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![domus galilae domus galilae](https://a4.pbase.com/g3/55/401755/2/101825901.JNT88FG9.jpg)
"The building transforms itself into "a vessel drifting in the vastness of ocean named Seoul," says Hyun-Suk, "just as the architect of the Ideal considered it to be 45 years ago. The performance uses a perpetual methodology of distraction to bring the empty building to the foreground. The building becomes a conduit for the decaying and the hopeless. There is a glory and a tastelessness to it. Metaphors of hope and time in humble and in excess. The empty streets are furnished with people three men sitting on a step, a bright boot or coloured gloves. A moment of calm where a blind storyteller moves her hand over a brail book and reads aloud is countered soon afterwards by the startling sight of horse and carriage trotting around a corner, adorned in bright lights and rainbow colours. The journey is a constant metaphor for utopia and failure. The person on the end of the phone gave me instructions to find a tape recorder and walk out of the building and follow the signs outside. Clusters of visitors waited at the formica tables on soft orange seats and we ordered a cup of traditional Korean tea and sat, chatting until a phone call arrived. The journey began with a visit to an old-fashioned teahouse. Each traveler re-writes what he sees, hears, and smells. "The Sunday idleness is adorned with piles of metal dusts, rows of tainted hand-written signs, closed shutters of unlikely tea shops and inns, and other minute details," says Hyun-Suk.
DOMUS GALILAE SERIES
This is the time when we spectators of Heterotopia become the protagonists, and performed a series of surreal journeys through this death row of industry, a doomed cityscape on foot. On Sunday afternoons, however, the area is immersed in an eerie stillness. The intention of the performance is to engage the visitors with the layered remnants of the ideal and its failure.ĭuring the week, the alleyways are crowded with fumes and noises from small metal shops that have made up the fabric and identity of this part of the city for five decades. The magnificent Sewoon Mart, a utopian vision by the late Su-Geun Kim, now worn and soured by time, awaits us. Heterotopia is a site-specific, participatory performance directed by Hyun-Suk Seo. The building, a 1km-long building in the old heart of the city is flanked by favela-like informal structures, mazes of spontaneous electronic shops and markets stalls that are now all due for demolition.
![domus galilae domus galilae](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f9/76/7d/f9767d1c288af72b1874109c7502af01.jpg)
Last week in Seoul I took part in Heterotopia, a remarkable and poignant performance in the alleyways and courtyards that make up Korea's first modernist mega-structure Sewoon Mart.