Blogging again

Finally: super special fun-time blogging from the roof!

Where have the last days gone? Everything feels like total crazy town, my speaking and writing skills feel ruined in some way, and Bjørn, Power, Jan and I are now all staying in the same room at the Marriot and we're flying home tomorrow. The opening on Saturday was, I think, a great success, with many of our new friends, and also a few strangers that we had not met before, coming along for the party.

Earlier in the day we did an interesting interview with Benjamin Kaplan of the Native Gaze web-site, an interview which will be very cool to read as it seemed to really follow a path that was unstructured and adventurous in much the same way as the rest of our project. I'd link to his web site, but linking on Blogger is really annoying and I can never remember the code and I'd have to cut and paste and what not. And besides I saw that Power just linked to it below, on her post, so check it out from there.

During the opening I also stood outside talking to Lina Kunimoto we noticed how, from the outside of the gallery, the show kind of looked like a Jan Christensen exihibition.

Also, during the opening, met an interesting Danish fellow who was vice president of some kind of division of some kind of company here and who wanted to buy Soo-Jung Choi’s painting because, as he said, it perfectly matched his brand new [Danish design brand here] couch. What the hell? Here I am thinking we’re doing process-based relational aesthetics, and this guy is matching our art with his furniture. That was very nice.

It's really windy up here on the roof right now. Yesterday, Power mentioned that there is a really big tropical storm on the way over from China, hopefully it won't interfer with our leaving tomorrow. Currently cyclone strenght.

Other stuff that has happened. Before Bjørn's second gig at Bar Nana last Friday (which was unfortunately cut short as a result of technical difficulties) I was finally able to go for a swim in the hotel pool, which was very nice as the diet we've been keeping here really hasn't been doing any of us any favours. Except maybe Power who seems perfectly capable of staying fit while enjoying Pringles as her main dietary component. In my case, I really need to get home to get back into some kind of running routine, and I need spelt walnutbread from Vårt daglige brød. And I need soy milk. No more fried stuff.

Yesterday I bought a bottle of Barbera d’Alba by Bruno Giacosa (my favourite everyday wine Slightly overpriced at 39 000 wons, but still worth it, and it was the 2003 which I’m not sure I’ve had before. Beautifully and one of the few reds I can imagine drinking without food) which Power, Bjørn and I enjoyed in our room before going out to dinner in Kangnam, the area that Jan has been raving about as having Blade Runner-like architecture (true) and restaurants over three floors in every building (also true). We did, however, again get somewhat burned by the fact that Koreans, for some strange reason, eat dinner very early. So when we showed up at about 23.00 most places were closed or closing. Ate some pretty average Korean stuff, and then went to an "Irish pub" called Sapporo Lion. Very uninteresting place, so we left quickly. Then went to another place, which was better, perhaps only because it served Power the whiskey she wanted and the rest of pitchers of Miller.

Other stuff:

Power loves Richard Quest, the travel correspondent for CNN. Power also likes the bad guy in the Mummy, and this Iraqi correspondent (also at CNN) who really looks like Suge Knight.

What are the socio-economic consequences (benefits/ drawbacks) of hotels providing wine openers on request instead instead of including one in every room?

A while ago, during dinner at the lovely restaurant Marrakech Nights in Itaewon, Jan introduced me to someone as very creative for a non-artistic person, to which I replied that Jan was very artistic for a non-creative person.

Frustrations at finding stuff from labels such as Alexander McQueen or Martin Margiela only to remember, time and again, that this stuff is a good 30% more expensive here than back in Europe. Then again, the stuff here can’t be found in Oslo.

In my draft that was deleted last week I also wrote a long bit on the, for me, newly discovered fact that writers for international art magazines really do not make any money. You always hear this, but I always thought that it meant that writers were poorly paid compared to everyone else. In terms of the only experience I’ve had myself, however, it’s kind of true. Except I was told that I would be getting an actually pretty decent fee which then, for the following 7 months and counting, for some reason just hasn’t shown up in my bank account. But 50 bucks for a review in Art Forum? What do they spend all their ad money on?

Highlights from AFN – Armed Forces Network
- Where to sit on planes that make it more likely to surive
- The importance, and easiness, of exercise
- How to get to Incheon airport using the special army
- Personal ads to learn playing bass guitar
- Ads for mudfest trips

Farewell gathering tonight

Hello everyone, thanks for a great opening the other night. Please let's try to meet out somewhere tonight, as Bjørn, Jan, Power and I are going back to Europe tomorrow. We are going out for dinner and drinks in Hongdae, around 7 or 8. Not completely decided on the details yet, so just call one our phones to found out more.

Posting this from Tae Eun's lovely chair while the sounds of our pre-opening are playing from the little blue and orange room. Bjørn, Power and Jan are busy doing various kinds of blog or publication-work, which I should be doing too. So there will be more stuff on the blog in a few hours, and it's going to be good to read all your wrap-up thoughts there as well. In the meantime, be well everyone and hope to see as many as possible tonight.

klmz,
Erlend

Post Opening Trauma

Well well well... I've been away from the blog and from the project space as well as Internet as a whole for a couple of days - since the opening in fact. Now I'm back and it is definitely time for a recap of what has happened and what has not. I do have a problem though, earlier dubbed as the "Groundhog-day-problem": all the days look the same in a way and still - sooo many things happen all at once and I even have troubles remembering even the funniest things. We have talked about this syndrome within the group and we all pretty much feel the same. A typical conversation could be:

"Do you remember that person we met at that place that we went, you know, on Tuesday or Wednesday or something?"

"What? Do you actually mean that you can discern Tuesday from Wednesday? And if so, you mean that you actually remember what went on on either of the days?"

"Oh, no not really..."

But first things first.

Opening.

A late night before (Kowalski spinning at Bar Nana and some Itaewan clubbing afterwards) made for a late morning for Erlend, Bjørn and myself, but we arrived in time to be interviewed by Benjamin Kaplan for his webpage THE NATIVE GAZE (not up just yet), install speakers and sound system and to tidy up the space just a tad. Even before the opening visitors turned up to the projectspace 195. The kitchen on our second floor with "Mama" in charge (we love her unanimously by the way) had prepared some delicious food for the guests and we had some free beer too. Jan was in charge of the DJ set downstairs and he was a happy teacher to anyone interested in knowing how it works to mix some music. I was running around trying to ensure that everyone had a good time and that everything was running smoothly. At one point there were more than 80 people in the space simultaneously. Most of us were on the top floor drinking beer and mingling about. Erlend introduced me to curator Henk Slager (image below somewhere from our chat) and at one point my good friend Alain Siebert with his good friend that I will name "Peter the Dane" showed up and I kind of spent the rest of the evening around these two guys. At one point we moved on to our hostess bar in Hong-dae where we had some more drinks together with the four cats and made more serious conversations about art.

The anecdotes of the evening are way too many to start gossiping about, additionally I don't even remember many of them. I hope and trust that Erlend will give his version that will in turn help me remember the things I should write down and I will: later. As for now I'll post some images from the opening.