SASG Residency Week 5
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4
Last weekend, Evelyne and I participated in temple stay at Geumsunsa temple. They offer English guide for tourists staying at the temple for a weekend. We had some meditative activities such as making prayer beads and participating in 108 prostrations. In the morning we went for hiking. The temple is located in the mountain north of the city; I thought that this is because Buddhists saw the mountain as a sacred place (such as Mount Koya in Japan), but a nun who guided us told me that temples used to be in the city but the government moved them away from the city when the temples had corruption. After all, staying at a temple on a mountain is calming and is a great experience, especially after an exhausting week of traveling and installation.
This was the first week for Evelyne and me to work together in Seoul. We have done several projects in Montreal, Canada, but is the first time participating in a long-term residency. We had a few meetings together as well as the staff of SASG for planning the open studio and opening performance in September. Also, we started prototyping, fabrication and programming. For the installation, our plan is to divide the studio into two spaces to show each artist’s ideas separately. Nevertheless, we will work together as we have different skill sets such as sound composition and interactive video.
On Wednesday, I organized a hotpot party for the SASG artists; all the international artists showed up as well as Josef, a Korean media artist. We went to local Nammun market to buy vegetables, mushrooms and sliced meat. I made Japanese style hotpot with soy sauce and mirin with katsuobushi and shiitake broth. Later, I added tteok (Korean rice cake), dumplings and instant noodles. After the dinner, we watched some videos to share popular culture and internet culture of Korea and Japan.
On Friday, SASG organized museum visits for us. We first went to Nam June Paik Art Center. The museum currently exhibits Datumsoria on the 2nd floor, which is a collaboration of Chronus Art Center, ZKM and Nam June Paik Art Center. There are pieces from Nam June Paik as well as Liu Xiaodong’s painting robot and Carsten Nicolai’s minimalist yet sophisticatedly composed audiovisual installation. After the visit, we had a Korean lunch at a restaurant nearby, and we went back to the museum to meet the director Jinsuk Suh. He shared ideas about how museums will change in the future. I am also interested as online communities having more significant presence than ever, which questions the necessity of physical institutions.
We also visited Platform L, a gallery and theater space owned by a Korean brand Louis Quatorze, and then Ian Art Consulting, who organized the museum visits for us.
The next week well be the last week of Call Stack project for web residency at Favoriten Festival so please follow us on Intagram. Also, check out Christopher Matthews’ fundraising for the upcoming projects including Lads, for which I worked on interactive sound development; I am also contributing generative video clips for the campaign.
