deconcrete

It is astonishing the numerous amount of elderly couples I have been seeing in the subway, wearing a complete neon-colour camouflage trekking equipment. Since Seoul is surrounded (rather gobbled up) by hills, its subway system easily reaches any forest at the end of its lines to enjoy nature just half an hour ride from schizophrenic urbanity. So my last wandering in Seoul is going to be natural; I need some greenery. While looking for other Korean architecture blogs, I came up with the project of regeneration of a forest by ludens-ifying it with hidden art installations amongst trees. It’s my place.

Before coming out at a random periphery subway station, I get lost in an interchange, where I suddenly find in the basement 3 a compass rose printed on the floor, north-oriented; a paradox of unguideness in this messy maze of underground staircases. Once outside, I am guided by a beautifully clear drawing that the newspaper-kiosk seller has made in my notebook. And while walking, I start finding aliens in the forest, where people are cheerfully picnicking in, around, above or around…

In this forest I found by sheer chance one of my favourite fetish hybrids: the ramp-stairs: a mix between a diagonal surface and conventional steps, to be used in many forms. Parent and Virilio already exposed the possibilities of freely squatting an oblique surface some decades ago (memories of my architecture master thesis, exactly two Junes ago now!). So before leaving the city, I grant myself with the only two architectural sins in this trip of spontaneous everyday detours; two pieces of open voids where people inhabit and appropriate themselves of a diagonal circulation.

First, another ramp-stairs system by OMA inside a Museum (more elegant than the Chicagoan ones) and staircase outside it, and second, the hole excavated as a plaza/corridor by Perrault at a University campus. While the former is a C-shape covering of an existing uphill circulation between a bus stop and the campus, the latter is a U-shape turning an open-air oblique corridor into a meeting area. I am glad that both cases seem almost more successful in their void condition than the own function of the building beside them.

Exhausted I sit down for a break in a sudden tiny café back somewhere in town, 3.5 m2 big, at twilight, and find a Surrealist illustrated story by Edward Gorey, The Object Lesson, lying also on a tiny shelf; an exquisite dark tale about absences, missed connections, dreams and surreptitious absurdities. Originally printed in 1958, it appeared the same year as other surrealist inventors dreamt of re-reading the city.

Here, the Seoul Series end.

[images 1-4> Seoul Art Park] [image5>compass rose on the floor of the basement 3 of a subway station] [image6> OMA's Museum of Art, Seoul Nationalal University] [image7> Perrault's Ewha Women's University Campus, Seoul] [all images by deconcrete2010]

Soaring temperatures make a sea of white shirts appear in the CBD of Seoul at noon. It is Monday lunchtime and this isolated area of the city (literally an island) dedicated to finance becomes invaded. Although clothing stores at the groundfloors of corporate buildings advertise only Westerners wearing suits, I hardly see any of them in the real world.

This recently planned area starts being invaded by alien skyscrapers blossoming all around, and despite not existing any sense of a lively city, the fact of finding several 24h kimchi-sushi restaurants, makes me remind that Koreans are amongst the ones with most working hours in the world.

It is impossible to follow anyone randomly. Any try makes me follow workers to an eating place or back to the office. Bored of these non-productive routines and being stuck at the main crossing, I almost feel obliged, first to go also for lunch, and second, to move on to another neighbourhood.

Eager to visit the Rainbow Cathedral, an art installation somewhere in Seoul that I read via newsletter some time ago, I take the subway to that station. After appearing in an anodyne huge crossing, I realize I mistook the line; so asking everybody for a rainbow in the street is a fruitless desperate operation. This makes me go into a PC room (or an Internet Cafe in a stinky basement full with video-games freaks) and check the map for the first time in Seoul and explore these anodyne highways while walking to the exhibition.

I discover then a network of anonymously big crossings, where 5&5 lane highways intersect each other. the city in-between is as dull as the crossings themselves, making these crossroads the most exciting points. There is a gap of 300 to 400 metres between each other and surprisingly all of them have quite a big slope separating these valleys, reminding me of San Francisco, and making me walk up and down, up and down, up and down, again and again… It takes me 5 crossroads to realize that Mondays do not like art exhibitions and another 3 to find the nearest subway station.

While detouring the city in the most explorer-related sense, leaving all outdated Situationist politics aside, it is very useful to use the subway map  in order to make the city even more abstract. Like transnational geographies, moving from one point to another and forgetting what lies in-between, either if is a street block or a whole country, turns the city into a virtual cloud of scattered situations.

After seeing my seventh golf course flying over a carparking and the third soldier carrying a cosmetics bag, I cannot find any office worker going for dinner in his white shirt. but it is time for me to do so.

The whole lighting neighbourhood is turned off. It’s Sunday morning in Seoul and this whole industrial district providing any kind of electric component is closed. The beautiful Seun Arcade, an immensely long concrete building threats demolition, for the sake of a green park; the city thinks that turning derelict structures from the 1960s into open parks is a magic formula for political success.

Today my psychogeographical strategy has more to do with psychopath than with psychological geographies (or psycho-paths). Instead of following random people to be guided through new parts of the city, I choose and chase my prey imagining his story beforehand. I also used to do this when making crosswords; imagining simple stories of why the author would have chosen that word that day.

The first individual results to be a baseball player leading me to a hidden field; the second is a Japanese/Korean student memorising words all her way and the third notices that I am following his bag with the printed word Tokyo, and starts a kind of zig-zag play by changing direction at every corner. After a while, he is getting nervous, so I decide to quit: I have arrived to a very interesting area.

My psycho-instinct takes me to the National Cemetery subway station after seeing a huge sign. It is Sunday morning, and it is full of elderly people. But instead of having a depressive ambiance, families gather joyfully for a picnic at his ancestors’. This place is a mix between a National memorial to war victims, and a meeting point to celebrate life. Corpses are mere numbers in a vast extension of rationally ordered graves. And I suddenly remember this Situationist game of interchanging graves, putting the Peter’s one at Mary’s, and Mary’s at Steven’s…

After this carparking-like park, I discovered a new area, by following the Japanese student. It is a wasteland under an elevated highway among railway tracks. Dozens of disabled veterans (having been or not involved with war) wander around this creepy post-apocalyptic place. The fact that there is a charity open air canteen, gathers people all together. It is shocking to change from this panorama to the lavish Ferraris lane I find some stations away, guided by the guy carrying the Tokyo bag. I am not interested in street names, so I rename them myself, depending on what I live or find there: only luxury vehicles!

This makes me think of the linear map I am producing of Seoul. It needs to be connected to place and psychological perception (phenomenology), but also Time is basic.

The map of my city and the city will both end as soon as I give up moving and the drawing line ends. The rest of the existing city, probably 90% of the surface, which i have not detoured, do not need to be represented. It does not exist for me. And I learn that whenever a city does not show up with any new attractive corner, anything new to discover, it is not worth living there any longer. Provocation is then dead.

Second day of derive: the fact that Saturday is traditionally the leisure day, has also made the people I was following in Seoul, to take me to shopping districts, or accidentally monumental spots; these were anyway lying one next to each other: trendy consumption together with culture origins.  

Walking along lanes filled up with multitude of clothing stores, in between I meet Korean folk dances all along, or an spontaneous taekwondo show, or a procession of Royal guards in traditional costumes, or a replica of a traditional village, or a woman handing brochures for a religious sect asking me whether I need spiritual comfort f0r my depression. (do I look so depressed?!) The answer is a sign I find later wondering whether I am bored!

I discover a network of back alleys, which were originally built for common people in order not to walk along the main street, since they would be obliged to kneel down whenever a Lord walk by. So these alleys turned into lively spots for the everyday avoiding imposed protocols.

Suddenly Berlin appears in front of me! Five years ago, the city gave a piece of the Wall to Seoul, trying to achieve a peaceful reunification of the two Koreas. Just in front, I found the Canal. If yesterday some alleys remind me of Tokyo, now I have landed back in Kreuzberg, but with cleaner waters. The city has destroyed the 1950s highway, in order to recover the historical river which used to cross the city, and give it back to citizens. A project which pushed the Major of the City become the Prime Minister of the country. Should Shanghai recover its dried up network of channels as well?

For a moment, I decide to make the pre-fab Chinese City prototype guide me, and leave my derivators aside. Ancient Seoul copied their philosophy in order to plan their own urban grid. So as soon as I see the Gate to the Imperial Palace, with the river at my back a mountain in front, I prove that I am in the North-South fengshui axis. I didn’t want to use cardinal points, but I needed to prove whether an Empire transported the same urban concept to all its conquers.

To finish the day, I let one business card from an amazingly crazy shop guide me to their other branch somewhere in the city. After one hour of lost paths, I end up in an over-pretentiously designed area, where it seems to be a Tokyo-like competition going on about who has the weirdest haircut. a whole street with cafes and cafes and cafes and cafes…

enough for today.

Arrived in Seoul. An endless railway bridge crosses from the airport island to mainland peninsula. the left side of my ride is an esplanade of mud, whereas sea water covers the right side landscape.  there is time to imagine flooding and emptying cities with water.

The first journey of the series starts with Shanghai’s map.  i draw every movement on my spontaneous itinerary into it. but after a whole day of virtual abstractions, it does not make sense any more for me. sorry, Debord, but this situationist strategy n.1 forces me to an unpleasant derive. so i decide to give it up, and shift to strategy n.2> being guided by other derivators or citizens that I just intituively  follow.

I choose my prey, follow it,  I can even smell it in short distance, and afterwards discard it until either I find something interesting or I loose it in a crowd. some go into buildings, others meet people, others seem too lost…

This strategy is going to produce a graphic linear map of the city, out of the situations I experience, directly related to a specific time. north, south, east and west do not count any more; but references are only visual instead of linking portions of the city. a sort of conceptually moving city, as ancient Mayas did along the Mexican jungle, discarding what has been left behind.

found situations:

* a golf course covering a parking. the oblique net allows balls return back to players and works as shadowing for cars. 

* Women’s University: a whole neighbourhood oriented to female cultural, commercial and services consumption. 

* non-democratic subway system: instead of a flat-rate, the price of the ticket depends on the amount of stations, making me decide the end of the journey before entering the train. (in case i am legal!)

* French antiques neighbourhood: it seems to be a fever consumption of 19th century bombastic furniture.

* hyper-abundance of Christian churches. I start to wonder, whether the amazingly status of development in this rich Korean society is leading to an increasing soul emptiness; the built form of pure loneliness.

fear of the day> where to sleep. i haven’t seen an economic hotel in the whole day. a girl i ask in a nice cafe offers me to sleep at her place in an extra room. i go with her, we derive together, and after 15 minutes of impossible conversation Lee wants to charge me 80 euros. Just similar to another couple of sex-motels I have tried, so after 3 hours of failed attempts it is time to assume it and go into an Internet basement to find a place before midnight.

once settled, i meet another derivator, who virtually takes me to his favourite club in Seoul. he tells me of a night spent at this top exclusive place, which charge 500 US$ only for the cover. but as he explains, the good part is that you can even go with only one friend (probably one can go there alone) and feel like in a private party. the club has dozens of rooms, where they provide girls you choose, to dance there; neither prostitutes nor gogo dancers; just normal people having a drink in your lonely private party.

so decided, every day I am trying different situationist strategies in my drawing of a graphic linear map of Seoul, out of time moments.

Guy Debord wrote in 1955 about a friend of his having just traveled through the Harz region in Germany, by means of a map of the city of London, whose directions he had blindly followed. [tom mcdonough editing the situationists and the city]

so tomorrow, i’ve decided to flyxperiment to southkorean Seoul and start a 5 day-series of dérive explorations, (un)guided by a map of Shanghai (fully in Chinese). i have no referent of its form, but that both cities have a sort of a main river meeting a smaller one. someone told me that shanghai lacks of a huge mountain in downtown. maybe shanghai turns mountaineous, maybe seoul finds its dreamt urban grid. no idea where to go, to sleep or to eat. but i have a small bag as luggage and loads of excitement with me.

has the day already arrived when some cities are built for dérive, as Debord predicted? next 5 posts, hopefully, from somewhere in seoul.

psychogeographies to be continued…

[image> Vinland map, 1434 AC. speculated version of America's discovery occurring before Columbus's expedition in 1492 AC via bnl]