The challenges Unmake Lab faced are also found in works by Ayoung Kim. Ayoung Kim didn’t major in fine art either. She studied commercial design and began her artistic career after completing a master’s course at an art school in United Kingdom. Like Unmake Lab, Kim creates works based on research. The difference is that she produces videos containing fictional narratives and characters while Unmake Lab focuses primarily on objects and data, which are also transformed into video images. If Unmake Lab is an engineer, Kim is science fiction writer. Kim has created imaginary characters and narratives by associating the history of modernity and the present with microscopic events she has chosen. For instance, Every North Star, one of her juvenilia, discloses the history of Busan in which elements of capitalism are blended with those of imperialism exemplified in the case of suicide of a horsewoman. Kim said this subject of her work derived from her experiences as a stranger in the United Kingdom. “When I was studying in England, I felt some antipathy about the fact that they dominated the production of critical discourses concerning imperialism even though they were the ones who created imperial regimes.” (Ayoung Kim)

Ironically, Kim’s critical work received positive recognition in the European art scene. She utilized in her works the freedom and anxiety she felt as a stranger in Europe. Due to the nature of her artistic styles, she requested resources and supports through the cooperation of diverse non-art institutions, including the Archives Nationales, France and this request was accepted beyond expectation. Of course, the most important mainstay that enabled her to execute her work at an overseas residency was the support from the Arts Council Korea. She was considered the “most successful case brought about by ARKO’s support for a Korean artist participating in an overseas artist-in-residence program.” She stresses that Korea’s art support system is superior to that of any European country in terms of scale and diversity. Kim is of course well aware of the strength and weakness of Korean public support system. She expresses her concern about creators who cannot work without any grant or outside the system. She criticizes that Korea’s artist-in-residence programs put more emphasis on offering physical workspace and tend to be short-term or emphasize the outcomes rather than processes. The biggest problems above all are the lack of support for the human resources and production management required in creative processes. Korea’s public support is usually just a way to provide money and asks artists to solve all their problems themselves. This may be particularly problematic to artists who take a multidisciplinary approach, embracing historical, sociological, and scientific issues to understand and critique modernity and its transformation.

Kim could experience the benefit of more than an offer of physical space by attending an overseas artist-in-residence program. For example, by the request of the artist, relevant public institutions provided necessary manpower and resources through a partnership. Support from a diversity of experts and artists enabled her to carry out her work efficiently. Kim said the respect for artists and their work shown by European public institutions was evidence of their cultural capital. This cultural capital reproduces their own prestige and authority by offering information, knowledge, and the means necessary for artistic work through their organic placement and combination in a personal, physical, and institutional dimension. Kim has created her critical artistic work through an arrangement and combination of such resources. In her latest series Porosity Valley, she laid out a narrative in a porous world by embracing the latest humanistic and sociological insight (New Materialism/ANT) and sci-fi imagination that manifest the world through a life-non-life network, moving beyond anthropocentrism. This is to some degree her own story. She takes her life and work to go through an extraordinary European porosity that includes art yet excludes the other.

After her return to Korea, Kim has been deepening her critical fictional work concerning modernity, being offered more opportunities and resources based on her gained experience and career. In Korea, she is busier but may feel lonelier. As even a collective Unmake Lab feels lonely, there is nothing strange about our thought that Kim as an individual creator feels lonelier. In the process of meeting and parting new staff, developers, experts, and artists when shifting from one project to another, she wants to have stable and systematic support for production, and moreover feels some more elemental thirst. “I have always been alone. It was hard for me to feel any sense of belonging because I often moved to short-term residence programs. I missed some reference group sharing issues of our time.” (Ayoung Kim)

We are well aware of the history of solidarity and collegiality among artists. A group of artists who joined the avant-garde movement that dreamed of integrating life with art in the early and middle 20th century, an organization of artists who tried to gain recognition for their autonomy and expertise, and the collective activity of artists of a peer group sharing creed and propensity never dreamed they could receive any cultural policy grant. These were paragons of mutual admiration societies bound up with mutual respect, self-help, mutual help, or patronage. These societies were criticized as elite groups that had blind faith in the myth of autonomy. Meanwhile, they tried to redefine themselves as organic intellectuals forming the collective counter-hegemony against the state and capital in solidarity with the general public. Tension, however, was stirred up in this history of their dependence on public funds, and this resulted in an inner split in extreme cases.

I’d like to introduce a dramatic case of this split. Basement Workshop was an arts collective active from 1971 to 1986 organized by Asian-American artists and activists in the basement of a building in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The collective initiated Asian American movement for Asian-Americans’ human rights and solidarity. Basement Workshop, which carried out diverse social-engagement practices such as community service, research, education, publication, direct action, and art-making, was enveloped in internal conflicts as it increased its organizational scale and extended the scope of its projects by means of art support funds granted by the federal and local governments. Some of its members brought the use of public funds for its art programs into question. They put forward criticism that their organization might be subdued to be more palatable to the government if they received government grants. Artists could not help feeling that their social intervention’s autonomy was diminished in this process. In the summer of 1975, conflicts erupted and artists and non-artists decided to go their separate ways. This served as momentum for the collective to clarify its character as a non-profit art organization. In 1986, the reason why Basement Workshop disbanded was ironically a dearth of support funds from government.

A conflict brought on by artistic social intervention does not only emerge between art and non-art players. What I mention here is the case of conflicts that arise when artist group A and artist group B were carrying out projects (supported by public grants) for the same social cause. This happened in 2019, and I belonged to group A. Group B tried to record group A’s performance with A’s permission and use it as the video-footage for their performance. Some friction regarding this matter was caused in this process. In the end, group B decided not to use the video-footage. Group A and group B had almost no communication to foster mutual understanding on pending issues. As their performance drew near, B decided that not using the video was more effective, while the public institution that supported B judged that it would be more desirable not to have any conflicts. Group A, however, raised questions about such "easy" decision making. This was because of the idea that a deep conversation should take place if they truly shared same purposes for their practices. All the same, this critical thought could not be shared even within Group A. Group A artists with diverse inclinations working in a wide variety of genres had collaborated for years, but they dissolved due to this occasion. This occasion also left a big scar on its members’ minds.

How did public support for artistic social intervention in the 1975 case of America and the 2018 case of Korea have an effect on inner conflicts among artists? No public institutions providing grants instigate or regulate conflicts among artist groups. And yet, those institutions tend to sow the seeds of conflict by making the artists group’s social intervention a project managed by effective logistics and institutional regulations. This project leads artists to be mindful about schedule, not belief, and a solution to a problem, not debating ideas and visions. In this case, conflict arises not from a clash between belief in and interpretation of social intervention but from how to carry out the project from administrative perspective. That is, the major problem is a fiasco in operating the project. The project encourages participants to see a colleague as an administrator. Thus the conflict arises regarding the roles and responsibilities of those in charge, not from those of colleagues acting together in the presence of problems.

William Deresiewicz lamentably mentions in his essay “The Death of the Artist and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur” in the December 2015 issue of The Atlantic.
“Creative Entrepreneurship is spawning its own institutional structure – online marketplaces, self-publishing platforms, nonprofit incubators, collaborative spaces – but the fundamental relationship remains creator to customer, with creators handling or superintending every aspect of the transaction.”

Deresiewicz critically describes the process of transforming artistic identity, highlighting individual artists and their creation of artworks. His narratives, however, overlook the artist’s distinctive practice of social intervention. The practice of social intervention is composed of processes and productions in which a diversity of actors participate. (This is the same for artistic practices such as avant-garde art, media art, and art addressing issues such as climate change.) What counts most for artists as they engage in social intervention is to redefine their identities and works, adapting to changes in support systems and artistic work (technology, research, cooperation, and application). The transformation artist-expert-entrepreneur Deresiewicz suggested seems to be more or less linear. When it comes to the artist’s practice of social intervention, multiple identities such as researchers, activists, and mediators have to be added to the three identities he mentioned. Each project abides by the logistics and codes of each support. Those artists have to properly allocate and synthesize their multiple identities while negotiating and forging the scope of their (de)authoritative leadership, ownership, and public use of their work. Their precarity is not simply in regard to their status and recognition. Each project provides diverse sources of insecurity. What’s crucial is how to build a foundation for sustainable practice and community while addressing all these short-term issues such as compensation, deadlines, communication, trust, as well as technological, aesthetical, and political problems.

Are Unmake Lab and Ayoung Kim pigeonholed as entrepreneurs according to Deresiewicz? Yes and no. They tend to make rational choices to bring about the best results by making proper use of external resources, especially support funds. The most salient feature of the entrepreneur can be said to be the ability to adapt, which means one has to negotiate with goods and services they can provide depending on the characteristics of the market transaction. From the viewpoint of economics, this need will be further imperative in the market where symbolic goods and services are traded with high uncertainty or particularly the market where demands for these symbolic products are small and fragmented.

Works by Unmake Lab have sometimes displayed some appearance of a strategic entrepreneur in that they reduced the strategy of ‘direct action’ to some degree and took the form of work or ‘artistic allegory’ available for an exhibition. If so, who is their transaction object or customer? Who pays attention to their work and invests resources and experience? Government agencies, art museums, and viewers are not their only special customers. Their customers include researchers, artists, activists, and educators who criticize or attend their work. Although they have often faced indifference, they do not change the direction of their work to attract more customers. What counts for them is to keep going, to leave something, and not to be volatilized, thereby emphasizing validity through discourse and practice. What distinguishes Unmake Lab from other common entrepreneurs is their pursuit of the sustainability and consistency (unlike replaced or exchanged goods’ short-term value) of artistic practice. This is also found in Ayoung Kim’s statements.

“After the COVID-19 pandemic every institution talks only about the environment and climate. Ever-changing trends and keywords work in the art scene. And yet, it is hard for artists with their own concerns to follow such trends. This means, in a sense, artists can break away from the cycles of fashion. I at times feel this rapidly changing cycle in the art world feels superficial and fleeting. I very often see trends change so quickly and attract so many people. Such a work and exhibition is not even remembered in the future.” (Ayoung Kim)

Kim seems to take autonomy in a conventional sense that contrasts long-term consecration of art with short-term consumption of art, and supports the former. Ayoung Kim herself, however, received a favor by being recognized through such a trend. “Research-based art was once in fashion. I was also defined as an artist representing that art. All the same, there are no artists who don’t conduct research. (Ayoung Kim) She has also used cutting-edge technologies and methodologies such as VR, 3D graphics, sound, video, and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). If this is true, her attitude cannot be seen as one of the versions of conventional consecration of art and the myth of autonomy.