Hi guys! Just wanted to share with you a conversation I was able to have with one of the most prominent Korean American experimental animation artists out today. Although most of my work is pretty commercial, I think there are really exciting things happening outside of the typical Hollywood Animation Film Industry. Here’s a transcript of our conversation I was able to record on my phone. You can see more of his work at http://jinkyuahn.com Shiyoon Kim: • Why don’t you introduce yourself and what you do? Jinkyu Ahn: • My name is Jinkyu Ahn and I am an experimental artist. One of my defining styles is the consolidation of creative elements from different branches of visual and nonvisual arts into a cohesive artistic work. Shiyoon Kim: • Could you elaborate? Jinkyu Ahn: • For example, one of my works is “Flipping.” Flipping is an old-school animation technique that I’m sure many people have tried as kids. It’s like when you draw one frame of an action on each page and then flip through it. For example, if you are drawing a stick figure walking from one place to another. You would draw each movement on separate pages, and when you flip fast enough, it makes each of those frames turn into an animation of the stick figure walking. • That was the technique I used to make “Flipping.” However, instead of using drawings, I used photography. I took a number of high-speed photographs of oil-based paint mixed with a differently colored water-based paint. As you know, oil and water don’t mix, so what happened instead was these small droplets of oil paint slowly coming together to form bigger drops of oil paint while floating around in the water paint. • I flipped through the thousands of photos I had taken to create this animation. Then I created the soundtrack from two separate musical scores. Each of these scores were partially burned away, so I applied flipping on them as well to create the soundtrack. Thus, it was a film created by applying an animation technique on rapid-shutter photography of paints, all set to a score created through an animation technique. • Shiyoon Kim: • Was this your first time doing it? What draws you to this unique style? Jinkyu Ahn: • No. My first time was as a MFA student at CalArts, where I created “Weakness.” This was a mix of interpretive dance set to music along with special stage lights that shined on their bodies and props (which were intersecting cords hanging in the sky) to create shadows dancing within the web. Thus, the performance piece was both the dancers and the shadowplay happening behind them. There was also a culmination event where I took slow-shuttered photos of the dancers, creating a motion blurred final product of their dance and their shadowplay. • • • What I get out of this is that it’s unique and requires imagination and execution. I wanted to become an experimental artist because I wanted to push the boundaries and experiment. Mixing so many different parts of different visual and nonvisual art forms and making sure that each next project is a completely new mix forces me to think. And it’s not just thinking on the subject matter or the message I want to send. I have to think very carefully about the very technical details of how I can accomplish something before I even get to the part asking what I want the subject matter or message to be. For me, that’s very stimulating work. Shiyoon Kim: • Given that you’re pioneering a very novel art style, how do mainstream audiences react to your work? Jinkyu Ahn: • They react well, all things considered. They are often drawn in by the novelty, but stay because there is something they see that is compelling. I have had exhibitions at galleries that usually show only traditional works and have won at film festivals, including Oscar qualifying ones, that typically only award mainstream stuff. I think the lesson to learn is that if you are passionate about something, you can communicate that passion no matter how strange the method. Shiyoon Kim: • Out of curiosity, what else have you juxtaposed together? Jinkyu Ahn: • In “Organ” I tried creating an autobiographical movie collage. Specifically, I took videos of myself growing up in South Korea, videos of my time in the United States, and videos of my trip throughout Europe and tried to remove a coherent narrative and let clips from each speak for themselves. I tried to make it as close to a people-watcher looking through a café window to the world outside and filling in the details themselves. • • “Contained” is my most recent work, where I used ancient calligraphy ink to create paintings, but also included with each painting meteorological information like humidity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure. This is to highlight that art is not solely created by the artist, but that the environment plays a major creative role as well. On a literal level, the environment affects how quickly the paint dries, which can affect its texture, color, etc. on the canvas. On a metaphorical level, “Contained” is about how the controllable emotions, physical movements, and thoughts of the artist collaborate with the seemingly antithetical uncontrollable weather and environment to create art. • Shiyoon Kim: • Thank you for your time! Where can we find more of your work? Jinkyu Ahn: • You can find me at http://jinkyuahn.com/JIN-KYU-AHN. Thanks for having me.
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