

16 Kim, ‘Head of Expression Woosung Lee’.

17 The interview was conducted in Lee's office on 2 June 2016.

18 Interview with author.

19 Gordon Craig, Edward, ‘The Actor and the Über-Marionette’, The Mask: A Monthly Journal of the Art of Theatre, 1, 2 (April 1908), pp. 3–15 Google Scholar. According to Robert Gordon, Craig did not literally propose the replacement of the actor with a puppet but ‘was using the image of the marionette to evoke an acting style that is depersonalized, abstract, and subject to control by the mind of the artist (director-scenographer)’. See Gordon, Robert, The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006), p. 95.Google Scholar

20 Kwon, ‘Author Interview’.

21 Ibid.

22 Klich, Rosemary and Scheer, Edward, Multimedia Performance (New York: Palgrave, 2012), p. 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Parker-Starbuck, Jennifer, Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance (New York: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 3–4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Saltz, David Z., ‘Sharing the Stage with the Media: A Taxonomy of Performer–Media Interactions’, in Bay-Cheng, Sarah, Parker-Starbuck, Jennifer and Saltz, David, eds., Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), pp. 93–125 Google Scholar, here p. 100.

25 For more detailed discussion on the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ concepts of presence, see Fischer-Lichte, ‘Appearing as Embodied Mind’. To a great extent, my view of ‘strong’ presence resonates with Cormac Power's and Auslander's deconstructive approaches to the issue, although neither of them discusses digital media as a legitimate part of presence. See Power, Cormac, Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre (New York: Rodopi, 2008), p. 14 Google Scholar; and Auslander, Philip, From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 62 Google Scholar.

26 Dixon, Steve and Smith, Barry, Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), p. 132 Google Scholar. For the ongoing debate on liveness as a necessary condition of presence, see Krasner, David and Saltz, David Z., eds., Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance, and Philosophy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2006), pp. 85–200 Google Scholar. Other major scholarly discussions on ‘strong’ presence include Joseph R. Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007); and Goodall, Jane, Stage Presence (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar; although neither book is directly concerned with the impact of digital media on the human performer's presence.

27 Wurtzler, Steve, ‘She Sang Live, but the Microphone Was Turned Off: The Live, the Recorded, and the Subject of Representation’, in Altman, Rick, ed., Sound Theory Sound Practice (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 87–103 Google Scholar, here p. 89.

28 Klich and Scheer, Multimedia Performance, pp. 71, 55.

29 Georgi, Claudia, Liveness on Stage: Intermedial Challenges in Contemporary British Theatre and Performance (Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), p. 106 Google Scholar.

30 While Fewster holds a non-competitive view of presence, he uses it in the ‘weak’ sense and the intermedial interactions he focuses on are different from those between non-identical characters/performers in The Marionette. Fewster, Russell, ‘Instance: The Lost Babylon ’, in Bay-Cheng, Sarah, Levender, Andy, Kattenbelt, Chiel and Nelson, Robin, eds., Mapping Intermediality in Performance (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), pp. 63–8Google Scholar. For the competitive views cited see Blossom quoted in Auslander, Liveness, pp. 41–2; Dixon and Smith, Digital Performance, p. 132; Salter, Chris, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), p. 115.Google Scholar

31 On ‘immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’ see David Bolter, Jay and Grusin, Richard, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 33–4Google Scholar.

32 Auslander, Liveness, p. 42.

33 Rosie Klich, ‘Instance: The Builders Association, Super Vision (2005)’, in Bay-Cheng et al., pp. 149–55, here p. 150, emphasis mine.

34 Georgi, Liveness on Stage, p. 23.

35 Saltz, ‘Sharing the Stage with the Media’, p. 101, italics in original.

36 See Kwon, ‘Author Interview’.

37 Tobin, Nellhaus, Theatre, Communication, Critical Realism (New York: Palgrave, 2010), p. 7 Google Scholar.