She waits...

Photos: Nambu Bus Terminal Station

Comics and Grub

Amongst the many changes that occur in Seoul, often times a subway station can transform itself. Attached to Line 2's Hongik Station is a transfer route to the AREX (Airport) line. I know this because I was making my way to Exit 5, and had to go through this very clean and polished tunnel.

Even the turnstiles have become things of diversity. The "beep" is more of a pleasant chime than the usually high pitched one heard at regular stations. Also when passing through, a plexiglass gate with pictures of Kpop stars opens for you. It certainly had a futuristic feel to it.

Exit 5, from Hongik station, takes you out into a quiet neighborhood. Once outside you will notice a cafe across the street called, "Cafe Sand Park".

For those folks who cringe at hearing "Sand" in a restaurant name, well this one was not disappointing. The interior was low-lit and light piano music was playing overhead. It had a real home-town feel to its interior.

Although I am not a coffee drinker, the ground beans smelled fresh. Instead of a coffee drink I had the "fruit tea", which was all right although a bit overpriced. Even though tea drinks at cafes in Korea are mostly a tea-bag in hot water, they tend to be pricey. Usually in the 6,000 to 8,000 range. But, one makes due and pushes on.

I wasn't overly hungry and so just had a light snack of a cream-cheese bagel. Surprisingly, this came out very scrumptious. The bagel wasn't too hard, like they are at Starbucks, and the cream cheese was fluffy and smooth.

The place even had some baked goods on sale near the register, which looked homemade and delicious.

I would highly recommend coming over to this place and getting away from the Hongdae crowds. Definitely a good place to bring a book or some work.

After my tea-and-bagel I headed to a comic book store to see what it was all about. On the way I spotted this wall-drawing, which from closer inspection was either made with charcoal or ink and brush.

The comic book store is located nearby Exit 8 of Hongdae station and is at the basement level. Inside are wall to wall bookshelves stocked with comics, mostly Japanese ones. All of which were in Korean, though. But it was fun to see a place like this in Seoul.

They even had one section dedicated to art-books and "how-to" books on digital drawing.

After the comic book store I went to Homi Art Supplies and looked around, then headed for dinner at a beef-galbi type place. Sorry, I meant to pick up their business card but it didn't work out. I got distracted on the phone. Anyways, it is a place that you have to climb a set of stairs to get to, and is outside exit 9... going up the street with the Dunkin Donuts.

Very delicious and not as heavy as regular galbi, which I think is a lot better. Altogether, another fun time spent in Hongdae exploring what is out there.

Performance Art in the Subway: Video

The video is here for you to get a better understanding of the whole thing that went down last week. For more information and a view of other performances go to my post here.

:)

Performance Art in the Subway Cars: Dongdaemun to Incheon

Performance Art is one of those areas of the art world that you either like or dislike. As for myself, the more zany and out of this world the more I am intrigued to watch. But I know for those uninitiated Performance Art can look like just a bunch of crazy people acting nuts. However, it is a medium of art that is so close to the human experience, that a painting or sculpture just can't radiate.

The Tate's glossery page describes the medium like this:

Art in which the medium is the artist's own body and the artwork takes the form of actions performed by the artist.

With that said let's begin our journey into a Seoul subway ride that was anything but normal. Around 1pm the artists started to show up and eventually were a sizable group.

We had a set departure time, that of 2:06 pm and as we waited Eric briefed us on what to do.

The artist, Jin Sup Yoon, engaged in the experience by drawing pictures throughout the event.

Our train arrived and we sheepishly stepped into the train car. Actually, this was the moment I was most anxious for. How were a group of performance artists going to deal with the dilemma of a train full of unsuspecting people? But I knew one of the best traits of this art form is it's interaction with the audience. In this respect, I was full of excitement at the same time.

The artists above (from left) Gwen Atkinson, Brooke Carlson and Bianca Turalija, got the groove going on the train by letting the deep notes of the saxophone get everyone's attention. While he played Gwen spoke a poem in English, and when finished Bianca translated it into Korean.

While this was happening the artist, Mrat Lunn Htwann, was setting up his materials for his performance.

Immediately, the attention was on him as he set up slippers, a black furry swath on the subway chair and rope hung in the style of a noose.

During Mrat's set up / performance the sound artist, Sato Yukie was playing his guitar. I think the element of sound made by his guitar gave a nice narrative to what was happening. In some ways I think it helped soothe whatever nervous feelings people were having.

Mrat's performance was kicking off and soon he was found wielding an iron and interacting with the audience, by "ironing" them. It made for a lot of giggling on the train.

When people would walk away from this confrontation he went with this energy and followed them. The following picture shows him going after one girl who was quite surprised.

Jin Sup Yoon got in on the fun and added his own element with the iron. 

But not all who were on the train that day could deal with this aspect of the performance art. One man, who was being interacted with by Mrat, had a go at him. He mostly used language as his choice of weapon and was very upset. Thankfully he was cooled down by the photographer, Young-il Kwon. 

I'm going to make a video of this event and I believe I have a clip of this altercation, which can show just how powerful performance art can be.

 I was actually amazed and impressed that the following two passengers didn't flip out and go off on tangents, considering the kind of "face value" culture there is in Korea.

Accompanying this crew of artists was "Tiger" from the group "Tiger and Bear."  Their a duo of artists who have interpreted Korea in a very interesting way. The following, taken from their blog explains this better.

When James Topple and Colin Riddle moved to Korea, they had an idea to investigate how people have adapted
to the economic and social changes that have taken place over the past decades.
They would do it through the eyes of “Tiger and Bear,” important creatures in Korea’s mythology.
The results are fresh interpretations of modern-day Korea.” -The Korea Herald

His performance included walking around the train car and passing out a paper that had both Korean and English on it. Another theme he used was the image of many phallic shapes on his shirt and ones drawn on his body, which I am guessing relates to a theme in their 2D artwork.

At this point "Tiger" was doing his thing along with Mrat and then the artist, Park Juyoung started hers.

Her performance consisted of walking up the aisle of the train car, while pleasant music was played via a recorder dangling around her neck and paintings displayed in her hands. It is my interpretation that she was commenting on the same actions made by disabled people who beg on the train. Note: she is deaf. Although considerably more mellow than the other performances I found hers quite evocative.

More "Tiger" prowling around the train...

Meanwhile, during all this Eric Scott Nelson was at the front of the train engaged in his own performance. His consisted of laying out cat food in a message in Korean.

However, by the time I was aware of his performance I was too late. As the officials on the train were quite upset with it and asked him to clean up. His message reflected an event that happened earlier, which was his cat had gotten run over. The message was meant to say thank you to those riding the subway as that prevents cats from getting run over, but he didn't get the chance to finish writing it.

At this point the artists gathered their things and met up with Eric. We were getting closer to Incheon and less people were on the train. After some time the artist, An Jung began her performance.

In this performance she used a food directory book as her material. In it were white stickers that she peeled of and placed in her mouth. Then she proceeded to peel out pages and pin and tape them to her head.

It was a quiet and thoughtful performance that properly ended the trip to Incheon. Afterwards, we all grabbed a bite to eat and put fuel back in our artist bodies.

The PAISC event was definitely something I will always remember, as it was my first time seeing performance art in such a grand manner. I look forward to making the video and showing you guys what it sounded and looked like.

I hope this has sparked some interest in Performance Art and shows just how creative and dedicated artists of this medium can be.

I Got Out!

It's not that thrilling, but last Saturday I did manage to put down my work and head to Gangnam station. I met up with the good people of Artpoli to discuss how I can be involved more. So far they have been mostly use to Korean members and are trying to bring in non-Korean artists. It was awesome to talk about art and how I can help the group out. Already you can see I am posting information about their contests.

(Note: If you get to their site and it says "not available" it's because they're doing maintenance.")

Along the way, I managed to get in a few snapshots of the Gangnam subway station, which seems to be under a huge renovation.

While I tried to get out of the station and find my way to exit 8 I found myself meandering through a maze.

Above ground I later took these photos while I waited for JH to pick me up.

For dinner we stopped at a Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood.

 Twigum: (fried appetizers)

 Rice and Donkatsu:

 Udon:

Hopefully this is just the beginning of what will be my usual weekend-adventures.