Program 
Workshop Concept 

The foci of this workshop are two folds: transculturalism and transmediality reflected Korea art through the spread of knowledge and artistic practice, and the circulation of artifacts as well as the theoretical framework in interpreting works of art with an emphasis on the materiality and their border-crossing. 

By examining the production of art and its discourse in transcultural contexts, this workshop seeks to offer a broad vision of cultural translation and adaptation in Korean art from the Goryeo dynasty to the present. Synchronic movements across cultures, nations, and communities, as well as diachronic movements across time, will be thoroughly discussed to answer the following questions: how were knowledge, social system, aesthetic practices and artifacts translated across regions and times and to what extent were these systems modulated, what was a medium for cultural exchanges, and who were the involved in transmission, perception, translation, and modification of ideas and objects? 

In this workshop, the concept of transmediality is defined in a rather discursive manner as an umbrella-term and hypernym to refer all phenomena involving more than one medium. Transmediality, the ways that an image or artifact migrants from one form to another, is a crucial mechanism for the circulation of objects, but can also hasten the transformation of their meaning. The study of transmediality entails important issues such as the appearance of a certain motif, aesthetic, or discourses across a variety of different media, the interactions between various art forms, and technological and economic terms and material qualities pertaining the media. Based on previous scholarship, we develop further discussion on how the materiality of media influences the adaptation of a certain motif in different art forms, how do we account for mediatic translations, for instance from paper to stone and painting to sculpture, how did motives, characters, narrative circulate between various media and cultural circuits, and in this process why do certain formal elements and iconographic features remain pertinent while others do not? 

A more systematic understanding of transculturalism and transmediality embedded in Korea art history brings new perspectives and insights into the complexity and dynamism in transfer process across time spans, spaces, and media. Through these approaches, this workshop aims to research Korean a communicative space in consideration of its role in cultural exchanges and innovative use of art forms.