마을벽화로 본 지역문화정책 비판적 고찰

Abstract

This study aims to critically consider the local cultural policies of the government and local governments by village mural. Village murals, which began to be painted in the late 1990s, have been a nationwide cultural phenomenon for decades. In particular, it was consistently used as an important element of various local cultural policies implemented by the government and local governments. The government and local governments have been working on the project for two purposes: ‘improving the residential environment’ and ‘activating tourism’ but it has largely focused on ‘activating tourism’. This study grasped the concrete status of major village murals across the country through field surveys, one of the case study methods. Also, through the analysis of official documents, the government and local governments operating in the village mural project were analyzed for the policy basis and administrative management plan. As a result of on-site surveys, most of the village murals across the country had problems such as uniform subject matter, low level representation, and poor follow-up management. This is partly based on the experiences and abilities of organizations and artists who participated in the village mural project, but fundamentally, it is due to the projects of the government and local governments that focused on short-term visual tourism rather than long-term improvement of the residential environment. It was confirmed that the projects of the government and local governments were carried out through vertical integration and that there were problems in the actual work, such as requiring specific topics, subject matter, designs and colors. As a result, the village murals ‘objectify’ the residents and ‘romanticized’ the place, resulting in a unified visual representation. Therefore, this study suggests that the administration and accounting should be strictly managed, but in actual work, the vertical integration structure should be eased by simplifying various documents and procedures, as well as rich cultural understanding of the target place, selection of various topics, and original subject matter and expressions.