the 2nd Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course Day4

SEOUL, the capital city of Korea. We were excited about this field trip after three days of Gwangju life. Well, I was in Seoul just last a month and a half, but it still tells me a lot of stories whenever I visit this lovely city.
     We got to Nam June Paik Art Center first on the way to Seoul. Thinking about Nam June Paik these days inspires me more and more to play my piano again. Also, I think about a lot of 'if' even though we say there is no 'if' in the history, I keep asking myself, what if NJ Paik didn't meet John Cage? What if NJ Paik didn't study music? What if.....

     Tobias Berger, the curator at NJ Paik Art Center made a nice tour for us. He explained several important things which I recall from my class of professor Kang at K-Arts.

     Since I became intersted in performing myself with cooking, playing piano, and sewing, this fluxus performance seemed quie different from my previous view towards it. I thought about Eun mi Ahn's performance, which was fantastic. A lot of NJ Paik's performance goes to very Korean traditional ideas or concept. Just like this photo, it goes back to the idea of calligraphy, however, it was connected with a new idea in many ways, in this case it was brushed by his hair.

     Then, we went to Leeum. Having done a lot of research on Leeum before because of my school homework, I felt like coming back home again when I visit here. The problem I had with Leeum was that I wanted to see something new. Luckily, they started focusing on 'contemporary contemporary art' now. A German artist, Dirk Fleishmann already told me about this exhibition, so it was nice to see some works in advance, yet I couldn't see all of these new works though.

     Rayoung Hong from Leeum had a brief explanation about the museum and answered several questions from us. She hosted us kindly with some tea time before we started exploring the museum.

     Last spot for us was the studio of Lee Bul's. And this was quite a bit of story. After the bus made two loops to find this studio, the driver gave up to go up this crazy narrow and steep hill. Therefore, we just walked. (I always think our legs are the best transportation in the world.)

     Lee Bul welcomed us even though we were super late. She was so nice that she explained about her works friendly to us and answered several questions from us. We also donated nice wine as well, which we enjoyed very much in the rain after walking around to find this studio.

 

     Her recent work was Laputa, the castle in the sky(Japanese animation film) to me. I have big emotional connection on this island looking castle floating in the sky, yet her work was amazing with little details of the material she uses.

     We had such a long day starting at 7am in Gwangju and finishing up at 12am in Hongdae with pouring down rain, without knowing how tired we will be the next day.