OUSSS
Koo Jeong A
OUSSS by Koo Jeong A is a 3D film project developed between 2014 and 2022 in collaboration with Anna Lena Vaney. Launched during Paris+ art fair in 2023, the work centres around the glow-in-the-dark skatepark OTRO, which was developed by the artist in collaboration with Belgian architectural firm L’Escaut between 2007 and 2012 on Vassivière Island in Beaumont-du-Lac, France.
The film takes us on a journey through various forms, with shots of curved hills, mountains, valleys and grasslands contrasted with the luminous otherworldliness of the OTRO skatepark. As alluded to by the title of Koo Jeong A’s new film, the OTRO skatepark becomes a protagonist within the work, forming part of the artist’s ever-expanding term, ‘ousss’. Used by Koo Jeong A since the 1990s, ‘ousss’ can be both a root, affix, stem and suffix, but also a term in and of itself. It is suggestive of an enigmatic and morphing movement, signal- ling matter and energy existing within the cracks of our universe. Through ‘ousss’, Koo Jeong A continues their interest in conjuring alternative realities within the material of everyday life.
By choosing to make the film in 3D, Koo Jeong A allows the viewer to experience the expanded perception that is embedded within the world of ‘ousss’. This is a world in which the clear-cut boundaries between physical and immaterial worlds dissolve, and our experience extends beyond that which we can objectively see, into what might be sensed in between. Through watching the film, Koo Jeong A’s invites us into an experiment. With its filmic techniques and stereoscopic format, the work poses the question as to what it might feel like to experience ‘ousss’ in real time, such that our senses are simultaneously awakened and sent into a space of dreaming.