BA How did you follow along or guide them in the process of building their spaces?
MBS I think the challenge was to gather in one place spaces that are usually scattered throughout the city — each with their very own identity, program and vision — without compromising their uniqueness. We wanted to allow these spaces to exist together, in a cohesive exhibition, without becoming a single entity, while maintaining the idea of multiplicity. We worked with an extraordinary firm of Italian set designers, Archivio Personale who deeply dived into all the projects that we received and thought about the way they could interact within the space of the Daelim Museum. I think we wanted to create dialogues between the projects, visual layerings in the space as well as conceptual interactions between the projects.
BA Looking at how the world is still grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic, the themes you explore in the exhibition are exceptionally timed, especially with the ability to view the ‘other’ digital space.
MBS I have to say that the pandemic truly shed a new light on the exhibition as many of the subjects that we’ve been dealing with these past months was embedded in the reflection around the show. Experiencing the exhibition from the digital space that is a eterotopia par excellence is quite ironic. Thorough documentation was planned of course, but the 360° digital experience was prompted by the current conditions of being condemned to view art from our computer screens. I truly hope we will be able to be around artworks in physical spaces soon.
‘No Space, Just A Place: Eterotopia’ is showing at the Daelim Museum, Seoul, until July 12, 2020 — or visit it virtually here.
Local Korean art spaces:
Audio Visual Pavilion, Boan1942, d/p, Hapjungjigu, OF, Post Territory Ujeongguk, space illi, Space One, Tastehouse, White Noise
International artists:
Meriem Bennani, Olivia Erlanger, Cécile B. Evans, Kang Seung Lee, Martine Syms
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MYRIAM BEN SALAH is a curator and art critic. In charge of special projects and public programmes at Palais de Tokyo from 2009 to 2016 as well as editor-at-large for Kaleidoscope magazine, she’s recently been appointed Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Renaissance Society (Chicago).