Launching a global art project in the middle of promoting an album might not be what you’d expect from a boy band – but, if you’ve been paying attention, it’s not all that surprising from South Korean superstars BTS.
Since the early days of The Beatles, boy bands and their fans have been treated by wider society with a kind of bemused astonishment at best, but more often with a sense of sneering derision. At least until, like The Beatles, they’re discovered and adopted by the mainstream (read: men) and therefore seen as Legitimate and Serious Artists.
There’s an undercurrent of misogyny in the language people use to talk about the passionate, mostly female, mostly young fanbases of boy bands: ‘crazy’, ‘rabid’, ‘hysterical’. The lack of respect for these fans often transmits to the artists themselves. For BTS, they have the added barrier of xenophobia to contend with.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, BTS is comprised of rappers RM, Suga and J-Hope and vocalists Jin, Jimin, V and Jungkook, and they’re the biggest pop band in the world right now.
In 2019, they sold out Wembley stadium as part of their world tour, and they became the first band since the Beatles to have three number one albums on the Billboard 200 chart in less than a year. In 2020, after being available for less than a week, their upcoming album Map of the Soul: 7 has chalked up a record 3.42million in stock preorders.
Yet outside of their (admittedly tens of millions-strong) fandom, known as ARMY, the band is frequently treated as a novelty – if they’re given attention at all. When they announced their ambitious global art project, Connect BTS, this week, reactions were mixed. While many were positive, there was also a sense of surprise and condescension running through a lot of the reporting.
The BBC described the art project as ‘balloons and scribbles’, which is a strange way to refer to a massive solar-powered balloon that is travelling from London to Seoul, and a new sculpture by renowned artist Antony Gormley. Meanwhile, contemporary art guide Art Rabbit tweeted that they ‘never thought we’d mention [BTS and artists] in the same sentence’.
For Connect BTS, the pop group have teamed up with curators around the world who ‘resonated with BTS’ philosophy’ to showcase works in various genres from 22 artists – including Gormley, as well as Jakob Kudsk Steensen and Ann Veronica Janssens – across five cities.
Although the connection between such artists and BTS might not seem immediately apparent to outsiders, BTS fans aren’t surprised: the project aligns well with the band’s tendency for intellectual and philosophical curiosity.
On a personal level, through social media, interviews and livestreams, the members – particularly RM and V – have long expressed their passion for art. Their work, meanwhile, is full of allusions to art, literature, psychology, mythology and more.
For example, their most recent music video, for Suga’s solo Interlude: Shadow, features visual homages to artists Anish Kapoor and Jean-Michel Basquait. The song itself, about the complicated and sometimes dark feelings associated with fame, embraces legendary psychologist Carl Jung’s concept of the ‘shadow’.
It follows on from the Jungian themes in the band’s 2019 album Map of the Soul: Persona, particularly RM’s solo Intro: Persona.
On the same album, the song Dionysus – which on the surface, sounds like a party anthem – uses Greek mythology to explore artistic passion. BTS fans are quick to point out that it’s no coincidence that Dionysus’ primary followers were the maenads: young women who were portrayed as raving mad.
In this way, BTS consistently uses such concepts to not only express themselves, but also show their love and appreciation for their fans.
In a joint statement about CONNECT, BTS, they revealed how the project is meaningful to them not just because it represents diversity and positivity, but also because with it they ‘hope to return the great amount of love and support from our fans, ARMY, and all audiences’.
BTS don’t present their messages in a patronising way or dictate how fans should think or feel about any particular work. Instead, they create innovative and complex projects that allow followers to interpret and analyse and explore for themselves.
While others turn their noses up at both them and their fanbase, BTS continue to create interactive, complex projects with depth, proving that not only are they serious artists but they’re also a group that takes their fans seriously, too.
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