Micro City Lab

전시기획 Curator
심소미 Somi Sim

참여작가 Artists
무스퀴퀴 취잉 Musquiqui Chihying
정이삭 Isak Chung
줄리앙 코와네 Julien Coignet
빌리 도르너 Willi Dorner
움베르토 두크 Humberto Duque
플로리안 골드만 Florian Goldmann
허태원 Taewon Heo
공석민 Seokmin Kong
권용주 Yongju Kwon
이아람 Ahram Lee
리슨투더시티 Listen to the City
사소한 조정 Minor Adjustment
모토엘라스티코 MOTOElastico
피플즈 아키텍처 오피스 People’s Architecture Office
아그네스카 포크리카 Agnieszka Pokrywka
젯사다 땅뜨라쿤웡 Jedsada Tangtrakulwong
언메이크 랩 Unmake Lab

Walking Today’s City through Micro-intervention

The universe consists of infinity of erratic micro-events.
Each of them is more important than the great ones.
-Yona Friedman

Let’s look at today’s city. Beyond the shape and volume of macro-cities, including
Seoul, invisible micro places and stories of life are accumulated as stratum of the
city. The back side of the city is filled with numerous layers of small time and space,
but they are very vulnerable to expansion of the city. These micro-places are hidden
by the city’s surface, power, and grand mechanism. Then, what is the ‘micro-place?’
We can approach to this through a lens of artists living in the city. The exhibition,
Micro City Lab, proposes a process of intervention, one step forward from the artists’
lens. The intervention will be separated from certain concepts, forms, and aesthetic
praxis, which are overly used in contemporary art. The exhibition tries to intervene
in invisible places through presumably useless art in a minimal form: microintervention.

(Left to right) Interventions map / panels: Jedsada Tangtrakulwong, Julien Coignet / Table : Ahram Lee, Seokmin Kong, Humberto Duque, Agnieska Pokrywka.

Micro City Lab is an urban intervention project to investigate the sense of micro
place in mega-cities through micro-intervention. 17 participating artist groups
from 11 countries will attempt to intervene in places by using art, architecture,
design, performance, fab lab, and activism. 14 groups among them will operate
intervention projects in various outdoor places (public space, streets, parks, resting
areas, redevelopment area, cultural space, commercial place, etc.) in Seoul during
the exhibition period. The artists’ micro-intervention focuses on the relationship of
each place’s circumstance, objects, and hidden aspects, and applies the minimum
materiality of body, text, sound, and smell.

Listen to the city, Willi Dorner

Some artists will explore autogenousness and architectural function of places
alienated from the city’s power: People’s Architecture Office concentrates on invisibility
of small factory area where the exhibition space locates; MOTOElastico investigates
informal ways of occupying spaces in Seoul; and Isak Chung repairs flat benches
deserted in streets. Other artists will approach to a gap between life neglected in
backstreets of the city and the mega-city’s mechanism: Julien Coignet pays attention to
visual elements eliminated from urban scenes in Korea; Jedsada Tangtrakulwong poses
a question on surface of the city by using brick-like stickers; Yongju Kwon handles
waste of the city; and Taewon Heo observes the ruin of city migration from abandoned
flowerpots.
On the other hand, several artists will see a possibility that a new relationship would
rise from typology of urban spaces: Humberto Duque intervenes between public
space and commercial space; Agnieszka Pokrywka realizes natural phenomena in an
artificial way; Musquiqui Chihying reverses ordinary context of everyday life; and Minor
Adjustment presents aerobics in public parks. In addition, there are certain struggles
to excavate urban places through subtle sensation and perception: Willi Dorner
arranges human bodies on the stage of urban place; Seokmin Kong transforms
psychological situation into a place; and Ahram Lee records smells on the streets in
text. There also exists civil meditation on urban place: Listen to the City fights for the
Okbaraji street; Unmake Lab critically explores technology-oriented city; and Florian
Goldmann finds out civil forum in scribbles on walls in Athens.
Micro-intervention in micro places is at opposition of spectacle, which city and art
have aimed at, and thus, our society ultimately desires for. It is a comment not only
on micro places, but also on minor places that should be kept although they have
been ruptured by capital. The artists’ interventions in various places might be trivial,
however, will help to understand various, multi-layered urban places and social
network surrounding them. During October, the interventions happening in Seoul
will gradually fill the exhibition walls and several talk, seminar, workshop, and tour
will continue. It is expected that these processes lead to invisible areas and expand to
another intervention and relations.

Somi Sim / Independent Curator

Humberto Duque, Musquiqui Chihying, Isak Chung

MICRO CITY LAB
Period 2016.10.7 – 10.30
Opening Hours 1-8 pm Open everyday
Venue
Indie Art Hall GONG,
Various Site in Seoul
Curator Somi Sim
Supported by Arts Council Korea
Adam Mickiewicz Institute
In Collaboration with Julien Coignet
Coordinator Nara Shin
Design Sunyoung Kim
Space Design buup
Film Document Sindae Kang
Translation Jieun Sung
Contact microcitylab@gmail.com
Indie Art Hall GONG
30, Seonyuseo-ro 30 gil, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul

Julien Coignet (Mosaic Project)