Even after three, four days after leaving
One of his points in his most recent blogpost is “The art product as excuse for setting up social relationships”. What a great deal many art councils and supporting foundations of arts has already grasped is that social relationships within the arts is the ground foundation towards a healthy, generous and flexible art world, and opening up the national borders for social relationships and exchanges with residencies and travel grants for artists and curators across borders encourages and generates new cross fertilizations. What art councils and foundations still not yet have grasped in its total is that this does not always come with a product of art that one is able to see or touch. Many national governments still finds the fact hard to comprehend that if you hand out cash to artists and curators that enable them to travel, drink, have fun and to engage in different relational situations, it actually increases the gross national product at the end of the day in a fruitful relationship as weird as it may seem. Culture hardly ever comes on the top priorities of governments unless it is about a “cultural revolution” or something (again with those communistic references…). Foundations are always looking into ready products and measurable results in a close knitted relationship; value for money.
Thankfully though (as strange as it seems to be writing this after complaining about bumps in my back from various hard floors) there are not so many founders to this project – which gave us the luxurious freedom to experiment. This is most likely the most intriguing result of our work shop and it needs to be emphasized. Had we had more obligations towards expecting foundations about measurable results there would have been less result when it comes to hard core experimentation and an increased process base. We would have been worried about the documentation images, how the texts were formulated and would not have been able to as freely engage and develop the project – which in one way was all about confusion or with uncertainty as well as a leveling of positions, art works and artists. A confusion about authorship, but also a generousity to pick up a thread in someone's piece and turn it into something else - in a joint collaboration. Who had done what in the end became both uninteresting and blurred.
The state of uncertainty and total confusion that in a sort of way we experienced can be transformed into a thought about “creative chaos”. I’m not yet altogether sure what went on for three weeks in
It is emblematic that we have not really written on the blog about the art pieces in the show - it has been a bit problematic since we have avoided to have singular art pieces in the show that could be mistaken for "masterpieces". I'll make use of an example that maybe will clearify a bit. While writing on this blog in Yeonhee-Dong 195 I also had my Skype-account up and my artist friend back in Stockholm, Allen Grubesic asked me how things went in Seoul. While explaining that we were constantly adding artists from Korea to the workshop I said it was an open call for anyone interested to participate and that the concept was about interference in other's work. Allen picked up on this and wanted to throw in something that might be picked up by someone. He sent a quickly made design with two golfers in the foreground about to scream fore, and a little man in the back ground who was either about to be hit by a ball or to be hit by the golf clubs. The style reminded me about the poster for antoher project that had come up the very same day for the video project by Eunji Cho. This project is about the so called "national gymnastic song" that all the Korean people are well acquainted with since all the school kids started the day by doing gymnastics to this very tune. Bjørn Kowalski Hansen made the lay-out for a poster and the musician Kyunghyun Min made a remake of the song that was played during the pre-opening and filmed by Eunji and for the opening the video was runned on a monitor. Visitors who didn't participate in the pre-opening were a bit confused since they wondered if the shot were taken during the opening or not, but it couldn't have since the wall behind the "gymnasts" were completely changed...
I printed Allen's contribution in blackanwhite and hung it temporarily next to the poster. Jooyoung asked about the new contribution and she picked up on it - she asked me out of the blue how the heck Allen could know so much about the Korean society - she obviously read more into the image than I could even begin to comprehend. I knew from Allen that Koreans are madly in love with golfing (which was why he decided to make this design), and I suspected that it was a sport done by the "upper class" much like in Europe but had no idea about Allen's deeper connections and told her that I knew nothing. Jooyoung triggered loads of thoughts - to a Korean film (that I forgot the name of, help me Jooyoung?) and she wanted to add a word that seems to be in a way knit to the National gymnastic song in a way, at least conceptually, namely the word 입신양명
There is a radical force in the fact that even though every one was confused within the experiment, that no one really knew what the heck was happening and what would be the result of it but even so continued to work side by side without complains but instead cheerful enthusiasm. There are only two reasons for continuation when something like that happens: love or/and a curiosity and awareness for the fundamental interest the project in itself has the potentiality of producing in the end. I believe both reasons were manifest in this project with a double grip. Together we succeeded in creating an environment of love, respect, equality and creativeness within a bubble of our own. I.e.: without obligations towards an art product or a result able to be measured or weighed. (and NO, I did not just now have a spliff or anything, I really mean this!)
It would be truly intriguing to take this creative chaos to the next level in yet another step of the research project about how this work in progress is managed. To be able to make an exchange in yet another level, to host a continued workshop in Norway/Sweden/Germany with the same Korean group and with the same intentions as to interfere with each other, obtaining a “flat powerless structure” whatever that means and increase creative, artistic chaos into yet another tweaked situation for a deepened “result” for whatever that means. The outcome of the Seoul workshop are deep friendships, sense of belonging with each other, and a very long line of both missed and established and yet to come opportunities of interest, faith and future engagements – and not least importantly a taste of something completely different and quite new. I’d like to propose to warp it yet another round with 1000 ideas and 100.000 combinations if it would be possible. Not saying this would be resulting in something measurable at all – I doubt it – so the possibilities of getting funding for a project like this would be rather slim, unless there are some official out there with an exceptional open mind and true passion for art. Not sure my body, mind, soul and heart can take yet another round of confusion though, being the total control-freak I am. But I’m nore than willing to give it a shot because of the double grip of a love/passion and awareness about the serious state of exceptional experimentation that surprisingly enough (to a sceptic like myself) opened up before my eyes like a utopian abyss - unexplored and extremely fascinating.
Around 5pm today at the space i was about to wrapping things up. some of works are already taken down by itself e.g Eunji's poster!!. Junho taken his drawing and wood works down. thanks god that we got nothing stolen from the 26 x catalogues of Seoul City Museum's loan. As they are need to be returned to them by next week. otherwise i will not have my passport back.
Having a last meeting at the space with Jinyoung Jung. 
Having a last Korean supper and meeting about the publication. Power came up with a great idea of making a large poster. brillant!!
Here is a couple of Hakki's sisters which i found on the table. where is Hakki's brother?!
Yesterday Jinjoo came to the gallery to check her radio station before she set off to Japan. and her friend came to see the show.
Pretty quiet table!!
Soyeon and i had lunch the other day. she is so excited writing about our project. look fwd to reading it!!
Thank you Jan!
Thank you Jooyoung!
Thank you all participants!!
Thank you all for your warm generosity!
Thank you
First some general remarks about our life in
Food seems to be an issue for veggie foreigners like me. For those of you who has followed the blog here knows that my fellow bloggers has been mobbing me about my eating habits. Yes, I’ve hailed the nutritious Pringles from time to time, not out of a completely convinced mind but out of necessity. See – its not easy to order if you don’t speak Korean, and even if you speak Korean there are not many dishes on the menu that actually are pork-, chicken- or fish-less. And then there is kim chi. For those of you who still don’t know what kim chi is: find out. For those of you who don’t like kim chi: it takes time for some, but eventually you’ll be convinced about its greatness. It grows on you. And yes – you start to smell like kim chi after eating it.
Hierarchies have been a topic on our minds as you by now know. Being the oldest of the Scandinavian group as well as the only lady and additionally with some inherent diva princess attitude I have obviously stirred up some strong feelings in the Korean group about me taking care of the guy’s (my babies’) laundry. I’ve heard from several Korean participants in the workshop about how unheard of this is. I am fighting to make completely sense of it, but from what I understand, this is something very Scandinavian of me. This in turn makes me think about the quote “How very Scandinavian of me to think that I could organize freedom”. But to be honest – Jan, Bjørn and Erlend in particular were quite reluctant to leave their laundry to me. Why? Because of social hierarchies? Not sure. I’ve no problems with doing laundry, mine or others, if it is needed – why should I? Because I’m female and should be worried the other’s might place me in a “woman’s trap”? Bogus, I drink them all under the table anytime and have bigger balls than most of them anyway. Even if I happen to be the “big mama” – or “Mrs Hammer” with “Baby Bjørn” as our rampant little kid.
Jan’s lecture at Art Sonje for the personnel of the exhibition space where he’ll have an exhibition later this year about his art. Erlend and I had the pleasure to be around for it. Once again Erlend and I could conclude that the Korean art scene is completely gender fixed to be all about women. There are just no men in the art world at all – at least not that we have encountered. This is of course something about hierarchies too that needs to be figured out...
The Etiquette Belle installed in different bathrooms (at least for women). The bizarreness of the Etiquette Belle for me can best be announced in a Norwegian word best not translated: “prompe-skjuler”. What happens when you push the button is that you’ll hear a strong sound of a toilet flushing for approx three minutes. It is supposed to make the toilet a nicer environment.
"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.
