The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss on the reason why artists perform their artistic idea and practice not only as visual form but also through speech acts that take social and political aspects, and to examine its perlocutionary effect. Fo... The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss on the reason why artists perform their artistic idea and practice not only as visual form but also through speech acts that take social and political aspects, and to examine its perlocutionary effect. For these aims, I focus on manifesto or Seoneon in Korean and other linguistic forms which correspond to its definition and use that are the most powerful discourse to perform collective identity and idealism, similarly utopian vision, of human being who keeps the social and political rights from the beginning of modern era. In the early 20th century, among Korean artists, Kim Bok-Jin wrote drafts for manifesto of several art and literature movements which strongly resisted the power structure of colonialism and the early capitalism of Choseon (former dynasty and name of Korea) under Japanese colonial era in 1920s. After the independence of Korea and the Korean War, from 1950s, refusing to follow feudal rules and values on arts from the past, many artists, addressed as “modernists artists” by others and also themselves, started to manifest or declare their revolutionary aesthetics as “new art.” Following decades, influenced directly and indirectly the democratic movements from 1960s, artists’ speech act as manifesto included demanding changes of system in arts and culture into more democratic and modern ways. These tendency towards manifesto or speech acts by artists were growing again in 1970s and 1980s, when democratic movement and revolution were happened, and till the late 1990s, into two different direction such as experimental performance art or socially and politically engaged art in Korea that is so-called Mijung Art (translated as People’s Art in English) or Realism (Hyunsiljuui in Korean). Therefore, I can say the Korean artists performs speech acts socially and politically from the perspective of “manifesto.” Yet, in spite of these historical clues and archival traces, it’s not easy to find singular studies focusing on artist manifesto or social aspect of artists’ speech act in Korean. Thus, I take no priority except Seoneon or manifesto and effect of the written and spoken words for this study that claims re-inventing them and the social and political significance. In order to bridge the gap of the study that here is no earlier study on Korean artists’ speech acts or Seoneon, I consider artist manifesto, as the corresponding one, from the European modern and avant-garde art history during the Modernity and Revolution around 19th century. Manifesto traditionally functions as militant and ruling means by autocrat, legal rhetoric, religious or divine revelation, academic argument, and rarely a very detailed list of the urgent cargo should be deliver upon arrival. Based on these historical uses, manifesto has public and political contents, tends to take future tense or urgency, and is required to perform communicative or disputative relation between sender and receiver of message. The modern and avant-garde artists take this linguistic form, based on the political aspect, and at the same time, because of its re-invention through the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution. The re-invented manifestos call repressed people who are invisible in society or history like “ghost” as “we,” who perform together the written and spoken revolutionary mission and Isms to subvert the control structure and to live un-ruly, finding their right back. According to this calling, the repressed existence becomes the subject of manifesto from the object so that the replacement produces radical “performativity.” For this calling of “we,” artists present sort of useless and empty acts for instance to write their signature on the which has no legal or political effect in real, and to announce the invalid documents in public. The performer or subject should overcome this kind of “theatricality” confronted with performativity in general speech act. However, for the artists, the theatricality makes motivated stage on which their speech acts turn into more real or more social one. As for another issue, future performativity, manifesto highlights “always new, and the beginning” as the founding text of a Ism or collective movement. The future subject, who dreams realization of a new idea and leap from the contradictory past, is found in the later artists’ speech acts and manifestos which drive the historical aspect pulling death and birth of a “new art” or divisions of aesthetics. Additionally, I refer media as the last issue in regard to speech act or manifesto. Because, many artists’ manifesto are distributed through media such as news, magazine, or bulletin, and also used as public media to present socially or politically arguable opinion. These four characteristic issues of artists’ manifesto or speech acts ― subjective or radical performativity, theatricality, future performativity, and media ― are revealed among the experimental performance art, and socially and politically engaged art from late 1960s to 1990s in Korea. In detail, the former one is the Fourth Group’s Declaration that lasted for about two month in 1970; the later one is begun by Hynsil Dongin (translated as Reality Group or Coterie literally in English) in 1960s, expanded by Hyunsilgwa Bareon (translated as the Reality and Utterance in English) in 1980s, and scattered by many micro movement groups of this Minjung Art in 1990s. These artists’ manifestos and speech acts are recognized as parts of Korean avant-garde movement from each different philosophical and academic point of view. And each of them call receivers as “we” who are subject of performativity and will join a group or a collective practice through the speech acts. And these artists transform their stages of performance or happening into a place of speech act; they published the text of manifesto in exhibition leaflets, catalogue, or sometimes literary zine, so that their exhibition or publishing is regarded as artistic production or practices itself. In the historical understanding, the former one is a future experimentalism of nihilistic or irrational act breaking from reality; the laters are constructivism of reality drawing future liberated from contradiction and repression of the past and the hegemony. On the other hand, these two impact on the field of speech acts into different ways such as cultural consumption and political struggle. Although these differences, here is a firm conclusion that these are meaningful artists’ speech acts which take an important linguistic and aesthetic form such as manifesto and unfold the revolutionary, artistic, futuristic and relational performativity in the realm of the social and the political.
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