CADAVRE EXQUIS POST MORTEM
-
INCHEON / GEUMHO.SK
by the
칼mont
Family
Written by Jamie Bruno
Editors: Alysia Kim & Eric Davis
Translation: Soomi Park.
As
printed on the Space Beam Community monthly
publication, Incheon, Korea.
The train will be here long after your art.
Who’s in charge here? Who can we go to? How is
this organized?
I feel like art in Korea is just an excuse to have a
party.
We are a group of friends from various backgrounds.
We are interested in collaboration and sharing
ideas.
We emphasize communication and working together.
Our collective work is often temporal, social, and
spatial.
Before discussing the conceptualization of
Cadavre Exquis, one should know that our group,
the
칼mont
Family, and the project itself evolved together,
simultaneously.
1. Geumho
Our short history begins in Geumho in the spring of
2009. Geumho is a small neighborhood in Seoul that
sits atop a hill next to the Han River. One can get
a good view of the river from the hill, especially
from the roofs of the buildings. Just this past
summer, if one were to look up from the river at
Geumho, one would’ve seen a wall of houses
resembling jumbled staircases stacked on top of each
other.
Stairs
[from the
Golden Lake Series] Alysia Kim
Now, all that is left are piles of rubbish and
thick, naked blocks of concrete for future
high-rises.
Geumho, the abandoned neighborhood, became the
foundation for the group’s commitment to each other
and to Korea. Geumho was special; it was virtually
empty of people but incredibly full of material
objects and pieces of family life: books, diaries,
utensils, photos, clothing, appliances; the list
goes on and on. When it was discovered by friends,
it was already in a state of slow decay; the windows
broken, the floors coming apart, ceilings drooping
and moldy, and wallpaper ripped and shredded.
Red
Chair
[from the
Golden Lake Series]
Alysia Kim
It seemed as though some kind of sudden natural
disaster had forced people to hastily leave their
homes. Therefore, these homes--these once private
spaces--became public. Doors were left unlocked.
Walls were split open.
Children’s Room [made of materials and brick from Geumho]
Agathe LePoutre
Geumho became a playground and a market to many
people. Every weekend more and more Koreans and
foreigners visited the area; taking time, taking
pictures, taking things. For us, the neighborhood
offered a very intimate look at the lives of
hundreds of displaced families. It gave material and
spatial understanding and identification. We
traveled there every weekend, getting lost in the
architecture or in a particular empty space, or
having picnics on rooftops, talking and gazing at
the city skyline beyond the Han River. This place
that had been forced open by the reality of eviction
was so full of memories and is what made Geumho feel
both melancholy and incredibly accessible. It was a
very personal place.
As the demolition spread to destroy more and more of
the area, the group began a series of collaborative
and individual artworks across the houses all around
the space.
Cliff
[from the
Golden Lake Series]
Alyisa Kim
Geumho House Paintings
Lenny Correa, Jamie Bruno, Junkhouse
Photo by Alysia Kim
Within
the next month the majority of the neighborhood was
demolished, along with these artworks. We
understood our projects were transient but we all
intuitively agreed on the importance of
participating with Guemho, no matter how long they
would last. Our actions there opened us as a group
to our own agency in space. Our activities there
question identity, responsibility and role.
2. Space Beam
As a group, we felt an immediate connection towards
Space Beam’s endeavors to enrich the community
through artistic practice and additionally towards
their critique of public space through Eco-Park.
Animal Invaders
Baedari 360
[Soomi Park & Jamie Bruno]
The Baedari area is currently a point of contention
between developers, residents and the municipal
government. It is the right of the inhabitants to
claim ownership to the area that they live in and to
have a stake in its future. In addition to
connecting the community to art Space Beam acts as a
progressive, intelligent voice on behalf of the
Baedari residents.
The process of developing an exhibition for Space
Beam began in July and was quite slow. At the time,
we were around 8-16 people--a casual group of
friends. Some of us had only known each other for a
few weeks. As a whole, we were more used to
watching films and sharing music and ideas than
conceptualizing together, in a public way. Geumho
was improvisational and spontaneous, but organizing
a project was much different. However, we realized
we had a similar value system, and it was from here
that we developed our way of working.
Naturally, we focused on themes and methods that
were already close to us: collaboration, inclusion,
accessibility, and the space of the city. But we
were split. Some wanted a theme that dealt with
space and power. Others wanted to avoid politics all
together. We scheduled a series of short
collaborative experiments.
… working on some collaborative sketches
These experiments were integral to developing
our process and were essentially rough collaborative
sketches of the work that was to come.
Additionally they built trust and allowed a
better understanding of each other’s personal
methods. Despite this it still
took us a month of debating to realize our concept,
and then another month to consider how to execute
the works. There was a struggle
between process and form. We were interested in the
possibility of random participation of visitors and
discovering a method that would exhibit the process
itself. We ended up with a way of working that drew
more from our methods in Geumho than from the
typical artist-gallery relationship.
... working in the gallery
3. Cadavre Exquis
Cadavre Exquis is a drawing and writing
game made popular by the Surrealists in the early
20th century. Each player takes turns writing or
drawing on a piece of paper. They conceal their work
with a fold, revealing only a tiny portion for the
next player to add onto until completion when the
entire page is revealed. The name originates from
the first phrase of the first time the Surrealists
played the game: Cadavre Exquis boira le
vin nouveau. (“The exquisite corpse will drink
the new wine.”) The work, "CX House" was meant to
introduce the form to visitors of the exhibition in
a way that would allow them to participate in it.
CX_House
킬mont
Family
There was another reason the game was important to
us. Construction is a prevailing
aspect of Korea; very few buildings remain conserved
and untouched. Therefore, Cadavre Exquis
also became a metaphor for the patchwork space of
the city and the various forces at work on it and
inside it. Our installation process reflected this
aspect of the city as always in progress,
constructed from a juxtaposition of ideas and a
complex set of situations.
We scheduled what Eric Davis described as a 'soft
opening' for October 10th, a more intimate block
party, barbeque, and workshop day meant to introduce
the community to our ideas.
Eric Davis & Sam Grey’s collage workshop
After
the opening, we planned for a time when the gallery
would remain relatively empty, with some pieces
removed and relocated and later others sporadically
added. For our closing we scheduled an event where
all the works could accumulate together with music
and performance for a celebration on the 24th. This
event was purposefully more public and open.
Jamie Bruno’s Blind Spot Drawing
workshop
…images from Cadavre Exquis
Closing Party
The Chicken and the Wife
[musical performance] Veronica Lee
Afterward Cadavre Exquis was
extended until mid-November. We
finished removing all the works and cleaning the
space on the 15th.
4. Overheard
The train will be here long after your art.
We ask: Whose art?
The 랔mont Family’s art? Of
course it will, purposefully so.
Space Beam’s art? We certainly hope not.
Who’s in charge here? Who can I go to?
How is this organized?
No one is in charge. Or, we all are in charge. We
don’t function hierarchically. In our group, people
take responsibility as necessity demands depending
on personal tempers, skills, and experience. We
communicate with each other often and delegate each
other to get things done. Our organization is
chaotic and intuitive.
I feel like art in Korea is just an excuse
to have a party.
Having a variety of different perceptual
environments for visitors to Cadavre Exquis
was a priority of ours.
Cadaver Exquis was open for viewing
almost daily in a more reserved social environment
and we balanced this mood with two events, one
purposefully more intimate and the other more
public. That said, the function
of these events weighs heavy on our exhibition and
has substantial importance.
Parties and events bring people together and get
people sharing and talking. They offer way of
viewing and experiencing art that can be a more
inclusive and accessible. This
informal environment does not take away from the
integrity of the works, but it helps to minimize the
gap between the artist and the
viewer. This kind of viewing experience arguably
might not work for all types of art but we feel it
was appropriate for the 칼mont
Family due to the fact that many of the works in the
exhibition were either interactive or required the
participation of people for completion.
The
Block Party and the Closing Party allowed more
people to experience Space Beam and Cadavre
Exquis than they would have alternatively and it
was a great way to get people from different
backgrounds to communicate and experience the works
and performances together.
Cadavre Exquis was the first time our
group has made work publicly, and we are grateful
for Space Beam’s openness to our unconventional
exhibition.
For
more information about the
칼mont
Famiy and the Cadavre Exquis
participants visit
http://www.kalmontfamily.com
http://smokemirrorsmonitors.com/
http://kalmontfamily.com/
