Youngsook Choi
Contact details
Department of Geography
King's College London
Strand
London
WC2R 2LS
Email: youngsook.choi@kcl.ac.uk
King's College London
Strand
London
WC2R 2LS
Email: youngsook.choi@kcl.ac.uk
Research
Surveillance as a Performative Space: Mystification and Transformation of Spatial Narratives in Surveillance regimes
Along the perennial argument between public liberty/privacy and security, we are already living in a society of massive surveillance system and it does not seem possible to withdraw existing infrastructure but rather more expanding everyday in various purposes and excuses. The debate around surveillance practices now should focus more on how this supervising and controlling system has been affected our social identities as well as behavioral activities, and eventually how we need to react and live in surveillance society.
Choi’s PhD research “Surveillance as a Performative Space” deals with how inherently surveillance is related to social re/structuring in terms of controlling spaces and spatial narratives. Especially her fieldwork is planning to focus on how different regimes of surveillance in different institutions identify socially deviance tendencies in terms of performativity, theoretically based on mainly Foucalt’s panopticon theory and Butler’s radical term of performativity. Apart from major ethnographic research in picked areas in London, a social experiment in a form of public-engaged art practice will be established regarding surveillance ownership as a part of research.
Supervisors: Prof Rob Imrie and Dr Mike Raco
Along the perennial argument between public liberty/privacy and security, we are already living in a society of massive surveillance system and it does not seem possible to withdraw existing infrastructure but rather more expanding everyday in various purposes and excuses. The debate around surveillance practices now should focus more on how this supervising and controlling system has been affected our social identities as well as behavioral activities, and eventually how we need to react and live in surveillance society.
Choi’s PhD research “Surveillance as a Performative Space” deals with how inherently surveillance is related to social re/structuring in terms of controlling spaces and spatial narratives. Especially her fieldwork is planning to focus on how different regimes of surveillance in different institutions identify socially deviance tendencies in terms of performativity, theoretically based on mainly Foucalt’s panopticon theory and Butler’s radical term of performativity. Apart from major ethnographic research in picked areas in London, a social experiment in a form of public-engaged art practice will be established regarding surveillance ownership as a part of research.
Supervisors: Prof Rob Imrie and Dr Mike Raco
Biography
Young Sook Choi majored in Geography at Kon-Kuk University in Korea and has achieved her MA with Distinction Award in Hypermedia Studies, University of Westminster. She has a hybrid of careers across the art/culture area and the commercial corporate. With an enthusiasm for an alternative culture, Young Sook Choi cultivated and nurtured the first Korean video festival “Broke in Seoul Video Festival” which became one of the most important roots of independent festival culture in Korea. Moving onto the public side, she has directed and programmed a few significant gender-focused and youth-targeted educational festivals and public exhibitions. Among them, “The Sexuality Museum for Youth” and “Seoul Women’s Cultural Festival” marked the turning point with a culturally radical curatorship, and both of them have become the stable public programs fully supported by government. Beside the subcultural and public-based activities, Young Sook Choi has diverse experiences in commercial media communications such as advertising copywriter, PR manager, branding consultant, and journalist for major daily papers.
Academic Interests
Youngsook Choi has a great interest in urban spaces, and challenging the authoritarian vision of urban re/structuring especially in public and minority perspectives. She has been carrying her interest through various writings, exhibition and conferences such from her MA thesis on “Machining City: Socio-economic Ideology of Digital Urbanism” to the annual curatorship for Women and Space Festival in Seoul.
Academic Interests
Youngsook Choi has a great interest in urban spaces, and challenging the authoritarian vision of urban re/structuring especially in public and minority perspectives. She has been carrying her interest through various writings, exhibition and conferences such from her MA thesis on “Machining City: Socio-economic Ideology of Digital Urbanism” to the annual curatorship for Women and Space Festival in Seoul.
Publications
Writings and Films
“CCTVNUTS Manifesto”, DiY Survival (2005), edited by Betty Marenko, C6, London
Editor of Digital Media & Culture Magazine “BIS”, Vol. 1~5, 2000~2001
Documentary about female factory workers “Who Are You” (2005), 6mm DV, Exhibited in group exhibition “Nameless Name”, Gallery Sempio Space
Digital fiction about a satire of information society “Weather Forecast” (1999), 6mm DV,
Screenplay at 2000 Indie Video Archives
“CCTVNUTS Manifesto”, DiY Survival (2005), edited by Betty Marenko, C6, London
Editor of Digital Media & Culture Magazine “BIS”, Vol. 1~5, 2000~2001
Documentary about female factory workers “Who Are You” (2005), 6mm DV, Exhibited in group exhibition “Nameless Name”, Gallery Sempio Space
Digital fiction about a satire of information society “Weather Forecast” (1999), 6mm DV,
Screenplay at 2000 Indie Video Archives
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