Nam Seoul Living Arts Museum

NERIRI KIRURU HARARA experiments as much with the development of media technology as with the value of variable communities and the artistic languages in common use within them that are being engendered through new media.

Nam Seoul Living Arts Museum (SeMA Nam Seoul) was established as a crafts and design museum, after the former Belgian Consulate building constructed during the Korean Empire was moved from Hoehyeon-dong, Jung-gu to Namhyeon-dong near Sadang Station (a major entry area to the city, connecting Gyeonggi province and the Southern part of Seoul). This was done as part of the downtown renewal project. Perhaps because of the eccentricity of the new location, one suddenly experiences a strange time when entering this neoclassical building, isolated like an island amidst the commercial area near Sadang Station. The exotic feeling emitted from the traditional European building and the indistinct nostalgia towards the vestiges of modern history are mixed with a sense of freedom from the rush and exhaustion brought by a major traffic point passing through a city center, resulting in what must resemble the experience of slipping into an unknown time and space.

Here, this August, NERIRI KIRURU HARARA will establish a temporary learning community, The Village. Situated on SeMA Nam Seoul’s first floor and in its garden, The Village adds meals, discussions and recesses to the processes of knowledge- and craft-learning. During the biennale, the output from the pre-biennale and summer camp will be exhibited and follow-up lectures will be held.

On the second floor of SeMA Nam Seoul, each room on both sides of the corridor features media artworks by female artists. These media spaces seem isolated but in fact extend into each other, connecting with the exterior through tall windows and sometimes they even form a group, like an archipelago containing individual works.The works gathered here transform the city, nature, cyberspace and abstract areas into a science/speculative fictional environment. They perform how the human body has changed and continues transforming through advancements in media technology and digital development. Meanwhile, Han Mook, the only male artist invited in this building and the oldest participating artist in Mediacity Seoul 2016, questions the newness of new media with the half-century long trajectory that he took since Apollo 11's Moon landing, within which all spaces terminate on the flat surface of two-dimensional paintings.

NERIRI KIRURU HARARA in SeMA Nam Seoul, beginning with The Village summer camp, can be a haven for women confronted with misogyny on a daily basis, or an educational community where learning is embraced everyday, or a temporary real utopia.