White Stork Nest

‘NERIRI KIRURU HARARA’? Artbook from Small Room to Outside World, 2016, Book, 24 x 16 cm, With the support of SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul 2016

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The artist squatted in an empty house of a public housing tenement. This space is on top of the building where White Stork Nest’s workshop and studio is located. Unlike general artistic squatting that is radical and exaggerated, this proceeded secretively and quietly. The artist took up a room that was not his, hypothetically conceived that his rent was overdue. He then did a productive act equivalent to the amount of the rent. This art book was written during this performative act of squatting. He also visited his colleagues’ unfamiliar places, expanding this art project. The art book includes content from one of the pre-Mediacity Seoul 2016 programs, “Meeting on Community Art: the exhaustion (regeneration) of public art,” including related materials, coverage on the participating communities, general context on White Stork Nest’s practices, the recorder’s personal life and research, and other comprehensive configurations and fragmentary information.

White Stork Nest

White Stork Nest is a studio for cultural and artistic activities located in Banghak-dong, Dobong-gu which is at the northern perimeter of Seoul. It serves as the culture, arts and social hub for the community connecting resources and people in a web of relationships. At present, three artists live in the area and engage with the neighborhood’s residents and young activists in creative arts and culture projects. They are experimenting with having artists become a part of the local community to foster cultural developments and nurture new relationships through creative activities. Banghak-dong is an area where there is a concentration of micro-scale factories for manufacturing socks. The White Stork Nest team noted the large bundles of cloth that is sheared from each sock before the toe is sewn closed and thrown away as scraps. They have developed an upcycling method of weaving the discarded fabric together to use as material for arts and crafts. This has evolved into a uniquely local culture and art initiative, and serves, furthermore, as an invigorating catalyst of life in the community. White Stork Nest now continues to hold workshops to explore the opportunity that the sock upcycling project presents.