SL: Do you regard “production” as the core of the producer’s identity?
SJ: When I talk about production, I am often asked at what stage I become involved. In practice, many people contribute to a production, but unless the scale is particularly large, it’s usually one person or a small team who carries the project through from beginning to end. In such cases, it can be difficult to draw clear boundaries between stages. More recently, however, as large-scale projects have become increasingly common even in the fine arts, production has grown more subdivided and expansive. The question of which stage I get involved in has therefore become more meaningful. Personally, I am most drawn to the very beginning of production—when nothing yet exists—and to the process of translating a concept or a plan into realization.
The moments I find most rewarding are those in which roles such as curator or dramaturg have already been defined, and I am entrusted with the more practical and technical dimensions. With the growing number of projects that bring art and technology together, I now often form a “technical team” at the earliest stage. Even when working with minimal information—an idea jotted on a single sheet of paper—I take great pleasure in devising plans and structures as though I have already glimpsed the final outcome.
SL: In recent years, the curator’s role seems to have expanded beyond the traditional task of selecting works and contextualizing them for exhibition. Increasingly, curators collaborate with a wider range of partners to realize complex projects, a role that appears ever closer to that of the producer. How do you view this development?
SJ: It is often said that as the forms of artistic creation have changed, so, too, has the role of the curator. However, I would argue that the curator’s role has always been in motion through different eras. Curators have long acted as both planners and producers, but at some point a preconceived division between these roles emerged, giving rise to a certain conflict of interest.
The situation today, however, is quite different. Today, when curators engage their imagination, they can no longer stop at the level of ideas alone; increasingly, they must think in integrated and comprehensive terms. Some curators I have met even demonstrate producing skills more refined than my own. Yet, once we begin working together, it becomes evident that when it comes to organizing people on-site and carrying plans to execution, the role of the producer is indispensable. The producer is responsible for giving form to imagination, safeguarding the process, and ensuring the practical conditions that make the work possible.
For this reason, I see the roles of curator and producer not as conflicting but as complementary. If the curator unfurls a map of imagination in the air, the producer acts on the ground like a foreman, guiding its realization in a concrete way. How these roles converge within production can profoundly shape the outcome, and even simply observing one another at work can shift methods of practice and approaches to collaboration. I believe that, quite apart from issues of budget, when the roles of curator and producer interlock in balanced ways, the work that emerges becomes more compelling and more richly realized.
SL: In that sense, founding the collective apparat/us seems like a natural next step. Rather than focusing solely on how to sustain your work as an individual producer, you created a platform where multiple people could gather around shared agendas and explore diverse forms of practice. Yet running a collective demands tremendous energy and commitment. Was there a particular moment that prompted you to take this path?
SJ: The collective apparat/us is devoted to studying the mechanisms that allow art to function, as well as the roles and operations that make production possible. When we first began in 2019, I imagined that if many people came together, the process would flow organically, like a single living organism. The reality proved otherwise. Whenever people gather, systems inevitably emerge, and without some form of structure the collective cannot be sustained. At one point, I found myself wrestling with the question, What makes a good collective? But the question became so complex that I eventually set it aside and reframed it more directly: I am running an organization, and I am responsible for the people who work with me. Bringing people together and sharing a vision may still carry the spirit of a collective, but when it comes to managing their time and taking responsibility for costs, I realized I had to act as the leader of a company.
Accepting that structure led me to ask myself: What responsibilities must I take on? That line of questioning, in turn, enabled me to mature as a producer. At first, I imagined a collective as something that would arise naturally, almost like a revelation—mysterious and alluring. Now I approach it as a task, like running a project with a deadline, something that must be carried out at a given moment in time. That new concept has given me both a stronger sense of responsibility and greater flexibility. At the same time, I’ve always been interested in how other artist-led collectives develop their processes. Watching curators or artists—such as Jeon Youjin, Eugene Hannah Park, and Yi Moon-seok, with whom I recently engaged in discussion as part of the working group for this issue—run collectives alongside their individual practices continues to impress me, and I can learn so much from them. In the end, for me, everything comes back to production. Whatever is being made, the essence lies in assuming responsibility for the process.
SL: With apparat/us, you pursue both commissioned projects and self-initiated ones. The nature of these two directions must be quite different. In your experience, how do they compare?
SJ: It may be surprising, but conflicts rarely arise in commissioned projects. The larger and more difficult the undertaking, the more strongly everyone shares the conviction that we have to get it done, and collaboration tends to flow smoothly. There is little need to spend time persuading one another about whether to proceed, and once production begins each person quickly settles into their role.
Azade Shahmiri, Tempor(e)ality, 2024. Courtesy of apparat/us. Photo: Swan Park.
With self-initiated projects that we conceive and fund ourselves, the situation is quite different. In these cases, the values and orientations of each creator and producer surface directly, and moments of conflict are inevitable—sometimes constructive, sometimes not. When someone proposes an idea, it sparks extended conversations about its urgency, and, from determining the method of realization to reaching a final decision, the process can be protracted. Such projects demand far more negotiation, persuasion, and accommodation, and at times, when differences cannot be reconciled, members naturally drift apart.
In practice, apparat/us has taken on a slightly different form each year. If I were to name an ideal, I would liken it to a family: not a short-term project, but an experiment sustained over five to ten years, grounded in mutual trust and reliance. At the same time, it cannot be a closed structure: Openness and flexibility are essential in certain situations. For this reason, I hesitate to pin down apparat/us with a fixed definition. Much like an artist who refines their work and voice over time, I believe the collective will gradually develop a distinct character of its own. For now, we are somewhere in the middle of that journey.
SL: You have described apparat/us’s operating philosophy in terms of “open source.” Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?
SJ: Unlike artists, producers rarely have the opportunity to make visible the skills they possess or the processes of completing a work. Practical constraints such as copyright and confidentiality reinforce this invisibility, keeping producers within relatively closed networks, where growth is often slow. I wanted to find a way to break through those limitations. With apparat/us, my aim has been to create something akin to an open-source platform—accessible to anyone and offering a space where methods and capacities can be shared. Each time we encounter new collaborators, we exchange techniques, methodologies, and expertise. In doing so, the outcomes extend beyond the scope of a single project or production, expanding into a larger ecosystem. What I ultimately seek is to generate new possibilities through the practice of “seeing together,” and I regard apparat/us as a laboratory for precisely that kind of experiment.
SL: In 2024, apparat/us convened the roundtable “Our Stories: Beginnings and Dreams,” in collaboration with producers Moriyama Marie (Japan) and Yap Seok Hui (Singapore). You have continued to pursue dialogue and exchange with other women producers across Asia. What kinds of shared ground or common concerns have you discovered along the way?
SJ: What struck me most was that none of us could clearly define our own titles. At different times, the three of us were called producers, stage managers, coordinators, operators, or exhibition managers. Yet once the work begins, it quickly becomes clear that what matters is not the title or reputation, but how one actually works. In festivals, museums, and theaters, I have met many colleagues and exchanged stories from the field, and I realized that we all grapple with similar questions. Among them were Moriyama Marie and Yap Seok Hui, whose paths have overlapped with mine across both time and production. I first encountered Yap in 2013 at Festival Bo:m through Daniel Kok’s Q&A. I was struck by the way she handled everything herself, from lighting and video content to installation, operation, and deinstallation. We later worked together on projects, such as Ho Tzu Nyen’s Ten Thousand Tigers (2015). Watching her continually devise new media and operational systems led me to reflect on how technical experimentation and interpretation might be mediated in production. Since then, when describing the scope of the technical stages I take on during the production process, I often cite her practice as a reference point.
Benjamin Verdonck, BENJAMINPLUSHATBOS; Benjamin and Forest, 2024. Courtesy of apparat/us. Photo: Swan Park.
Shin Jinyoung, Moriyama Marie, Yap Seok Hui, The Story of Us: How it Began and What We Dream, 2024. Courtesy of apparat/us. Photo: Swan Park.
There were moments when exhaustion weighed on me, when anxiety pressured me, or when I found myself working odd hours under unusual conditions. In those times, I often recalled how she approached her work and faced challenges, and it reassured me. Simply knowing that she might be engaged in something similar elsewhere helped me recognize that my difficulties, crises, or problems were not mine alone. In 2022, through Okada Toshiki’s New Illusion— presented at the Ob/Scene Festival and the National Asian Culture Center—I came to know Marie. At a time when I was overly absorbed in mechanical devices and technical systems, she profoundly shifted my perspective and approach. Theater work requires constant analysis and adaptation: Even when staging the same piece in theaters of a similar type—whether proscenium or black box—each venue has its own structures, equipment, and systems that must be understood and accommodated. Unlike exhibition installations, theater production unfolds under tight time constraints with large teams of technicians, which only heightens the drive for efficiency, economy, and productivity. At that time, I was immersed in an almost obsessive pursuit of perfect planning.
In New Illusion, much of the work involved creating the environment anew through repeated adjustments: hanging and rehanging screens and curtains, endlessly sanding glass panels to optimize their transparency for projection, or discovering that even after using every curtain the theater owned—borders, legs, drapes—there were still hidden spaces that needed to be covered. In the midst of this, the Korean technicians kept asking themselves questions that were also answers: Is this really what our theater looks like? Perhaps we should purchase this material for the future. So this is another way to use curtains. These cycles of trial and adjustment never felt like mistakes or evidence of poor planning. Instead, the two theaters—in Seoul and Gwangju—functioned like living organisms, adapting to the work and finding rhythm with the technicians. The inspiration I drew from that process continues today in apparat/us’s “theater rehearsal,” a project that explores how the apparatus of the theater evolves and grows through rehearsal and transformation.
We also found a strong sense of affinity in the fact that, despite differences in age, our paths had not been quite different. For me, defining my role within the Korean art field has always been difficult. A producer is expected not only to plan productions but also to grasp technical matters, handle administrative documentation, and at times even raise funds. Yet there were few peers of my generation occupying this “in-between” position, and for a time I felt discouraged by that fact. It was a kind of anxiety or confusion born of not knowing how to evaluate myself. Meeting colleagues from overseas, however, helped me realize that what matters most is not the title but how we work. In one of our conversations, we arrived at the conclusion: The role you see in me─the role through which you define and understand me─is the role I embody. In the end, this very uncertainty is the shared condition of our generation of producers—and at the same time it is the ground from which richer discussions can emerge in the future.
SL: From the beginning, apparat/us has placed particular emphasis on the idea and practice of “rehearsal.” Could you elaborate on this? Also, how have you been interpreting this concept and putting it into practice more recently?
SJ: I have always believed that the more we rehearse, the better. A creative life is full of trial and error, of failures both large and small, and rehearsal is, in essence, the way we learn to confront them. Yet once production begins, everything tends to unfold with the gravity of a “final match.” There is little space for warming up, for training, or for cooling down. Artists often manage those processes privately in their daily lives, but once production starts they are expected to appear fully prepared. For this reason, I prefer to think of the opening of an exhibition or the premiere of a performance not as the day of the match itself, but as part of a continuum that begins the moment the work takes shape. Training, rest, and recovery are indispensable, and I believe those periods should be recognized as integral to the work. However, many artists feel ashamed of seeming unprepared, and pride keeps them from revealing their missteps. As a result, they rush headlong toward the goal, overlooking how the present moment is shared and what forms of inspiration and confidence are being accumulated along the way.
This is why I have become interested in presenting “rehearsal” itself as a form of work. Some may call it a “performance” or an “exhibition,” but for me the label is secondary. What matters is how seriously we engage with a subject through rehearsal and whether that process allows us to discover new ideas or to restore a sense of balance.
Okada Toshiki, NEW ILLUSION, 2022. Courtesy of chelfitsch. Photo: Tomita Ryohei.
Ho Tzu Nyen, Ten Thousand Tigers, 2015. Courtesy of artist. Photo: Ken Cheong.
SL: You once remarked that the work we do should not be fixed to a single identity, but understood as a process of continual change and expansion. One of the main forces driving that expansion is technological development. In particular, the rise of generative technologies, which our publication project also addresses, has brought sweeping transformations to the art field. Yet even as you work in production environments that make active use of advanced tools, you seem drawn to “slow technology,” or the reimagining of manual practices. Why is that?
SJ: As a child, I competed in triathlons. At the time, equipment was nowhere near as developed as it is today, so we prepared our gear for transitions in the simplest, most analog ways. I remember pinning my race number to a rubber band, tucking it inside my swimsuit, and pulling it out as I moved from swimming to cycling. In the years that followed, equipment became increasingly streamlined and efficient, but I realized that I had learned the most from those inconvenient, cumbersome routines. That experience taught me that “speed” ultimately comes from scrutinizing each step and repeating it until it becomes instinctive, and [I learned] that what is slowly and painstakingly internalized eventually proves both faster and more precise.
I think of artistic work in much the same way. In media art, if there is sufficient capital and equipment, one can code systems and automate processes. Yet in most cases artwork still requires the deep intervention of the human hand and the act of interpretation. This is why time that may appear inefficient or unproductive is, in fact, meaningful. I do not see it as waste, but as integral to the creative process itself. Today, with the growing focus on generative AI and ChatGPT, such time is increasingly dismissed as valueless. Yet I believe that respecting precisely those fleeting, seemingly expendable intervals lies at the heart of what I call “slow technology.”
If we were working in industries driven purely by machines, perhaps there would be no need to reflect on slow technologies at all. But art remains an irreducibly human endeavor, and the essential elements of creation are left in the human hand. For this reason, while I employ mechanical systems readily in commissioned projects, when I collaborate with peers who share the same vision, I deliberately turn to “slow technology,” or analog practices.
SL: Exhibitions today increasingly rely on automated technologies, often extending their structures and durations in ways that resemble long-running performances. Yet the more sophisticated the technology becomes, the more responsibilities seem to be delegated to machines. In this context, how do you view the significance of analog methods and manual work?
SJ: I do not regard performing analog practices as a form of preservation. There are still tasks that can only be carried out by hand, and often it is only through the motion of the hand that the mind fully engages. No matter how advanced the equipment may be in a performance setting, stable installation depends on people using their bodies to read structures, measure time, and train. In fact, expensive machinery or complex coding often fails to solve problems that can be resolved by something as simple as a person pressing a single button. While I welcome the advance of automation, it is vital to remember that there are wide domains it cannot address. Equally important is sustaining the imagination to consider how a task has been carried out by people before and how it might be reimagined by them again in the future.
Yu Jiwan, That Night’s Dream, 2025. Courtesy of apparat/us. Photo: Kim Sora.
SL: To conclude, I would like to return to apparat/us and its future directions. For 2025–27, your slogan is “Moving Alone—to the Deepest and Farthest—and Being in Togetherness.” What does it mean, as a producer, to move alone and be together at once?
SJ: At apparat/us, we set a guiding slogan for each multiyear cycle of projects. For 2025–27, our slogan—“Moving Aloneㅡto the Deepest and Farthestㅡand Being in Togetherness”—proposes a new kind of theater: a journey through which we explore the world in its many settings.
Beginning in 2023, apparat/us ran a small theater called Space Seoro, where we began the theater rehearsal in earnest. When the theater closed in 2025, we faced the question of how to carry that practice forward. We then decided to expand our activities over the past two years beyond the physical space, using nature, time, seasons, and objects themselves as materials with which to build a theater. Since then, we have held impromptu workshops with participants in places both deep—underwater, in forests, among sculptures—and far— Space Seoro, the eastern cliffs, the western sea, and the southern mountains—. This stems from the belief that both drama (story) and theater are not confined to theatrical space, but are present in our lives. Our aim is to reflect on the meanings of “together” and “alone” through a theater that begins alone yet is always together, a theater that is together yet functions only when it is alone. What we create is neither immediate nor complete, nor does it follow the methods of production conventionally deemed efficient. Instead, we speak of attempting “seasonal performances”—works attuned to the moment and unconstrained by existing systems. For me, these processes form an ongoing experiment in exploring new forms of productivity.
Shin Jinyoung is a producer who has served as technical director for the Ob/Scene Festival (2022) and worked as a producer for the Gwangju Biennale (2020–21), the MMCA Performing Arts Program (2016–20), the National Asian Culture Center Theater (2013–16), and Festival Bo:m (2011–13). Since 2019, she has established a production initiative, apparat/us, focusing on building an organic and sustainable production environment through diverse modes of practice such as planning, production, and collaboration. Since 2023, she has been running a black box theater, Space Seoro, where she continues to propose a wide range of creative activities.
Sooyoung Leam is an art historian and curator based in Seoul. She has been actively engaged in research and curatorial projects focusing on modern and contemporary art in East Asia, with a particular interest in transnational exhibition practices and the formation of Asian subjectivities. She currently teaches at Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University. Her writings have appeared in journals such as Sculpture Journal and the Journal of History of Modern Art. Forthcoming publications include “The Citizens Art School: Practicing Collectivity through Printmaking in South Korea, 1980s–90s” in Toward a New Aesthetics: Institutional Criticism in Art Education from 1900 to Today (Brill, 2025), and “East Asia through the Lens of Suwon: Communication Art Group (1990–96) and the Festivalization of Performance” in Art in Translation. Her recent curatorial projects include the Seoul Art Prize-shortlisted exhibition Walking Korea: Cut Pieces (2024–25), the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), and To A Faraway Friend: Beyond Afro-Southeast Asian Affinities (Busan, 2022). She earned her BA in History of Art from the University of Cambridge, followed by an MA and PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Her doctoral research focused on the sculptural experiments of Lee Seung-taek, exploring the intersections of avant-garde art and postwar Korean history.
[1] The four members were in a group chat titled “AFSAR Dreaming for Funds.” These messages are excerpted from this chat.
[2] Lee Jin-kyung, “Why the Impossibility of Death Becomes Suffering—Reincarnation: Eternal Recurrence and Nihilism,” Philosophizing Buddhism [in Korean] (Seoul: Hue, 2016), 201–218.
[3] Andrea Gibson, “Love Letter from the Afterlife,” Things That Don’t Suck, December 21, 2023.
[4] Primitive is a project by Apichatpong Weerasethakul consisting of a book, photographs, and videos filmed in his hometown of Isan in northeastern Thailand. The project comprises the seven-channel video installation Primitive, the single-channel video Phantoms of Nabua, and the short film Letter to Uncle Boonmee. The feature-length film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) concludes the project.
[5] Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “Memories of Nabua: A Note on the Primitive Project,” in Ghosts, Spies, and Grandmothers: Confronting Modernity Against Modernity [in Korean] (Seoul: Seoul Museum of Art; Hyunsil Books, 2014), 55–69.
[6] The deities referred to here are neither primordial beings who created the universe nor mythological figures born of cosmologies nor celestial entities beyond human reach. They are not symbols or fictional characters but historical figures whose births are clearly documented and who once truly existed.
[7] The Comb Sisters was a women’s community that emerged in Shunde, Guangdong, during the late Ming dynasty. Rejecting marriage and declaring independence, they supported themselves by working in the silk industry. With the decline of the silk trade and shifting social conditions in the early twentieth century, their numbers gradually diminished, and many migrated for work, engaging in domestic labor not only in Hong Kong but also in Southeast Asia, including in Singapore. For more information, see Yingjia Tan, “Comb Sisters,” Places Journal (November 2024), https://doi.org/10.22269/241116/.
[8] The Cai Gu was a celibate, vegetarian, women’s Buddhist community originating in the Minnan region of Fujian. They practiced and disseminated Buddhism through the operation of temples, schools, and vegetarian restaurants. In the early twentieth century, members migrated to Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, where they established temples and engaged in charitable activities. For more information, see Ying Ruo, “Virtuous Women on the Move: Minnan Vegetarian Women (Caigu) and Chinese Buddhism in Twentieth-Century Singapore,” Studies in Chinese Religions 17 (2021): 125–181.
[9] The first friends to share this secret with us were the Carefuffle Working Group. Led by disabled and queer members, Carefuffle is a collective that engages with issues of care, interdependence, creative agency, and social justice. Through their artistic practice, they challenge the framing of disability as deficiency, affirming instead its wholeness. They regard accessibility as both a shared joy and a collective responsibility for liberation, sustaining practices that work to dismantle ableism and cultural exclusion.
[10] Shayda Kafai, “Creating Crip-Centric Liberated Zones,” Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021).
[11] Choi Yumi, email message to Mooni Perry, April 27, 2023.
[12] Yoo Seon-hye, “Read Love and Extinction in Reverse,” Read Love and Extinction in Reverse [in Korean] (Seoul: Munji Publishing, 2024), 48.
[13] Saodat Ismailova, Rolando Vázquez, and Sophie Krier, “Healing as Re-Membering: Second Conversation between Saodat Ismailova and Rolando Vázquez, 2020,” in Meanderings in Worlds of Mourning, ed. Sophie Krier, Saodat Ismailova, and Rolando Vázquez, Field Essays 5 (Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2022), 38–63.
Fellow Sooyoung Leam
