-Relational Dynamics

Dynamics of Relationships_Manseok Ha

I am interested in steel. Because my parents have worked in the steel industry from my childhood to the present, steel has always been a very familiar material to me. While moving through scrap yards, I witnessed steel—commonly understood as a symbol of strength—slowly corroding over time, crumbling like pastry and eventually turning into powder. Through this experience, I began to perceive steel not as a strong material, but as something fragile and highly mutable. The rust, scars, and dented surfaces evoked sensations similar to human faces, and the process of corrosion and deformation came to resemble the changes humans undergo within relationships.

This experience also influenced how I understand art. I believe art goes beyond presenting predefined beauty or emotion without change; rather, it transforms experience through the artist’s own form in order to generate questions and provoke thought. What I seek to create through photography is not a sense of closure in viewing, but the discomfort and questions that remain afterward. When viewers begin to question themselves after encountering the work, that is when art truly starts to function.

Through the transformation of steel, I began to question and reflect on my own experience. Steel starts to rust and accumulate damage the moment it begins to interact with the world. Likewise, from the moment I was born, through relationships with my parents, friends, teachers, and society, I have constantly negotiated between adapting in order to belong and resisting in order to preserve my own form. In this process, I too have become rusted and scarred. Within relationships, there is a constant collision between who society or others expect us to be and who we wish to be ourselves, and these collisions leave marks. Just as objects inevitably bear traces through use, people leave traces on one another through relationships. The term “dynamics” refers to a condition in which elements that form a whole are mutually dependent and constrain one another. I describe this tension between adaptation and resistance within relationships as the “dynamics of relationships.”

In searching for a place where I could articulate the relationship between steel and human connection, I arrived at Incheon South Port. Steel is everywhere in its landscape. Steel barges and tugboats are moored to steel bollards on land, bound by chains or ropes, forming relationships with the harbor. They collide, leaving traces on one another. To protect themselves, the vessels surround their bodies with countless tires. This scene reminded me of human relationships—entering into connection while inevitably being wounded in the process.

The relationship between barges and tugboats reflects this dynamic as well. A barge has no propulsion of its own; it depends on a tugboat to move. Without adapting to the tugboat, the barge cannot move, and its reason for existence disappears. To exist, it must submit to this relationship. Yet the barge is never fully controlled by the tugboat, due to waves, weight, and friction. When being towed, the barge collides with waves. If it does not resist the waves, its form will be destroyed, which would mean the loss of its identity as a barge. Here too, the dynamics of relationships are at work.

Because barges are used for long-term labor at sea, their paint is stripped away through collisions with waves and rocks, exposing bare steel. The dents caused by relationships and the areas where the structure resists to maintain its form become visibly apparent. I explored this landscape through photography and chose thermal paper, a material rarely used in art due to its poor archival stability. Thermal paper is coated with a heat-sensitive substance that turns black when exposed to heat, without the use of ink. Common examples include receipts and number tickets. It is vulnerable to sunlight and humidity, and prolonged exposure causes images to fade.

Thermal paper resembles steel in many ways. Just as steel is formed through heat, images on thermal paper are created through heat. And just as steel rusts and loses its body over time, images on thermal paper gradually disappear, as if corroding. Through this material choice, I wanted the physical properties of steel to be embedded in the materiality of the work itself, allowing the “dynamics of relationships” to become embodied in the work.

Through this project, I question the prevailing social assumption that relationships are primarily spaces of communication and solidarity. While relationships certainly enable connection and support, they also inevitably contain wounds, fractures, and friction. In other words, relationships are structures in which opposing forces—adaptation and resistance—always coexist. Based on this premise, this work seeks to explore the following questions:

Why have relationships been discussed mainly in terms of their positive functions?
Must we truly accept relationships as something inherently necessary?
Are adaptation and resistance unavoidable structural conditions within relationships?
Is identity formed only through the process of being damaged and worn down within relationships with others?

Through this work, I aim to reexamine these long-held assumptions about relationships and to visually explore how the invisible dynamics and negativity produced by relationships shape the subject.