Sternberg Press Publishes ‘Solitary’, an Essay Collection Edited by Professor Tyler Coburn
Adjunct Assistant Professor Tyler Coburn has published Solitary (Sternberg Press, 2022), a collection of pieces written by ten authors at a wellness center designed as a mock prison in South Korea. Coburn conceived of and edited the book to explore the relationship between the wellness industry, the prison-industrial complex, sensory deprivation, and the history of solitude.
To create this unique collective artwork, Coburn commissioned ten artists, including himself, to be confined at a wellness center called Happitory (Happiness Factory) in Hongcheon, about 100 kilometers from Seoul. Happitory, founded by Kwon Yong-seok, a public prosecutor and a drama therapist, offers retreats for those who are overwhelmed by daily life and want to seek time away from work. Each ‘prisoner’ is left alone with a yoga mat, a tea set, bedding, pens, and paper.
“I was fascinated by how this single site connected so many topics, from wellness to incarceration,” Coburn said. “I was also intrigued that, though the cells have very little in them, writing materials are provided. So I imagined turning the facility into a writing residency, inviting colleagues based in Korea to produce new texts within these unique conditions.”
For this experiment in site-specific writing, the collection features essays written by Jaeyeon Chung, Tyler Coburn, Sunjin Kim, Hyunjeung Kim, Kyungmook Kim, Min Kyoung Lee, Woochang Lee, Russell Mason, InYoung Yeo, and Jiwon Yu. Each artist grapples with one or several of the following questions: How does one square the relaxation promised by Happitory with the way solitary confinement functions in actual prisons? What types of thinking and writing become possible through its restrictions—no books, no Internet, just writing materials? How might the emphasis on writing relate to texts by Oscar Wilde, Antonio Gramsci, Kim Dae-jung, Shin Young-bok, and others produced during periods of imprisonment?
Tyler Coburn’s artwork has focused on how notions of “subjectivity” and “the self” are defined and refined in scientific, legal, military, and technological contexts. “I've always been interested in the discourse of site-specificity, and I saw this project as an experiment in site-specific writing,” he said. “The contributions themselves vary in style and subject, though there's a reason I invited each contributor. I wanted to see how they would respond to a facility that's popular for restricting the use of computers and devices in one's cell. One visits Happitory for a digital detox.”
The book, co-published by Sternberg Press and Art Sonje Center, Seoul, and distributed in the United States by MIT Press, will be presented by Coburn in New York on Thursday, December 8, 2022 at Canal Projects. Although Solitary will be officially released on December 27, 2022, copies will be available for purchase during the event.
Tyler Coburn is an artist and writer based in New York. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Coburn’s writing has appeared in frieze, e-flux journal, Mousse, Art-Agenda, and Rhizome, among others. His performances, sound works, and installations have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; South London Gallery; Kunstverein Munich; CCA Glasgow; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp; CAC Vilnius; LAXART, Los Angeles; and SculptureCenter, New York. Coburn is the author of several books, including I’m that angel (2012); Robots Building Robots (2013), published by the Center for Contemporary Arts Glasgow; and Richard Roe (2019) and Solitary (2022), both published by Sternberg Press.