Pensée Sauvage
Interview with Yelim Ki, Winter 2021 Participant
What is your site?
It’s a hypothetical & imaginary institution that can soothe all my complaints floating up in my mind as I attend art classes and more generally, institutions teaching art, such as the university.
Wow, an institution. Seems like a big project!
In my mind, this is a long-term project that may be able to realize finally when I’m older — in my 40’s or 50’s. So this website is a cornerstone which can work as an empty courtyard in that place.
It’s like I’m writing a possible scenario, and this website is the first step: setting up the stage and arranging it. It’s very important for me to build up tangibility on each step.
What did you learn through creating the site?
I consider front-end coding a tool which I can use for drawing, sculpting, and writing — a way to deliver my thoughts to the public.
Of course, coding languages have also disappointed me by the lack of my capacity. But I know I'm free to find a solution by searching, being lost, and sometimes asking to someone specific I know. I love trial and error. It gives me strength to stay awake.
Personally, I like cruising in thoughts while looking at some shapes and structures. Some architectural sites or artifacts that are left as traces. And building up a website is easy, takes less energy and risk to build up such a trace. Very effective, and so much fun when you share, of course.
About technical issues on my site: There is still an error that I can’t solve on counting the number of people, so I have to come and check regularly to clean up the database. Keeping it tidy is part of creating and caring for a place.
What did you learn from being in fruitful school?
I appreciated the linear sequences that came along with fruitful school. I had to stay up a whole night and had to wake up too early to attend with the distance & time difference, but the massive amount of articles and references that were shared pushed me to stay awake.
What's something you'd like visitors to your site to know that they wouldn't otherwise?
The freedom of their being there. You are welcomed to make a mess. You are welcomed to stay as long as you can. You are welcomed to play with HTML code (that was the funny part I didn’t expect at first — entering HTML into the chat works pretty well). You are welcomed to leave some messages or curses to me so that I can check when I come to clean up.
Why pansies?
Pansies… I simply like their faces. There is something brutal about their faces. They have a sauvage beauty and are animalistic. I also enjoyed breeding pansies in Animal Crossing back in the days.
What's the significance of the title, "Pensée Sauvage"?
Ah yes, it’s important. Since there are obviously not many contents contained on the site, it’s almost like an empty yard. So I think this semantic naming can lead you in a decent way.
Pensée Sauvage can literally mean “wild pansies” or “wild thought.” There is a book also named this. I didn’t read it, but I like this double meaning or pun.
What type of website would you like to experience more in the future?
More space debris. Once I got a mail from someone who found my debris, and she introduced me an artist Jasper Spicero (https://jasperspicero.com). His works may be a good example of what I’d like to experience more. Not only his coding works, but also his object works and video installations blow my mind and make me conceive them as a certain interaction or image that I can probably find somewhere on the web. He deals with a very gentle and subtle layout, a frame. And time. I still don’t know how to call this sensation.
But I have been collecting such references in my Are.na channel, “Probably Web”. You can feel this by having a glimpse of a series of my collection, rather than listening to my desperate explanation.
🥥
Yelim Ki
http://kiyel.care
