The Terrorism of Circumstance

My other favourite work at the Busan Bienniale was this weather balloon kept afloat by a fan blowing air upwards. It had a radio signal that broadcast through about twenty speakers arranged in a circle around the room. The radio signal was picked up on an amplifier through some feedback mechanism that varied the sound it made as the balloon moved around in the room and changed its distance from the amplifier. The sounds produced were very trancy: reminiscent of a cross between tibetan chanting and cicada song.

Unfortunately, as I was watching and listening, the balloon and its attached radio collided with the fan cage. The sound became very tinny, high-pitched, and loud, and then faded away totally. One of the bienniale staff soon appeared and looked at me, and I just shrugged my shoulders like I didn't know what caused the mishap (which was true). I guess I was lucky. They could have construed that I somehow screwed with the installation. Whew!

Busan Bienniale

I finally made it to the Busan Bienniale a couple weekends ago. It leaned fairly heavily towards video and installation art. I have this minor grudge against video art, as so much of it totally disregards the way people receive art in a gallery. Let's face it, even if you're a top-notch artist, it will be difficult to make someone stay in the same place in a gallery for very long. I think video artists should keep this in mind, and compose accordingly so people can get the "gist" of your video from any 2 or so minute fragment. Mind you, this only applies to video art displayed at large exhibitions like bienniales.

Regardless, there was a couple good video installations. This was one of them. On the one side, an outside corner that made the projection surface look like a glowing cube, various deserted architecturally inflected images dissolved in and out. As you walked around the cube, however, the inside corner on the other side revealed that it was not a cube at all, but merely two fairly flat surfaces intersecting on a perpindicular plane.

The inside plane depicted an avalanche in slow motion, engulfing everything in its path, including a road, miniturized by the scale of the mountains and the avalanche, and eventually engulfing the whole screen. The way this piece conveyed the awesome natural power (that can be both beautiful and destructive) as the architecturality of the box was absolutely brilliant. The domestic sublime, you might call it.

My other favourite work was a sound installation which I will explain more in a subsequent blog.

Things are getting tense here...

Or not... One morning, when I woke up, I heard an air raid siren. Then, as I was walking to school, I heard fighter jets. But the Koreans will blast fireworks and party for the scantest reason, including the current Chrysanthemum Festival. Even though the South has quickly followed the North into 1000 km missile range capability, they still have time to celebrate flowers. Thank goodness for smelling the roses, er, I mean, Chrysanthemums!

Is your Sex Sexy Enough?

If not, maybe you need one of these! I went to this motel in Busan, and there was this thing that looked like an exercise machine, but it turned out to be a Sex Machine. Where's a James Brown CD when you need it?

ISP tracking RULES...

I found out that someone from Tokyo, who works for Japan's largest internet service provider read my blog for fifteen hours! I guess they read the whole damn thing!

American Spies.

Maybe I've been watching too many Hitchcock movies, but I get the uneasy feeling that there are American Spies aplenty here in South Korea. I think I ran into one of them last weekend. The evil is palpable.

Marnie.

So I watched Marnie last week. It launched into my "best five" ever movies rather quickly, although when I revisit it in my memory it might be hampered by its weak link: Sean Connery's accent slipping in and out of his Scottish brogue. No one can match Hitchcock for the psychological depth of his characters (except for Bergman in his film Persona). He also has the distinction of making a propaganda film that depicts the villain as still human (Lifeboat). Not a common characteristic of propaganda films, it is yet ultimately more convincing to show the humanity of the enemy. It's also preventative medicine against the very worst atrocities, or do our animal instincts drive out the reasoning beast within, regardless?

Mail Art

My sister is an artist, and we are collaborating on a mail art project. Here's a photo of my fragments-in-process. I'm excited.

Surf's Up!

There are surfers in Korea! Here is one of them cutting a nice line at Haeundae Beach in Pusan. Coming from Canada, I'm pleasantly surprised by the warmth here. Back home it is 6 degrees Celsius, but here it is still above 20 degrees Celsius every day.

North Korea blew up a nuke!

So if bombs are ever dropped, I hope I'm at ground zero and instantly vapourized rather than being caught in a fallout zone. That said, kids rule and above is a concrete example of why they rule.

The Down-low lowdown on Ginseng

I finally decided to do something proactive about my health, so I invested in some Ginseng products. My choice of product perhaps is questionable, but we shall see. I bought some Korean Red Ginseng Wine (pictured above), and I have been indulging every day (not to the point of drunkenness, mind you). Despite the rash of Ginseng products available everywhere these days, overuse of ginseng can be hard on your heart. Medicine can be poison and vice versa like a certain french philosopher and others have noticed. Ginseng is supposed to be a good tonic when you are ill. I think my sinuses warranted a shot, and so far I have noticed a slight improvement. When I bought the wine, they threw a huge bag of ginseng candies my way as well. That happens a lot here: buy something get something free.

Thank goodness for the man-shaped root.

Are there cameras in money?

I get paid in cash! WTF???? This still blows me away. The Koreans love their cash money.

The Art of Rolling.

People roll many things: pizza dough, joints, meditation balls, dice, California, but I just learned how to roll one of my favourite Korean foods. All hail Kimbop! I am on my way to a volcanic island in the sea of Japan, and on the bus to the city that runs the ferry service which I will use to get to the island, I met this really nice Korean fellow Jae-yung. He put me up for the night and taught me how to make Kimbop!

I'm stoked.

When I first tried to make Kimbop, I tried sealing it with rice syrup, but he told me all you need is water! I guess the K.I.S.S. axiom (keep it simple stupid) was applicable. Of course, I failed miserably with the rice syrup, but now I know!

Subterranean Homesick Blues

I'm having the first bout of homesickness I've ever had despite all my travels. It seems as soon as I'm feeling physically better, the next day I feel crappy again. I think the pollution here is really bothering me and the air was especially bad (or so it seemed) yesterday and today. I want to feel healthy again.

I didn't even really have a longstanding home in Canada, but I miss my partner a lot. This run-down stuff is making me more irritable too.

I've heard that months 3-6 are the most difficult when teaching abroad. I have been here a little more than 4 months and much of the novelty has worn off I guess.
The picture above encapsulates my heightened awareness of time these days.

Traffic

Traffic here is crazy. I've almost been hit three times, and one time, I was shaken up so bad I had to lean up against a phone booth and catch my breath. No one stays on their side of the streets, almost everyone cuts corners, and traffic lights are not very visible and seem more like a guideline than the law.

As a country that has almost entirely reconstructed itself since the Korean War, Korea is a development success story. It does however have its share of growing pains. One such pain is the traffic! A culture that has only had the car as a commonly accessible commodity for three or four decades sure has been among the things that has taught me the value of human life, and its frailty beside these speeding behemoths.

My ex-professor and friend (or so I'd like to think lol) Dionne Brand recently won the Toronto Book Award for her novel What We All Long For. I must confess I haven't read it yet; I am more familiar with her poetry. I read her book of poems "Inventory" before I came to Korea and it was incredibly inspiring. It was one of the only pieces of art that motivated me to create myself in recent memory. Congratulations to Dionne and go buy her books! She's really, really good!

Miscelleria of Modernity (on your knees biotch)

Well, what do you know? After I write a blog about a magazine that doesn't pay me after I published in their rag, I get the freakin cheque and free copy sent within two freakin' days. I'm stunned. Obviously the new staff is PR savvy!

My neighbour keeps bringing me delicious Thai food cooked by his wife. I think he's trying to butter me up for something: a grand plan to blackmail our boss or something like that. I don't want anything to do with it really, but I secretly hope the gods wreak vengeance on behalf of my beleagured coworker (long story that involves some compromising info).

My lover wants to take a Tantric workshop and a dominate/surrender workshop. I think he wants to spice up our sex life or something. It's really a sweet gesture because I think he's thinking of me. I like to dominate people. Don't tell, please.

In case you're wondering, the photo below is of hundreds of baby jellyfish.

Hanging out at the coy pond, feeling coy.

One of the biggest corporations in South Korea is Dae woo: you've probably heard of them. They've got their thumbs in many pies: cars, stereos, even department stores. I found out recently General Motors owns a stake in the company. It's mind-boggling how a few people basically own the whole world, and let little peons like me make a liveable wage, while many others make a hardly liveable wage and endure incredibly shitty working conditions.

Forget about a big fish in a small pond: I'm a microscopic plankton. Love me.

George Bush IS intelligent.

Look. He's got the whole world talking about him, thinking about him. Maybe most of it is negative, but you know what they say: there's no such thing as bad press. The occasional ridiculous verbalism does not automatically make someone stupid. Think about it. I say stupid shit all the time and I was the most sought after student in my Master's degree cohort. The only difference is that I don't have zillions of cameras on me at all times to catch my "Bush-isms."

No. I simply don't believe it's possible to ascend to the top of the most economically and militarily powerful country on the planet (though I don't think they are any more) without at least having the intelligence to recognize intelligence and surround yourself with it.

That said... intelligence is a neutral quality; it does not automatically translate into moral "rightness." George Bush is a bad, bad man.

The Mighty Cicada

This is a picture of the loudest insect on earth: the cicada. Cicadas live as larvae under the ground for over a decade, then they come out, they sing their song, lay eggs or fertilize eggs, and then die. I think of them as magic creatures, prehistoric, wise, and powerful. How else can such a small thing make such a big noise but magic. Yes it's physics, but the best magic is always based on the material nature of the world.

I bring cicadas up because one of my students brought in two of the largest cicadas I've ever seen to class today. Everyone except him and me freaked out. The cicadas stayed speechless, stunned by their erstwhile captivity. If aliens tried to contact intelligent life on earth during august, all they would hear was a relentless metallic buzz, drowning out the traffic and the conversations below.