협업의 연성 조건

It has now been two years since we started running a mobile library called bookeubookeu ^①❶ Along the way, we found ourselves taking on all kinds of projects—often without much of a plan—and somehow managing to see each one through. Before we knew it, we had even registered it as a business. When we first began, with no grand mission and little prospect of making money, I never imagined it would lead to something as official as a business registration. It all started rather casually, somewhere between work and play, simply because we wanted to make something together. But after spending countless hours on work that offered little immediate reward, I sometimes found myself asking, Why are we doing this? What exactly are we working toward?

I still don't have a satisfying answer to those questions. What I do know is how rare it is to find people you can truly work with. Sharing similar tastes is one thing; finding people with whom you can continue building something over time is another. What began as a loose agreement gradually became a team, perhaps because we kept working through both small and large challenges together, slowly building trust along the way. Simply having teammates to share the work with is often enough to quiet questions like Why are we doing this? If I had to give one reason, it might be this: we wanted to publish a book with an ISBN. The three of us signed the paperwork to register the business for that purpose. Nothing really changed afterward, but that single sheet of paper somehow made it feel as though we had quietly promised to keep doing this together for a while longer.

Our mobile library, bookeubookeu, has taken the form of a series of temporary libraries in different places. Visitors bring a book and exchange it for another, one book for one book. At first, I secretly worried that people would simply bring books they wanted to get rid of. Instead, many chose books that had genuinely meant something to them. Discovering a stranger's bookshelf through those exchanged books became one of the most rewarding parts of running the library, and we hoped visitors would experience that same sense of discovery. Recommendations naturally followed—books passed from one person to another, stories shared alongside them. Not long ago, someone I met through the library insisted that Fullmetal Alchemist was a book "you can't call yourself cultured without reading." Thanks to that enthusiastic recommendation, I finally picked it up years after its release. It immediately became one of the most memorable things I had read in recent years, and I understood at once why they had recommended it so passionately.

In Fullmetal Alchemist, two brothers who lose their bodies through the forbidden practice of alchemy set out on a journey to recover what they have lost. The story is built upon the principle of the law of equivalent exchange: to gain something, something of equal value must be given in return. Yet although the brothers believe in that principle more than anyone else, they repeatedly choose to accept loss when it matters most. What the story ultimately suggests is that even a law as fundamental as equivalent exchange loses its power in the face of genuine care between people. In that sense, its logic feels surprisingly close to our own world. Our mobile library also operates on the simple rule of one book for another, but what we truly hope for may be something that cannot be measured at all: the unexpected encounters that happen along the way.

Letters of Intent is a book that quietly reveals the unique relationships that emerge in the art world, where personal affection and professional labor are often inseparable. I have encountered many projects that elevate collaboration into a kind of artistic manifesto—from the networked publications of Dada and Fluxus to Hans Ulrich Obrist's participatory publishing project Do It, which reimagined publishing not as a record of artworks but as a catalyst for new forms of practice and collaboration. Yet I had rarely encountered a work that so openly records the subtle emotions exchanged as relationships take shape, along with the still-unnamed state that exists before a relationship settles into a recognizable form.

The structure of the book is remarkably straightforward. It begins with a manual printed on the cover, followed by four Letters of Intent jointly written by the curator and the four participating artists—Iksuke, Choi Heesu, Kim Hyeyeon, and Lee Binsoyeon—for the exhibition. These are followed in turn by the emails exchanged during the invitation process, transcripts of conversations with the artists, documentation of the exhibition itself, and finally a blank letter of intent that readers are invited to complete on their own.

More than anything, what reveals the book's intentions is its decision to give written form to the expectations, commitments, and promises that are usually exchanged only verbally before a collaboration formally begins. In Letters of Intent, curator and author Lee Boreum turns her attention to the ambiguous emotions and provisional state she calls "intent"—the space that exists before a contract is signed—and to what she describes as the "collusive friendship" between curator and artist, positioned somewhere between an official document and a personal letter. To explore this idea, she adopts the format of the letter of intent, a document more commonly associated with real estate or investment, where it is used to express a willingness to proceed before a formal agreement is made. Here, the letter of intent is not a legally binding contract. Instead, it serves as a device for recording and making visible the beginning of a relationship that might otherwise dissolve as easily as spoken words. As a result, these letters contain a kind of promise rarely found in conventional contracts.

“Work only within the limits of your strength. Do not exhaust yourself completely,” “Do not rush to conclusions. Every work is a complex organism with a life of its own,” “Even when our perspectives and directions do not align, it is enough simply to remain by one another's side.”

Promises like these—less contractual obligations than shared commitments between people working together—reach beyond financial terms or formal agreements. Instead, they reveal the conditions under which relationships are sustained: how people care for one another, support one another, and continue working together.

The texts that follow are at once invitation emails and personal letters. They bring together the professional labor of proposing an exhibition as a curator, the affectionate observations that can only come from someone who has followed the work of these four artists over many years, and thoughtful interpretations of their practices. In doing so, they once again reveal the point where the personal and the professional naturally converge. Although these conversations take the relatively formal form of email, they retain the warmth of letters written in the spirit of a relationship. Near the end of each email, a brief note gently asks the artists to participate in the exhibition without compensation, apart from the minimum travel expenses. The request is understated, yet it quietly reveals that their collaboration rests not simply on contractual obligations, but on mutual trust and what Lee calls "collusive friendship."

Another compelling aspect of Letters of Intent is that it does more than explore the blurred boundary between personal and professional relationships. It also traces how ideas move across different media and material forms, continually transforming as they do. The same document takes on new roles and meanings as it passes through different spaces and relationships, almost like a living organism. A single sheet of paper chosen by the curator and artist becomes a letter of intent. The signed letter of intent becomes a poster as it enters the exhibition space. The invitation letter becomes a leaflet. In the end, all of these traces are gathered together in the form of a book. At the back of the book, readers are invited to write their own letter of intent using a blank template. It functions both as an invitation to participate and as an open gesture toward future collaborators who may one day become part of the project. Read in this light, the five instructions printed on the cover serve almost as a manifesto, anticipating not only how the book should be read, but also how it hopes to be put into practice. Even the punched holes added to its saddle-stitched binding seem designed with future additions in mind, as if new Letters of Intent could continue to be inserted and accumulated over time. In this sense, Letters of Intent is not a finished object, but an open-ended publication: a document that records relationships while simultaneously making space for new ones to emerge.

This structure becomes all the more compelling because the book is written by the curator herself. Since Lee Boreum clearly articulates the conceptual role the publication is meant to play, every formal decision seems imbued with the intention of bringing previously invisible relationships into the realm of documentation, while inviting readers to reflect on them anew.

Looking back, I realize that many of the thoughts that lingered after registering our business—and after finishing Fullmetal Alchemist—unexpectedly echo the questions raised by Letters of Intent. Collaboration outside the framework of an established institution is a space where personal fulfillment and professional, emotional, and material forms of compensation rarely exist as separate concerns. Planning and producing a project undoubtedly require professional labor, but they are equally shaped by affection for the work itself, trust between collaborators, and the ideals people hope to pursue together. As a result, there are many moments when we willingly take on work that offers neither immediate reward nor any guarantee of the future. And yet there is something that continues to make us do this together—something that cannot be explained by contracts, profit, or equivalent exchange alone. It is the trust built through time spent together in the blurred space between the personal and the professional, the shared experiences and failures that only became possible through collaboration, and the feeling that we can continue imagining new projects together. Perhaps these are the very conditions that make collaboration possible beyond the systems that seek to define it.

The formal documents we prepared for our business registration were filled with conditions and requirements, yet nowhere did they describe the conditions that truly sustain collaboration. Letters of Intent reminds us of those unwritten promises: the trust accumulated through solving problems together, the generosity to leave room for one another's imperfections, the belief that things can be worked out as long as no one is facing them alone—values that cannot be accounted for through equivalent exchange alone.

The books gathered at the CC Library deliberately avoid familiar and reliable paths. Instead, they emerge from persistent attempts to step outside convention and think through new possibilities. By their very existence, they function as works of critical design. Their makers are deeply involved not only in the content of each publication, but in every stage of its production—from the initial concept to the choice of binding—treating the act of moving beyond safe territory as a creative attitude in itself.

Perhaps that is why the books on these shelves ask to be read differently. Rather than standing neatly aligned on tightly packed bookshelves, they rest loosely across tables, each varying in subject, size, and thickness. Each offers a different way of seeing, the pleasure of unexpected ideas, and sometimes even the spark for making something new. Beginning with this essay, I hope to spend time with one remarkable book from this library each month, sharing some of the curiosity and delight they have given me.