Genuine Korean Kitsch

Waiiit. There is some story to it. We visited another Korean Art Fair in Gangnam.
In Korea there is no clear distinction between serious contemporary art and parallel universe naturalistic crap Art. But most importantly is to know about this particular object of desire.
If you go in a local department story you will find lots of variations of vintage telephones (all plastic, with digital guts of course) They seem to be much more popular here than in the West. So if they now appear as an cultural artifact in a Korean still life painting, than this cultural adaption of the object has produced Genuine Korean Kitsch. Its like filling biodiesel in a car that runs on regular gasoline.

Pusan Film Festival

..one day after its closing. All corporate event architecture in ruins. The so-called Indie lounge looks like a refugee camp. (wasn't that where it all started?)

I know, but it was just that..

Blip Facade

Galleria Dept Store in Apgujung-dong. A friend from Hong Kong had to tell us about. We had no idea. The animation (moving shapes) were a bit boring but the building is quiet impressive..

video_dumbo, briefly re-visited

Our annual rushed NY mission. For the second time masterminded from Korea!
Here's a little --> photo story of what happened
Quiet absurd to organize an art exhibition as part of a bigger festival which is such a nerve-wrecking giant effort, that there is absolutely no second to step outside. As a result we had absolutely no clue what was going on around the corners in those three days.

This was the third edition of video_dumbo
This year we could not get in our favorite venue, the stable (16 Main St) which is now Galapagos. Robert seemed behind with his renovation, however he got the big -disputed- elephant dumped in his house. We on the other hand were given another monster by Two Trees: A 5000+ sqft gallery space which made us expand our usual festival line up into a big exhibition (in which then some screenings took place)
The space turned out to be incredible: Large like an airplane hangar - eteam housed an entire cardboard Boeing 737 in full length!) It was also big enough to watch a video program - without getting distracted by the installations. Not even five close ups of woman in orgasm, Breda Beban's BEAUTIFUL EXILE on the far end wall displaying a 40 feet wide five channel video installation.


We were quiet happy with the outcome, it was really fantastic what came together this year. With absolutely generous help from our exhibition artists as well as support from Eyebeam, Roebling and Smack that let us use their equipment.
The amount of projectors, etc would have exhausted our micro budget entirely..

And again, for Gabriela and myself each time a new interesting experience to find ourselves temporarily in the other side - the one of the organizer, artist caterer, facilitator... again we were dealing with 150+ picky artists queens. Most amusing observation: unlike those artists featured with installation, 95% of our local video artists in the program only showed up for those program blocks which featured them, but none of the others. Those peacocks! ;-)

Among the highlights: Our Korea program (which we repeated) as well as Zach Layton, Ray Sweeten, Luke Dubois and Matt Ostrowski whose live AV performances were among one of the most kick ass I have seen for a long time!