Re-Play: 4 Platforms & 17 events

With spaces in Seoul frequently and quickly changing, who’s to say what’s to become of a street of hanoks? If we clear out a slum in Seoul’s northeast region—should we have a row of cafés, a shopping mall, a park and or a museum there instead? Who should make all of these decisions? Urban sociologist Jane Jacobs once said: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” However, it seems a rare occurrence that the people within the city are the ones to develop ideas about changing things. SeMA puts these issues in the spotlight with the exhibition, “Re-play: 4 platforms & 17 events.” Four different teams have come together to discuss how different unused spaces within Seoul should change and then applied their ideas to works of art that they created within SeMA. Park Cheon-kang and Jo Nam-il both believe that learning spaces should be softer and less intimidating. In “Temporary Lecture Hall,” the two took an empty, stiff-looking learning space (Guro-gu’s Lifelong Learning Center) and posed the question: “What if this space could look fun, friendly and inviting?” Tchely Hyung-Chul Shin created a 4-D cube on which each side screens advice by a well-respected artist, along with other media. The idea is that these kinds of cubes could be placed in so-called “unsuccessful” schools within Seoul; for example, Hanul Middle School, which plans to close down soon. Also included are the ideas of NAMELESS Architecture and AnLstudio, who will make up the two other platforms. Come view these works, as well as lectures, movie screenings and guerilla events and contemplate how Seoul’s spaces should be used. After all, who’s to say that the spaces (and the ideas for them) belong to these artists alone?