work...work..

Too much!

If it was possible to take a picture of all the craziness that is going on here at one time I'd do it, but there are just wayyy too many things that happens all at once that a picture could not capture. One thing is the smell from spray paint, the smell from wet wall paint, the crazy people running around and trying to help people but are instead being a bit annoying and then there are also people hurting themselves on falling art pieces... Not forgetting the friendly neighbour who wants to share his music with us. Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me" on the highest volume is not quite what I can take at the moment. Will we have an opening here tomorrow? And before that a wild night at Bar Nana? I really don't know... Maybe I'll just escape to the mountain of pillows at the Marriott and leave crazy to crazy before I'll join in the craziness...

The radio show!

Since Bjørn obviously keeps "forgetting" to post a link to the radio show that he participated in on Cheeky Monkey Radio I guess I just have to do it... HERE's the link, go listen immediately guys, to have some kind of impression about what we'll be dancing to tonight at Bar Nana!

From non-hotel to the five star Marriott

An anecdote worth mentioning apropos our never-ending story about lodging during the Seoul-stay occurred upon arrival to the Leeum Samsung Museum opening of the show “Flash Cube” the other day. The man of the hour; the artist Thomas Demand (image of him below) who participated with huge pieces in the show, came up to me and greeted me with a smile on his face and said “Hello Power, rumour has it you moved out of your lodging – it wasn’t to your pleasing I’ve heard?” to which I replied with an astonished “Oh dear, how on earth did you hear about that?” even before I could congratulate him for the show – and he stated quite calmly with a smirk on his face that “Well, the whole town hasn’t been talking about anything else you know, it has been inevitable not to hear about it…”. I guess that the “jimjilbang-trauma” of our little group has now officially entered not only the World Wide Web by the help of our blog, but also into the international art world circuit of gossips.

Now the lives of Erlend, Bjørn and myself has turned upside down as we are now lodged at the Marriott, thanx to the wonderful help of Tae Eun Choi and her friend that works on the Marriott who managed to get us a super great rate at the hotel. I’m now referred to by the desk clerk of the reception as “Mrs Hammer” (not complaining about that - "Mrs Power Hammer"is quite a good name, althoug not as good as "Mrs Power Drill" perhaps, but one cannot have everything) and I am cushioned up with far too many cushions in the largest bed ever made (actually, one would be able to build a fort with the pillows, a thought that has a certain appeal to me… maybe I’ll initiate a pillow war tonight upon the hotel return with my fellow new room-mates Mr Hammer and Mr Hansen…). I’m now quite a happy camper, albeit slightly poorer. What a difference a bed makes.

Seoul Street Art

Quick reminder: Bjørn at Bar Nana tonight

From 23.30 - 01.00 our favourite hatty trickster Bjørn will spin 60% the same records he played when he played there two weeks ago. But since only kollektorskum geeks like himself could even name like half the tracks it shouldn't be a problem and it will all feel new and fresh again. Hope to see as many 195'ers there as possible!

"Hello, this is Jan Christensen, I'm concerned about the toilet."

Just trying to catch up on bloggable tidbits that have hithereto gone unblogged.

Above, for example, is Lina’s explanation of Jan’s attempt to get the staff at the Marriot to fix an unsatisfying non-flushing situation when they were staying there last week.

Last night, unfortunately, there was no swimmingpool as the pool and fitness centre closed at 22. What kind of 5-star is this? Instead spent the night drowning in insane amounts of sheets, after a pretty good late night dinner consisting of tomato and mozarella salad and a red thai vegetable curry delivered to the room. This morning I talked Bjørn and Power out of ordering anything from the, in my opinion, overpriced Marriot breakfast.

In completely unrelated news, I've been very excited that this is finally out and doing its way around your favourite sites and networks of acquring or seeking for music illegally. It's a single by dynamic duo Jay Haze and Ricardo Villalobos and it's absolutely brilliant and easily my favourite release this year. Perhaps only equalled by Âme's "Fiori" from the Berghain/ Staatsballet thing. Up there with earlier Villalobos classics like "Morphunk" etc. Wondering whether I should go to the bootleg opening of Documenta or Ibiza.

Brief skype-chat with Leif Magne Tangen last night. He had just made a big sale at Pierogi, but was still trying to outsource his actual work there by trying to get me to underwrite his next press release for him. Jan entertained throughout the chat by amazing us all with his remarkable skype formations.

The "experimental factory/ flexible space" bit from my former post is a teaser from what should hopefully be the most thorough piece of theoretical reflection from me on this whole process, which should be written at some point soon hopefully, and which might take as its starting point a few ideas from Liam Gillick's five-day seminar at United Nations Plaza in May. It's connected to the ideal/ myth of hyperflexibility that surrounds those involved in the artworld and its relation to non-material labour and similar such fascinating ideas.

Also somewhat related to this, while enjoying a cab ride to Itaewon the other night, Bjørn and I passed what looked like the workers taking control of the means of production. There is a big construction site where people are constantly protesting against what looks like new, fancy apartment buildings in an otherwise lowbuilt and oldfashioned area. This day three people had climbed ontop of a big crane and were pumping their fists in sync with their comrades down on the ground. This made me very happy, but also ashamed to be non-flat structuring my way across town within the bourgeois comforts of the much too cheap cab.

Possibly that same day, on the way from Itaewon so that Bjørn could buy som fresh clothes, we met a very friendly cab driver who spoke very good English and told us about his son who was in the navy, showed us his saved boarding pass from a fjord-cruise he had done in New Zealand.

Right now some people are arguing outside our gallery, at the bus stop, we don't know about what, but now the cops arrived too. Jan tells us that the other day he witnessed a fight between the paint shop guy and his pizza place neighbour. Finally some action.

Also, the Hyuindai dept store in Apgujeong apparently openend a new Marc by Marc Jacobs store yesterday, so I'm off there later as I need some jeans, and maybe a jacket or something.

The Bricks Have Arrived

working!

moroccan restaurant_itaewon

edit by Erlend: To the right of Jan and Lina we see here the Iranian artist Roxana Manouchehri who is currently doing a residency at Changdong and Goyang, and Ann(e?) who works for the Melbourne Art Fair.

Two days after the pre-opening of great we can have the stinking factory maybe we can turn it into a flexible space!

So, the day we went to Hermés I wrote this long, insightful post for the blog in Word when I got back to the hotel later that night. Then, the following morning, when about to start putting it online, I failed to save the file and everything was lost. Which was kind of annoying. And ever since I have had total writer's block and the blog has seemed a very hostile environment, not least

It was mostly about the Atelier Hermés and the Korean Hermés award which is an annual thing where. It was also about how I had a nice big day of metrosexual fun. I bought a tie at Hermés, a couple of polo-shirts (not at Hermés), picked up the latest issue of GQ Magazine, drank various kinds of iced coffee and imported water, later in the evening Bjørn ate at McDonalds again (they have a quadruple burger there btw, I wonder if that's normal now, or if this is some kind of special at restaurants close to American army facilities.) The Itaewon hotel btw had some kind of special television circuit so that on CNN all the ads were more like public service announcements directed at American soldiers. Lots of info on how to know if your child is depressed, the importance of excercise and where to sit in airplanes to have better chance of surviving a crash/ bomb/ terrorist incident etc. Very funny stuff.

Okay, a couple of things I remember from my earlier, now long-deleted post:

- Seeing a girl on the street wearing baby blue Wellingtons with pink polka dots.

- Hermés ties being a good 35% more expensive here than back home. But found one that I couldn't find in Berlin, so still very much worth it.

In more recent news; westerday we went to the opening of Flash Cube, an exhibition at Samsung Leeum curated by Henk Schlager. More about this later. I had a conversation with an American artist where I mentioned my distaste for photography of architecture and suggested that it might be a good idea to put a two year ban on this kind of art. She laughed in a funny way, as did her French side-kick, whose image can be seen in a couple of places further down, from our adventures at the karaoke bar two days ago. I asked if she perhaps happened to be working primarily with photography of architecture, something which she then confirmed.

Today: Moved into the Marriott. Very nice, but not helpful to our illusion of flat structure. Also not helpful to my socialdemocratic desire to limit taxi rides and use more public transportation. Taxis here are way too cheap for somewhere that is apparently the third most polluted place on the planet. Okay, screw this. Power and I are off to the Marriot. Power is going to take a long shower. I will go for a swim in the pool. An hour and a half away from having gone my second day so far this trip without having a drink.

Yogiyooo!

Bjørn is the Scandinavian group's relational pilot when it comes to the Korean language - he is studying hard and is practising as much as possible when ever there is a moment over. There is one word however that all of the Scandinavians have picked up in Korean without any ado and it is as funny to say as "Banga Banga" (which is spelled a little different and means "Nice to have met you" if you are in the age between 5 and 10). I have no clue to how the word we all by now know is spelled, but the word sounds like "YOGIYOOO" and can be heard pretty much everywhere. It means something in the line of "Hey" and "listen up" - a call for attention really. It's rather useful in fact. "Yogioo - please hand me that pen over there, will you?".

After Dark Karaoke Male Bonding

Soo-Jung Choi knitting with pencils

Neolook photos/Quick collage

invitation card_final

after pre_opening

The day before the pre-opening!

[info] a party of desingner zinoo park

hi, there. i've got a mail from zinoo park who is a friend of mine n designer. he's having a party this friday at 20 near shinsadong at his new office. i know bjorn's gonna play that night at barnana but before then we could join his party and mingle with other designers and creators..

what do you think?

here's his HP
http://www.zinoopark.com/

i love this!

drawn by haeryon n others..

tampon_tempo_playtex?

pre-opening images

double DJ?!
jambong & haeryon(look at his T-shirts written 'a new mind')
limmy&chansik(basist)
eunji is posting a poster
from outside view
party!
jinjoo&sujung
what is that?
jangjunghee under the limmy's
let's do yeonhee-dong national gymnastic by eunji cho
it was fun!!!

Lots of photos coming soon

I have been completely offline for 3 days, just painting and working, not even checking my email, but I will be back tomorrow and I have lots of photos to upload. Check back very soon ;)

Just want to thank everybody for coming to the pre-opening party and chat last night, it was an amazing evening. We all love Seoul more and more every day!

images from pre-opening

Pre-opening

The pre-opening was directed by DJ Jan who decided to stay behind the DJ-booth all night to ensure that his disciples (the disciples are us; the Stepfordized mini-jans) were out there taking good care of the guests. Our job: first to ask people if we could offer them a drink/fill up their cup and then directly move on to ask who they were and then explain the project to them - spreading the word of the project. The visitors were many actually. A great deal of many interconnections happened and more people were added into the project. One lady, So Yeon Park who grew up in the house next to the project space showed up to the opening and it turned out that she has been living in the US for the past 8 years and moved back here on the 21st of June (the very same date we also arrived). She knows the area very well and has seen us working day and night in the space with an increasing curiosity about what the f... is going on in here and been wanting to ask but for some reason she didn't yet. She is an artist and been working as a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Kansas and now she's going to live in Seoul. She was immediately invited to our project. Today I found her in the space having lunch when I got here, so I hope that means that she'll spend more time here and with us.

Well, there were more stories like this, new people introduced, curators, students, people from the neighbourhood, artists from different residency programs around and more. Some dancing, some drinking, some serious working and some very serious networking was done. Then a drink pit-stop and later Karaoke at Prince Edwards with Ballantine's as a partner.

Pre-opening and post-karaoke