“I know.”
Two words that are at once an affirmation and a claim of truth. Such affirmation pervades our day-to-day life, seeping into conversations and surfacing when we want to show certainty, empathy, confidence, knowledgeability. But a question that I want to pose is: how can we be sure that we really know what we think we know?
The bakery you pass by every morning to work, the flower vase that’s by the office entrance, the jar of vitamins that’s always on the left corner of your co-worker’s desk. Little details that form the backdrop of the everyday and rest on the periphery of our consciousness. Objects that we are all too familiar with. Does this mean that we know them?
APMA’s Beyond Folding Screens 2 exhibition evokes a similar doubt in viewers by reframing byeongpung (병풍) as a centerpiece. Traditionally, byeongpung has been designated to the background, serving as a decorative partition that entertains viewers with vivid imagery. In other words, byeongpung is seldom the object of direct admiration. Instead, it spreads out from behind other objects—a chair, a table, a bed (in modern times)—thus quite literally assuming its role as a backdrop.
It’s not often that we scrutinize objects in the background. We take them from granted. Such objects exude a primordial “foreverness” that falsely reassures us that they will always be present and unchanging. The familiarity that we associate with them tricks us into thinking that we know them and, to an extent, we do—superficially at least.
APMA taps into this line of thought by bringing byeongpung to the fore. In doing so, APMA frees byeongpung from the strictures of form and reinvents it as a centerpiece that is duplicitous in structure and meaning.
Zooming out and in
Byeongpung evolves in narrative and meaning, depending on the distance at which it is observed.
From afar, byeongpung offers a single, panoramic view; each of its panels come together to weave a narrative of longevity and prosperity. Motifs from nature (i.e. peaches, fish, lingzhi mushroom, flowers) and scenes from palace life are depicted at large scales that emulate the sublimity of life. The significance of the individual is dwarfed, with humans being depicted as just another element living within the folds of nature.
On the one hand, such panoramic extensions bestow upon the viewer an omniscience that is reminiscent of the gods. The observer is granted total access to the scene presented. Nothing can be hidden from view. Perhaps this is why royals during the Josun era had a penchant for byeongpung that depict court life in miniature. As stated in an earlier post, disparity in vision and visibility entails a power imbalance that allocates dominance to the player who observes without being observed him/herself. While byeongpung is not an actual replication of reality, the act of gazing into one has parallels with looking out from a highly situated post (think Sauron’s tower) and symbolizes a power that is underpinned by sociopolitical influence.
There is another more intimate layer to byeongpung though.
Zooming into a screen panel reveals a slightly different narrative. Intricate details that were previously melded into the background come alive with a story of their own. The whole now becomes subject to partial scrutinization. Viewers began to see that the world depicted within a byeongpung’s many panels are not simply descriptive; relationships between animals and humans spawn throughout the numerous panels, insinuating a complexity that mirrors the drama of our quotidian lives. An aura of mystery is retained even in such illustrations. Where will the hare go after grooming its baby? What are the women thinking as they pile heavenly peaches onto a plate? Viewers can’t help but speculate how the snapshot-like scene in front of them will unfold. Such is the beauty of byeongpung—while seemingly static at a glance, byeongpung incites a curiosity that breathes life into its fictive characters upon closer examination.
Privacy in public
The act of peering into byeongpung is tantamount to holding a private conversation in public. Most byeongpung are set up in public spaces—in the king’s court, in the living room where guests are received, etc. As such, byeongpung is exposed to the simultaneous gaze of many, its panoramic scene being consumed repeatedly by different sets of eyes. Yet, each visual digestion yields a unique echo in thought that ricochets across the landscape of one’s imagination in idiosyncratic twists and turns. Those who wish to pursue the narrative begun by the byeongpung venture closer. It is in such a manner that byeongpung invites viewers to engage in a private dialogue with itself.
To an extent, gazing and zooming into a part of byeongpung is voyeuristic. One discretely enters a a carefully structured world that is essentially a microcosm of our surroundings through the act of gazing. There is a certain delight to studying the miniature people and liberally imposing our imagination onto them. There are no wrong or right answers in this world. Byeongpung simply provides us with clues to the beginning or perhaps the middle of a story—it is up to us to complete this narrative with our imagination.
Leveraging familiarity in branding
Familiarity is a double-edged sword. It disarms people and primes them to be more readily accepting of something that looks familiar. It also lures people into the illusion of knowing. Both points are illustrated by APMA’s exhibition on byeongpung; for the longest time people perceived byeongpung to be nothing more than a backdrop. This view wasn’t ever seriously questioned because people were all too familiar with it. But can we say that such a common perception fully encompasses the narrative potential of byeongpung?
Brands leverage familiarity to establish rapport with potential customers. As mentioned above, people gravitate towards things that they think they can make out. The risk to such a strategy is that people just as easily don’t pay attention to—or forget about—things that they believe to comprehend fully.
brands looking to convert audiences into a solid fanbase need a “hook”…such a hook lies in creating private dialogues within a public narrative
This is why brands looking to convert audiences into a solid fanbase need a “hook”. From the lens of a byeongpung admirer, such a hook lies in creating private dialogues within a public narrative. In essence, nearly all brands are public entities. The same brand narrative is uniformly distributed across multiple channels to a select or mass audience. For some targets, such a narrative might be enough to proselytize them into becoming a fan. For others, a more intimate “click” is needed. Such intimacy is conjured when customers are granted the opportunity to evolve from an observer to an active storyteller.
Much like how byeongpung weaves together an open ended narrative, brands should leave space for customers to overlay their story onto the pre-formulated one. Allowing the customer to wield agency is a subtle way of inducing them to become invested in the brand.
So to summarize today’s key takeaway: familiarity can be comforting but also, ironically, blinding. However, there is always potential for something to be private even within the familiar.