Seoul music: immersive art sheds light of the sustainability of a city

#Art can be a useful way of highlighting and creating a discussion around the issue of #sustainable #cities, which can often get lost in technicalities. An immersive exhibition in London about #Seoul was a good example.

With a population of almost 10 million people Seoul is one Asia’s modern megacities. Like its regional fellow urban centres its growth was engineered by its country government to create what academic Yu-Min Joo calls a globally connected national “node” to host investments resources and privileges.

This brings with it the tensions that can be found in large cities: the contradictions between a traditional past and vibrant technological present, divisions between being part its region or the global economy, and the conflict between a modern lifestyle and environmental sustainability.

An immersive exhibition, which has sadly just ended was a good example of how art, lighting, visuals, sound, and other media can be used to raise these issues with a lay audience, who do not need to access academic journals and websites to investigate what it means to be a vibrant yet sustainable city. This article summarises some of the themes and features some images.

Divided into 12 zones, perhaps to match 12 animals in the Korean Zodiac, the visitor was shown a mix of old and new, mythological and technological, spiritual and conventional. It began with an array of screens displaying individual narratives of some 60 Seoul-ites.

Curator Yeonhak Jeong set out the challenge in his videocast entitled An Unsustainable City. As Seoul was all Koreans gathered, he was worried that this “big city will not be able to sustain due the overload of people and materials”. A cri de coeur that can be doubtless heard in cities from Sydney to Vancouver. But Hyewon Toon, a designer insisted that while the crowd was “challenging”, she had come to the city for the “benefits that come with having so many people around”.

Later on, Collage: Gwanghwa uses vivid images and lights, words, and a spectrum of digital information to capture elements of legends, historic ancient buildings, and landscapes that are the foundations of the city’s heritage.  The Urban Pulse and Neon Nostalgia rooms use neon signboards to immerses visitors in the testaments to human innovation and aspirations, whether through food and drink, technology and entertainment, or commerce and education.

One room houses a metallic model of a Soseuldaemun, the large main gate with a high upper roof that was a symbol of upper class homes. A wireframed series of arches is meant to signify a cohabitation with deities central to Korean household culture, and how these deities might manifest themselves in the digital age.

Art is becoming an increasingly effective way to promulgate key messages on climate change and sustainability. At the end of last year, an installation featuring 17 doors, one for each of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals was opened at the UN’s headquarters in New York. Seventeen artists provided their own “entry point” not the debate.

A year earlier, a similar project to highlight Goals 10 to 17 through public art in Rime included a mural featuring a giant gorilla in a city to consumerism, maximum urbanisation and disrespect for the environment to highlight the need to meet Goal 11 — Sustainable Cities and Communities.

And to bring us full circle, South Korea artist Choi Jeong-hwa has highlighted the need for more responsible and consumption and production through public sculptures comprising consumer goods, balloons, wires, and recycled items. His work 1,000 Doors was a 10-story public installation built with recycled doors to show the reality or urbanisation.

That debate will develop, especially as the Seoul authorities are pursuing a “smart city agenda”, which they describe as “a sustainable city … based on city infrastructure constructed by converging and integrating construction technologies, information and communications technologies, etc. to enhance its competitiveness and liveability”.

London’s Seoul exhibition, which was hosted in the South Korean capital itself before its sojourn in the UK did not seek to provide any answers, whether to Seoul’s sustainable development or other contested issues. Hopefully it inspired visitors to find out more about the history and recent redevelopment of Seoul.