heliotrope

Yesterday marked day one of week two. I've been so busy since I arrived in Gwangju with the pressures of our lecture and visiting schedules and all of the obligatory eating and beer drinking with my colleagues.

I've filled all of you in on what I am doing here to varying degrees. Basically, I'm one of 23 young curators selected for a month long intensive course that includes lectures from international curators and artists, a visiting program to institutions in Seoul and Gwangju, group study, and practical experience on the biennale installation. The core "teachers" in the course are the Italian curator Massimiliano Gioni (New Museum) and American curator Dan Cameron (Prospect New Oreleans). We'll also have visits from Barbara Vanderlinden, Mami Kataoka, and Ai Wei Wei, among others.

The first week was a blur. The first three days were devoted to presentations of our past and future projects, which despite my initial nervousness actually went while. I even found out that i likepublic speaking.
After the first day we boarded what could only be described as an Indian disco bus and were whisked into the foothills of the mountains about an hour outside of Gwangju where a prominent collector hosted us for dinner and a musical performance. His property extended to the top of the mountain where he has nearly a dozen full time gardeners tending to the landscaping and sculpture garden. Dinner was my first experience with the Korean hurry, hurry. There was a lot of choreography surrounding where and when to sit and when and how to do things. This resulted in many of us not eating very much despite the wide spread of fancy food laid out for us (including wild boar!) At the end of the dinner we were invited to participate in a traditional Korean dance where we were to "dance how we felt under the moonlight." The dance began by holding hands and running in a circle. Evidently we took the instruction to dance how we felt a little too literally. Sumesh, the Indian curator, started Bollywood dancing in the center of the circle while others noodle danced. The conductor then yelled at as and told us how the dance was supposed to proceed, which was more like an elegant conga line than an interpretive dance free-for-all. Sadly, I don't have any photos of this.

presenting Massimiliano (courtesy Leanne Dymetrko):

dinner entertainment (courtesy Leanne Dymetrko)

the party bus!

After three days of presentations we were taken to Seoul for the visiting program. Another blur! We were tightly scheduled in a day and a half hit the Nam June Paik Museum, the Samsung Lee Um Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art, a museum whose name escapes me, Lee Bul's studio, and the galleries around the Anguk metro station. This was exhausting.
Luckily, the artist Soyoung Chung gave me an introduction to Seoul's galleries the weekend prior and I will be heading back to the city for the new media biennale Media City Seoul.

After being wildly disappointed that our hotel "sky bar" was a bench on the roof instead of the swank lounge with martinis, piano players, and lonely business men that we imagined, we opted for the Texas Bar where we ordered "Margalitas." They were awful.