50,000 WON

turns out we did have the money left over to buy those trendy clothes in Hongdae. And when we found a cash machine, we took out, for the first and last time, and quite unexpectedly, a 50,000 WON note. I didn't even know they existed before.

DECISIONS...DECISIONS

Two confusing excerpts from the travel diary, written a few days apart, about a week before the exhibition:

"So, erm... maybe we're going to Japan. A ferry from Busan to Fukuoka, a train from Fukuoka to Kagoshima, another ferry to Yakushima and then a bus around the island to the beach. A volcano on the horizon and flying fish skimming across the water to get there. An Enka singer and a Samurai on an adventure together. An argument? No I wouldn't call it an argument: Hey! I thought you said this was the way! To that place over there! Where? On the horizon! Yeah! We're gonna get there! I guess it has been leading up to this, a Samurai sword fight to the death, an enka singer in a sushi restaurant, a day on the beach. The video with her strange facial expressions. Forming a band and making up a song that has words we don't sing. A Karaoke backing track? It finally seems to fit very nicely together. Going up in a balloon was a diversion, maybe getting back to the beach just seemed impossible at the time... But it is possible! Although will it be a strange experience? So much effort to get to the place where I had one really good day."

"So yeah... I don't think we are going to Japan now. A train to Mokpo and then ferries amongst all the islands. "Hey! I thought you said this was the way!" ...it seems to make sense after all, getting lost amongst all the islands, searching for that beach in Yakushima.

The roof of the Love Hotel

It's our last day in Seoul. We leave here at 11:55 tonight. We woke up this morning to find the power cut in our room at Hotel Isabel. Sometime during the night a huge storm had cut the power in a lot of the city. We slept through the whole thing and only really realised after seeing branches and leaves being swept from the street. One of the horses was dangling from the roof of the hotel. A large banner had been torn from the side of Lotte Mart and the pavements were filled with squashed plums. Hopefully the horse won't fall from the roof and squash a person. And hopefully our flight won't be delayed.

A page out of my travel diary No.1

I'm sitting on the subway, yes, sitting. We won't be standing up all the way to Lotte World. I won't be as tired as I was yesterday as we arrived at COEX mall, the largest underground shopping mall in the world. We bought cute items for friends and family and had pizza next to a strange fountain. Then we went to Gyeongbokgung, which was closed for some building work, although we did manage to see a few guards practising ... erm ... whatever it is they actually do, parading with flags, banging drums and wearing colourful robes. I guess this proves it isn't all just a show for the tourists, but maybe they knew we could see over the wall?

Where to begin?

It's been over a month now since we got back from Seoul. We spent one month over there, and, after buying the plane tickets I spent about 3 months before we left thinking about what was going to happen when we were there. What we were going to do. We were there "unofficially" on an art residency at Seoul Art Space in Geumcheon, an industrial part of town. Our friends Jihoi and Naama were there officially and making an epic film about turning the world upside down. I'm going to try my best to make a blog about all that happened, but its hard to begin. Here are three things to get it all going.

No. 1 A QUOTE: it's from Iris Murdoch's "Satre" and it goes like this:

"adventures are stories, and one does not live a story. One tells it later, one can only see it from the outside. The meaning of an adventure comes from its conclusion; future passions give colour to the events. But when one is inside an event, one is not thinking it. One can live or tell; not both at once. There are no real beginnings. The future is not already there."

I think that explains why its hard to begin, and if I tried to explain it I could write for 10 paragraphs and not get anywhere. So thanks to that quote... I do have a beginning... I'm going to read the rest of the book now ;)

No. 2 A VIDEO

Its a meditative movie I filmed out of a taxi window riding through the streets of Seoul in heavy rain. I filmed out of the passenger window on a few taxi journeys we made, and this is "A Taxi Ride Through Seoul No.1". we were listening to opera at one point and it went nicely with the traffic jams. I'll post a few more throughout the blog. I remember filming in the middle of the night whilst we were driving 100mph down highways with a cab driver listening to a mixtape he'd made of British and American classics. I can't wait to see that one.

A Taxi Ride Through Seoul No.1 from Jack Barraclough on Vimeo.

No.3

Its some words I'd written for a song by Halo Halo, a band I've started with Rachel, she plays the banjo and I play the drums and we both make a lot of feedback come out of the amps. We never used the words in the end, but I like them and I kept thinking about them in Korea so we ended up using them for something we made together during our time in Seoul. I guess I thought about them so much I spent about an hour drawing and colouring them in nicely in my sketchbook.