Seoul

 

Mackerel Safranski

Mackerel is my neighbour. Here at the studios I have studio No. 15 and Mackerel has studio No. 16, thus the neighbourlyness. She is something of a unique person within Korean art, as being completely self taught she has gone against the grain of all traditions in education and has achieved some substantial results, indicating that even within what appears a traditional conservatism one can present an alternative and make of it a healthy-alternative by way of example. Being also completely self-taught, Mackerel and I have a lot in common when discussing the sometimes perilous pathes towards our respective fulfillment. And Yes, her name is distinctly un-Korean. Though this comes via what I found out to be a quite common practice amongst people here. A fortune-teller will be consulted and an alternative will be presented that accordingly contains some portent with relevance of the the future one wishes for themselves.

On thursday Mackerel opened a Solo exhibition at a nice dealer gallery in an are called Insadong. I met the gallerist and his wife, they seemed genuinely nice, honest people and will probably meet with them again later in the month. Her work is of a very personal nature, reminding me of things my friend James Robinson was processing (and still does) in the early OOs. Though colourful and imbued with a vivacity that is immediately attractive, once you get close to these paintings you notice that they are populated by ubiquitous men in blue suits, distinctly ‘erect’ monkeys, severed dogs heads, a gloriously profane panoply of illustrative sex, forlorn knitting women, doe giving birth and woefully naked young girls. All set within decomposing environs where the demarcation between nature and architecture is fluid and transgressive.  

Mackerel and me

I was invited out for dinner with some of the other artists from the studio and we went to a restaurant close by. This is a good example of the eating style I’ve been enjoying while here, well amongst all the meat I do find time to always enjoy my meals. There is something quite appealing in having  food everywhere, covering every avaliable space on the tables.

eating out

The gallerists, Mackeral and her entourage of friends and associates joined us later and began my long and fruitless introductions. I’m just terrible with peoples names. Except for the gallerist who’s name is Culture Yoo, as I was given her business card, and another artist, Seo Goun, who pinched my camera later and took this photograph (and also gave me her business card, thus the remebering).

Seo and me

 After dinner we moved on to my favourite place Hongdae, to a small cuban bar where everyone seemed to know everyones name – in a “Cheers” kind of way. So, sans names, there was a woman who works as a film producer (and spoke exceptionally good english), a guy who lectures in textile design, Mackerals ex-husband – who plays a lot of soccer and lives a quite unorthodox lifestyle that includes a tent, very little money and a priceless charisma – a film-maker with a penchant for i-phone applications, a lacanian post-structuralist academic, a ceramicist/glass artist who later fell off her bike and grazed her face, the bar-woman with a dead-pan wit to envy Rhea Perlman (as it seemed everyone decided to speak english for my benefit this night), a queer with very good taste in earrings, a very, very nice cake, more food (including fish and chips, again for my benefit – as this is obviously a very well known NZ delicacy), and more alcohol. Maybe I should just learn to remember peoples names, it might help with my networking.

Eventually Rhea Perlman suggested we take our good-selves elsewhere as she needed to clean our corner of the Kindergarten. We wobbled through the streets of Hongdae to a restaurant with the name Pig Skin, with grafitti covered walls, briquette barbeques (for the frying of pig skin) and what I consider the most attractive toilet I have seen since being in Seoul – it’s not that I tend to take a lot of documentation of toilets, I just happened to be quite enamoured of the grafitti.

toilet

I returned to the Pig Skin (it’s probably worth mentioning that the businesses toilet is seldom within the business, and sometimes may just be in a completely different building) with my photo and asked for the translation. I rapidly noted down in my notebook Democratic Conviction, Slave Labour, Totalitarianism, Individualism and Agitation as the words quickly entered and exited my brain, as at this time of the morning words sometimes take on the habits of names.

Textile lecturer and Film-maker

bike girl

(I’ll draw your attention to the large slab of pig skin frying on the barbeque.)

I’d like to mention something of the nature of grafitti as I have observed it here in Seoul, well mostly Hongdae. In Christchurch, since the unfortunate vacancy of one IGS, grafitti has had the default position of kids just writing their names everywhere. Though I’m very unlikely to stab someone in heart due to this, it does get kind of repetitve and boring. There is this obvious tagging around Hongdae, naturally, though there is also a wealth of very good political wit, Banksy style steciling and indy-propoganda. Like the example in the toilet above I found some more in the crisp light of dawn.

stencil

indy

 Thanks Mackerel.

Now if you’ll follow me across to the studio…

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Facebook

Before I got this new laptop I was posting (and sometimes still do) small vingettes of things interesting, absurd, outlandish, stultifying, vague and often just random. This is a selection of  a few, chronologically backwards.

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Soul Bunker

 

According to some people I’ve been talking with, Hongdae has changed significantly over the last ten years. It was once a place for students to find cheap apartments, or over summer just live in the parks, sleeping rough. It was a place where students, artists, musicians, radicals, activists, those more interesting and daring members of society felt safe to congregate and discuss and play.

Gentrification has not been kind to Hongdae, what with Starbucks, Coffeehouse, Dunkin’ Doughnuts and McDonalds, the corporate creep has obviously stripped it of some vitality.

Soul Bunker is a Bar I found on one of the more sought after proprietorial streets in Hongdae. Mackerel (my artist neighbour here at the studios) tells me it’s quite famous, though I didn’t know this when I happened across it, I was simply attracted by the sign and that it was a basement Bar.

I’ve made this something of a ‘local’ for myself, well – as much as one can consider a journey of 70-80 minutes local. Anytime I come to Hongdae (art supplies, books, walking etc) I make sure I drop into the Bunker and catch up with Mr. Jack Lee.

Mr. Jack Lee

Jack has an incredible collection of music (LPs and CDs) and an even more impressive knowledge that spans genre and time. I sometimes enjoy going in on a Wednesday evening, knowing that it will be quiet, unlike the weekend, and Jack and I sit drinking beer and playing music. I’ll find a track and then he will hunt out an obscure cover of the same song. Though I did manage to get one over him when I asked for Skip Spence, and it has been my great pleasure to ensure that his collection now has “Oar” amongst it. I think next week I’m going to try out the early, little known Mayo Thompson album, Corky’s Debt To His Father.

Last night I went down to the Bunker after fruitlessly searching (again!) for an art supply store called Homi, which is somewhere in Hongdae – I’ve been looking for this place now for about three weeks. I sit down and Jack asks what’s going on and I tell him of my struggle trying to find Homi. He’s never heard of this place but get’s his phone, rings a friend who has and gets some directions. I’m thinking this is very generous and expect to have the directions written on a piece of paper for future reference.

But no! Jack says, come on, Scott, I’ll take you there, it’s not far.

We walk out, leaving the Bar empty and unlocked, I ask, Jack, who’s looking after the Bar?

I am.

But jack, you’re here, and there’s no one at the bar – what if a customer comes in?

Don’t worry Scott, I’m the boss.

Ok, Jack.

We spend fifteen minutes wandering around Hongdae, with Jack on the phone to his friend who’s giving him directions as we walk, find the building with Homi in it and spend another ten minutes trying to find the entrance to Homi, only to arrive too late, it’s closed.

Ha! We get back to the Bunker after about half-an-hour, it’s still open, a couple of customers are there and seem to know what they are doing, as does Jack. I get a beer and settle in, listening to The Jam.

One last thing. I’d like to draw your attention to the lower left of the photo of Jack Lee, notice the amplifier: classic McIntosh MC7200 – solid state, beautiful! You could buy a small farm in Southland for the price of one of these.

Some records

Directions

If ever you are in Seoul, use these directions and go to the Bunker. Down there the world is a better place.

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Travel etc

It’s been a very busy week for me, with little time to really give over to writing and loading photos. There has of course been the daily application to work in the studio, as well:

I went to the residence of the New Zealand Ambassador, Mr Richard and Mrs Michelle Mann, to join them and many other NZers to recognize the role NZ troops played during the Korean war.

There where quite a few old soldiers there, with their families. I think the Korean and NZ governments assist in the financial side a bit for these veterans, to show there mutual respects.

It was nice to finally meet the ambassador, and also quite a few NZers who either live or have lived in Korea at some time. Names often escape me though for some reason I always remember a persons activity. So – I met the Manager of Hilton Hotels for the Asia area, a guy who was the Dean of the Catholic Cathedral in Seoul, representatives for the armed forces (who incidentally help the UN in ensuring that the South Korean Army keeps to the terms of the truce signed in 1953), the current Dean of the Catholic Cathedral in Seoul, Mike McRoberts (whose name is hard to forget – thanks television), various other members of the NZ Diplomatic Corps, the representative for trade and commerce, and of course Mrs Lee, a very elegant, gracious middle-aged woman who a later found out is the wealthiest person in Korea (and single, according to the Dean). I had a great time there, was a little out of my comfort-zone as those who know me will understand, and intend to return to any function or ceremony they have while I’m here.

Thanks New Zealand taxpayer.

Tuesday, everyone in the studio got together in the evening for a large meal and a large quantity of Soju – to farewell Pedro, who’s retuned to Portugal now.

It was a great evening which degenerated into an even better evening which metamorphosed into a raucous morning.

Pedro is great, and all the Korean artists here expressed some sadness with his leaving. I really like him, he has a very European approach to art-making that I found quite satisfying, and it was nice to have someone with who to speak English at times.

http://pedro-lagoa.blogspot.com/

And thanks Pedro for the great table!

Tanks Pedro!

Of course with all that happens when one has only a few short months to do everything, timing is never good.

Having not slept at all I’m in the kitchen at 5:30am eating breakfast and drinking six cups of strong black coffee to steel myself for the trip to Cheomseongdae Observatory, a six hour journey by car to the Historical Area in Eastern Gyongju.

When I first arrived here, Rho Unyoung asked if there was anything in particular I wished to do while I’m staying. Of course I wanted to visit the Observatory, so Unyoung organized a car for us and I couldn’t let a little thing like all night drinking and no sleep keep me from this.

  Unyoung arrives at 6am with the car and driver and understands that I’ve not slept, knowing that Pedro was feted the night before, and working as the co-ordinator for the studios also knows just what us artists are like. Though I feel I’m surprisingly lucid considering.

What I didn’t know was just Unyoung Had organized.

On the way to Cheomseongdae, we stopped of at POSCO steel works in Pohang City. Quite unexpected really, as I asked Unyoung – ah, just how cultural can a Steel works be?

Well, it happens to be the bedrock of Koreas financial success over the last forty years. So we get there and have the whole official tour, which begins by getting comfortable in the Corporate Boardroom to watch a very rhetorical PR film about POSCO – to illustrate, it opens with a still photo of a very happy family wandering down a lovely countryside railway track, with the sound of strings to accompany a voice over that claimed “Nature loves steel as much as we do”! Ha! Can you imagine what that did to penetrate my social conscience, it almost woke me up.

Corporate photo

After the Corporate guff, we got to the interesting thing, actually visiting the factory sites.

This was just great. The best installation/performance art and sculpture I have ever seen. I told my conscience, “just shut-up for once, I’m really enjoying this.” Huge steel billets come out of ovens that bakes the billet to 1300 degrees Celsius, and are run through a series of rollers and presses that stretch and flatten a billet that was once about 1mx30cmx20cm into a twenty meter long length of 10cm thick steel, and all the while the steel is white hot, and water is being sprayed over it continuously to try and cool it down and there is steam everywhere and I half expect Arnold Schwarzenegger to come walking around the corner looking for me, or Dante. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take any photos – damn!

After lunch we arrived at the Cheomseongdae Observatory. Beautiful!!!!

Absolutely Beautiful. I won’t try and describe as I have some photos of this.

Cheomseongdae

Cheomseongdae

I’m just so glad I went to visit this place.

From Cheomseongdae we traveled to Bulguska, an important temple of Silla Buddhism built between 751-774, during the Unified Silla Period. Unfortunately during the two periods of Japanese occupation the temple was razed to the ground. It was rebuilt, 1969-73, and now enjoys the designation as an UNESCO World Heritage site.

Here I took some great photos of reflective pools and ponds which will help me with some projects later on. As anyone knows who has taken tours of significant cultural treasure with a host-guide, it’s always difficult to retain all the information, so I’ll let the photos speak.

Bulguksa

Bulguksa

Bulguksa

Bulguksa

The last stop was Seokguram Grotto. High on the side of a hill (which Koreans call a mountain, but I’m calling a hill because I know what a mountain looks like), this grotto holds one of the most beautiful stone sculptures of Buddha on the planet. Along with a series of Bas-relief frieze’s around the walls of the grotto the sculpture was carved out of the side of the hill. It is exquisite in it’s smooth finish and proportions and scale. Even though it can now only be viewed behind thick bullet-proof glass. Again no photos but there is one of the building that was built in front of the grotto entrance, oh, and some photos of the view from the grotto across the surrounding countryside to support my claim that it wasn’t a mountain.

Seokguram Grotto

Mountain?

 

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Kongrish

I didn’t really think I was going to mention anything about this very fascinating aspect of the collision between English and it’s Korean speakers. It’s pervasive and everywhere, advertising, media, commerce, etc, etc. I’ve seen many humorous instances – a store selling fresh fruit named, People Making Toast; a paper recycling sticker stating, hate trees for a better future. But today I was at the local dairy, a place I go to for cigarettes and milk, and the exchange really prompted me to say something about Kongrish. The man who owns and runs the store is very nice and polite and to date I’ve gotten by with my pidgeon-Hangul, simple statements – hello, thank you.  I crab some instant noodles, a rubbish bag, go to the counter and as he recognizes me now, has my two packets of Marlboro waiting on the counter. We bow to each other, annyeong haseyo – annyeong haseyo, he shows me the price on the cash register and I offer over some money. My stuff is bagged up, handed over so it’s time for thank you – gamsa hamnida (here I’ll mention that the first two weeks I kept interchanging gamsa for gasam, which is apparently the word for breast) –  and I’m about to turn and leave, having put the change in my wallet, bowed a goodbye, when the owner stands perfectly upright with this radiant smile on his face and proclaims in a very loud voice, thank-you for fishing on my plate.

hmm… now this is a bit tricky. I want to run from the shop laughing hysterically and I can’t. Obviously it would be rude, he’s very charming and I go there everyday. I steel myself, smile graciously and fumble my way through gwaenchan suemnida -you’re welcome. I’ll be fishing there again!

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Somewhere in Hongdae

Fours weeks in (well close to,) and I’ve finally managed to track down a laptop formatted in english. Many thanks to Park Hyesoo and her friend I have yet to meet, Park Hun.

This image is just so appropriate. Pasted onto the side of a building in Hongdae, which is a student suburb (-dong) nestled around Hongik (pronounced Hongdae) University. Unlike much of the city, Hongdae is full of graffiti and continuously has interesting things happening on the streets. Not to discount the interesting things within greater Seoul – which without a doubt is fascinating.

I guess I’m just drawn to this area. I like wandering around and being one of the few European people on the street. I’m lucky if I see two or three other European looking people in an evening. Thus being something of an unusual participant of the crowds I get stared at a lot – which I really like.

The way I think of it is this: I didn’t travels ten thousand kilometers across the oceans and seas to feel the comfort of things familiar. I want to immerse myself in Korean ways of life – even if it is from the point of observer. I like to wander through the back alleys of Seoul, to see, hear, smell, touch and taste this life. It is almost impossible to get lost, with the subway system being large, extensive, easy to use and based on the inimitable design of the London tube. Thereby, just wandering around I eventually come across a subway entrance, and hey – I’m not lost anymore.

There is an obvious cultural misunderstanding attendant to this activity though. I return from a fruitful five-hour wander through the city, and tell one of the Korean artists about it. They will listen quietly and gentley to my travelogue, with a somewhat perplexed expression, and then ask the question – “but, scott, why didn’t you just take a taxi?” It seems Koreans associate walking with poverty. Unless it is a group activity like walking in the mountains.

But for me, as I mentioned, it is the best way to learn about and understand a city. Anyway, in my mind, tourists take taxies.

So it was Heartening for me, having wandered through the back-alleys of Hongdae to come across this image. It is a reminder for me that despite differences that are simply culture, the human condition is uniquely similar. It reminds me also of some time I spent in a city called Rostock. This was twenty years ago, when Germany was still a divided nation. Rostock was a particularly dilapidated example of what happens when totalitarian infrastructure collapses – situated close to the Ost Sea in what was then known as East Germany. I was wandering around the city one night and happened upon a subway that allowed pedestrians to safely cross a major highway that cut through the city center. So down I go into the subway, and about halfway through came across some graffiti that had been written on the tiled walls in black vivid-maker – “Always search for knowledge, from the cradle to the grave”.