Before starting the actual experiments on the body and letters, we planned the Typojanchi Pre-Biennale SaiSai 2016-2017(In-between Typojanchi) in October 2016. The Pre-Biennale was to apply various ideas and methods connected to the body, letters, and typography to reality. The preliminary experiment consisted of four-day workshops, a two-day open studio, and a one-day seminar and discussion in order to examine how letters could be expanded and interpreted when falling under the theme of “body.” We invited three design teams under the themes of Letters: Decoded by body motion, From shape to graphics: Mechanisms made from memory, and The body as a tool: The design of conditions and creation, and then recruited 15 students and professfionals involved in design and visual art, both at home and abroad, to take part in each workshop. The procedures and outcomes of the workshops exhibited at Culture Station Seoul 284, where the main exhibition would soon be staged, were made available throug an open studio, with people free to share their opinions on the body.

What we focused on for the actual realization of the body with respect to the 2017 main exhibition was the abstractness of that “body” itself. We chose to advocate a variety of suppositions about the body, which instead of being interwoven into one piece going forward were pushed to the extreme. Nothing was prescribed or concluded. We did not decide why these suppositions should be viewed as a “body.” Instead, we wanted to collect different and diverse viewpoints on the body. A wide variety of perspectives and cases were brought together in three books. We arranged workshops in which various ideas on the body were discussed and people could share their own ideas. We encouraged disparate views that were least likely to be raised at the forum as dialogues, and then worked to mix and promote them with and among other points of view. The forums for theses dialogues to advance ideas to meet were somewhat small and trivial, and included things like “chats” “small discussions,” “parties,” “round tables,” “dinners,” “email correspondences,” and “cooperating with extraneous groups.” Different perspectives that had led to extremes in a casual and informal atmosphere were then shared with random people who wanted to exchange ideas. This included participating artist, designers, curators, audiences, students, and professors.

Excerpt: 《Mohm, Right Here: Preface to Typojanchi 2017 》
Ahn Byunghak, Art Director