Flip Book: The Revolutionary Animations of the 21th Century

Flip Book: The Revolutionary Animations of the 21th Century is an exhibition project that seeks the possibility to reconsider embedded animation genres as contemporary art. This exhibition is divided into two parts: contemporary feature animation and its broadened aspects. The main exhibition entitled Studio between Frames will display the animation production process made by globally recognized directors that discovers commonalities between animation genres and contemporary art. The special exhibition #An Anecdote of Submarine Journey_ Status Update will include a variety of visual artists by expanding media such as drawings, graphic design, games, videos, and VR to visualize narrative elements of Science Fiction (SF) animation into an SNS format based on fan fiction.

This exhibition not only introduces international animators and directors who mainly focus on fine arts, documentary, design, music and so on as opposed to commercial animation, but also top notch manual labor or narrative elements of traditional animation in the digital environment in a range of 3-D, 4-D movie and Webtoon to VR. Thus, under current media landscapes like post-cinemas or SNS, the ultimate aim of the exhibition is to investigate socio-cultural issues, applying diverse philosophical and aesthetical discourse into contemporary culture in the post digital era.

Exhibition is composed to two parts.

Main exhibition: Studio between Frames  
Organizer: Eugene Kim (Program Director of BIAF)
Location: The Second Exhibition Hall at Ilmin Museum of Art
Participating Artists: Oh Sung-yoon, Lee Sung-gang, Katrin Rothe, Anca Damian, Anne Magnussen, Arai Fuyu, Sawako Kabuki, Bastien Dubois and Toonbwa
A List of Exhibits: Animation Film, Concept Art, Scenario Scripts, Story Boards, Stop Motion Animation, Original Version of Characters, Making Film, By-Products, and so on

Studio between Frames presents the creation process of globally recognized animation directors' making process which includes various sketches, continuity books, scene boards, etc. The animation term "key animating" means not just "animating," but "expressions of motion in a picture." "Key animating" is the way to supplement a picture per frame of animation to bring static objects to life, which is the most distinctive feature of animation genres that supplements pictures between each piece.

This exhibition visualizes the necessary processes of animation production to both emphasize the importance of those means and behaviors, providing new ways to experience the original version of animation in a specially designed artistic space.

Special exhibition: #An Anecdote of Submarine Journey_ Status Update
Organizer: Juhyun Cho (Chief Curator at Ilmin Museum of Art)
Location: The First Exhibition Hall at Ilmin Museum of Art
Participating artists: Mackerel Safranski, Noh Sangho, Moojin Brothers, Park Hyesoo, Studio YOG (Kim Ye Young, Kim Young Geun), Jun Sojung, Choi Sung Rok, Hong Eunjoo × Kim Hyungjae
A list of exhibits: paintings, installations, performances, lectures, videos, animation, games, posters, VR, and so on

#An Anecdote of Submarine Journey_ Status Update is a sort of fan fiction platform for the earliest Korean adaptation of SF novels, An Anecdote of Submarine Journey in collaboration with contemporary artists, animators, graphic designers, amateurs and so on. An Anecdote of Submarine Journey serialized in the suspended 11th episode of the Teakguek Journal from March 1907 to May 1908. The initially introduced SF novel, An Anecdote of Submarine Journey, which had been translated by Korean overseas students in Japan, derived from Jules Verne’s science fiction, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870. Rather than following the normal translation method, those who translated the fiction in the Teakguek Journal artificially fixed its original version in order to state their position that modernization of the homeland was a patriotic goal.

This exhibition makes particular way of narrations in the SF animation genre by which eight artists and audiences in diverse fields enlarge the format of SNS and online fan fiction, converting its original version of narrative vacancy into diverse entities’ collective creations in a totally different time and space matrix. This exhibition includes painting, installation, performance, lecture, video, animation, webtoon, games, posters, VR which creates the atmosphere of an animated movie set. In doing so, individual audience members will have a chance to make their own narrations by considering themselves as a virtual reality in SNS circumstances and ponder newly built identities based on their free will. 

Ilmin Museum of Art
The Ilmin Museum of Art has been a hub of contemporary visual art and culture since 1996. It has been a major force in developing the discussion of visual culture and the humanities in Seoul, offering exhibitions, lectures, documentary film archives, screenings, and publications on diverse modern and contemporary visual art. The museum is located in Gwanghwamun, where contemporary urban skylines live together with old palaces of the Joseon Dynasty. Not only is the museum located at a geographical intersection of past and present in the heart of Seoul, its building is symbolic of the modern history of the Gwanghwamun area. Constructed in 1926, the museum building was designated as one of Seoul’s ten cultural assets of modern architecture in 2010 for its historical significance. In 2012, the Dong-A Ilbo’s newspaper museum, Pressium, moved and re-opened on the fifth and sixth floors of the museum, creating a new, expanded art museum complex. Through curating and organizing a variety of exhibitions that embrace contemporary visual art with local and international interests, the Ilmin Museum of Art seeks to create a dynamic space to lead contemporary discourse and aesthetics.

Press contact
press@ilmin.org / T +82 2 2020 2083