From the Potential as a Mass Art to a ‘Minority Taste’: A Topology of the Art Cinema Culture and Its Audiences in Contemporary Korea

This paper aims to examine the topology of the culture of art cinema and its new spectators in contemporary Korea. Traditionally, the cinephile has meant a sovereign spectator that actively intervenes in the cultural field of cinema with her special sense of taste. However, in the post-cinematic environment where cinema undergoes transformations and migrates to various media and platforms, the topology of film spectatorship, which includes the space and place of art cinema, seems to take on new forms. How does the current film culture, in which new arthouse films are stagnant and stylized, and in which canonized arthouse films have increasingly released, affect the ideology and practice of art cinema, as well as the tension between commerce and art that has constituted it? To what extent does contemporary audience culture embrace and practice the ‘difference’ and ‘diversity’ that art cinema has sought, in the situation that its institution and practice have increasingly been diversified?To answer these questions, this paper investigation the shift of contemporary film culture from its potential as a mass art to a ‘minor taste’ or part of the experience economy, focusing on its physical space. Through interweaving the studies of cinephilia, film exhibition as a (non)institutional practice, and film spectatorship and experience, I tentatively categorize the terrains of contemporary Korean art cinema culture into multiplex art houses, dedicated art cinemas, and microcinemas (non-institutional cine-clubs). With the support of the Korean Film Council since 2006, CGV Art House, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, has contributed to expanding the base of independent and arthouse films. In so doing, it has cultivated the ‘multiplex cinephiles’, arthouse film lovers who consider as a primordial and original experience their multiplex experience based on the neoliberal experience economy. Independent art cinemas have sought to attract new audiences in the face of the stagnation of cinematic art by increasingly investing re-releases of proven classics, various special programs, and participatory events in lieu of new releases and long-term screening. On the other hand, in recent years, self-generated cine-clubs such as ‘Sorigrim’, ‘Jaju Younghwa(自主映畵) Screening’, and ‘Cinematograph’, have been practicing alternative film screenings, criticism, and education outside of institutional spaces, therefore demonstrating the vitality of new cinephilia through their interaction with social media and online communities.