시각문화의 관점에서 본 한국 근대 산업유산 : 철도역 급수탑을 중심으로

Abstract

Water towers at railway stations were facilities for supplying water to steam locomotives. In Korea, most of these water towers were built together with the railways constructed during the Japanese colonial period. The present study addresses railway station water towers in Korea from the perspective of visual culture. It examines 21 water towers still in existence, and also utilizes available data on removed water towers for comparison purposes. The study first analyzes the current status, style, and iconography of water towers, and then suggests their value and latency as memory-filled places by revealing their monumentality.BR The shape of these water towers is associated with masculine iconography such as traditional monuments and factories built in the industrial age. As cultural heritage, water towers are regarded as historical monuments of Korea. More specifically, water towers are symbolic monuments of modernization as represented by mechanized civilization. They are also monuments of the colonial period that elicit the memory and history of the Japanese occupation of Korea, and antiwar monuments marked by the traces of the Korean War.BR Today, water towers sometimes become post-industrial cultural spaces, serving as places for recreation or entertainment. Sometimes they are recycled as local attractions, thus becoming another type of monument that symbolizes and promotes their localities. The people visiting such localities combine the fixed memories of the past with their present experiences to form cultural memories of this age.BR Dilapidated and having lost their function, these water towers give testimony to extinction, loss, and absence. In this respect, they are also anti-monuments signifying negativity. However, if falling into ruin is regarded not as the final stage of things, but as a stage in their de-functionalization, then the water towers acquire significance as places filled with latent memories. By activating these latent memories through constant encounter with the water towers, traumas can be exposed and healed. In addition, artistic imagination or personal approaches can be elicited so as to salvage memories from distortion and repression and store new memories. Such practices will accord a meaningful part to water towers that no longer have a “part” in our society.