Sulki & Min, 'Office for Archival Reproduction', installation, 2006. (posted on 6/5/12)

 

Sulki & Min, 'Office for Archival Reproduction', interactive installation, 2009. Screen shot.

Sulki Choi and Min Choi are 2 Korean Graphic Designers who set up on their own in 2003 in order to work together on various commissioned and self-initiated projects. I first learned about the couple a few months ago when I was doing some research on the Jan van Eyck Academie identity, Maastricht, NL.

The 'Office for Archival Reproduction' (from now on referred to as OAR) is an installation that the couple produced as a contribution to ‘Frame Builders’, Insa Art Space (IAS), Seoul, 24 May – 2 July 2006. The installation aims to become a temporary office responsible for documenting how the IAS Archive is used during the period from 24 May to 2 July 2006. The central activity of OAR is to collect photo-copied pages of the Archive’s materials, made by its visitors, staffs, or any other users. The collected copies will be organized into a book afterwards as a record of the IAS Archive’s life: without any central planning, it’s going to be an almost random archive of the Archive itself. I am attaching hereto a small part of the text, which was posted as part of the installation.

''... Although the OAR is physically inhabiting the IAS, it’s not part of its official organisation: the office has no employees, and its operation is completely reliant on visitors’ – your – participation. We encourage you to freely browse the Archive, find materials that interest you, or the ones for any reason you think worth highlighting, then duplicate and contribute the pages to OAR.''

In my view, this work is very interesting and the concept that the final outcome of this installation is '... completely reliant on visitors’ participation' is fascinating. However, for some reason I feel that this usefulness that nowadays seem to accompany some fine-art projects is accompanying this one as well. In particular, the way that this project is installed and/or conceived, inevitably raises questions; the usual unanswered ones that emerge out of various projects within visual culture such as 'what was the original idea of your project?'. In other words, 'what was the question or issue that your concept attempted to address?' 'What is the use of this 'temporary office -if any?'. 'Is it going to be something like a publication that reflects something relevant and therefore useful to the organisation? 

Nikos Georgopoulos,
London,
May 2012