spring = rebirth, or something..

long time no write.
for the past few months (the entire winter) i have been in hibernation, namely with a very specific occupation: my thesis.
i have not seen much "real art" in a very long time, but instead have steeped myself in various seemingly trivial media: twitter feeds, celebrity news and interviews, youtube videos.
all regarding psy's "gangnam style."
yes, i am supposedly an art critic, and i wrote my thesis about psy.

here is a little q&a that a thesis seminar leader requested from each graduate for our introductions at the thesis presentations:

1. THESIS PAPER TITLE

2. QUESTION IT ASKS/SEEKS TO ANSWER (THESIS)

3. HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN THE TOPIC

4. WHAT IS A HIGHLIGHT FROM YOUR TIME AT SVA (PERSONAL OR COURSEWORK RELATED BOTH FINE!)

5. IS THIS THESIS SUBJECT MATTER INDICATIVE OF YOUR OTHER CRITICAL INTERESTS/ AND WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE A FEW OTHER CRITICAL TERRITORIES YOU'RE INTERESTED IN?

my answers:

1. Investigating the "Gangnam Style" Phenomenon: Global Eurocentrism, Asian Masculinity, and Psy

2. How is it that, despite attempts by Korean pop marketers to break through to the Western market, Psy was able to gain such a scale of international recognition? Does he subvert the existing order or reproduce it?

Through YouTube, Psy's "Gangnam Style" seemed to have bypassed the usual filters of K-pop marketing and Hollywood access, but ultimately still required legitimization and conformity to accepted representations of the Asian male in American media. The visual nature of the source of popularity in the so-called West motivated me to look at the video from an art critical perspective--I found that although the video does present him as a self-deprecating, safe figure, it contains elements of audience identification (familiar to an American/Western audience) and thus does not allow Psy to be a completely strange laughing stock.

3. I have been a personal fan of Psy since his debut in 2001, so I started watching interviews, following the "Gangnam Style" news as soon as it started in 2012. Increasingly, I noticed in his Western TV appearances (American, Australian, etc.) that his interviewers treated him like he appeared out of nowhere, like a loser who just randomly posted something on YouTube (like Justin Bieber) and became famous through that. I felt a sense of injustice regarding the larger scheme of how this global hegemony of Hollywood works. Psy has had a successful career in Korea for over a decade, respected by Koreans as the king of concerts. I wanted to examine what particular aspects of the video feed the Eurocentric agenda and whether it presents possibilities for subverting that agenda as well as the similarly distorted criteria that the K-pop industry imposes on its marketing tactics for the American market. (To K-pop marketers, "Western" is basically synonymous with "American.")

4. When I realized that I suddenly lost all my baby fat. (Around when the very first semester was ending, to be exact)

5. Yes, I am generally very interested in examining images and aesthetic production in their larger political contexts. "Fine art," I have long accepted as inevitably belonging to a set of asymmetrical power relations, and I believe many will not dispute that, but I find it often more pressing to address image production in popular media, let's say, because they are dispersed more widely for consumption, and many accept them without thought. An image does not have to be specifically labeled as "propaganda" to be imbued with interest and a specific agenda. Everything that is "set out into the world" contains an agenda. I am interested in whose agendas these are, what they consist of, how they are distributed, and why/what purposes they serve.

i will post a peak, or perhaps summary, of the thesis at a later time as i prepare my presentation.

needless to say, i got a lot of shit for investing my entire winter in psy, while i'm sure others writing about "actual art" received very little antagonism. i still stand by my choice, and the process has been immensely rewarding, though disheartening in terms of the representation of asian masculinity in american media.

more to come.