SEOUL: CITY OF THE FUTURE
The once poor South Korean city has bloomed into a cultural capital with high-profile architecture, top museums and an influential arts scene.
by Tom Downey of Smithsonian
’M BEING CHAUFFEURED through a parking garage above Seoul’s main train station with Minsuk Cho, who heads one of the city’s most innovative architectural practices, Mass Studies. We got into a car on the first floor, supposedly to whisk us away to a party, but as we wind up and around the spiral ramp of the dimly lit structure, we become more and more confused about exactly where the driver is taking us. Atop the garage, which didn’t seem glamorous inside or out, we are met by the blinding explosions of dozens of paparazzi flashes. The photographers aren’t stalking us, of course, but the Korean pop starlets who I
stride down the red carpet at the entrance to this one-night Seoul art/fashion event hosted by New York’s New Museum and Calvin Klein. After grabbing two glasses of champagne we position ourselves so we can look across the street at the Korean- made, American-curated centerpiece of the event: a striking video artwork playing on a 20-story-high LED display normally used for advertisements, one of the largest of its kind. Cho tells me that the artists had to observe some very serious restrictions: “That display is so huge that if the video moves too fast, drivers stare at it, mesmerized, and they crash,” he says.
As we wander the white- tented party, moving from a room filled with buff and beautiful international underwear models to a congregation of American actors and then Korean artists, Cho tells me he can’t believe the changes he’s witnessing in his hometown. “When I left Seoul to study in New York 20 years ago, an event like this would have been inconceivable,” he says. “Forget about the international art world and the celebrities—just finding any Koreans dressed as well as the people at this party would have been impossible back then. Things have really changed.” In only a few decades, this capital has transformed itself from an impoverished
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EC Magazines | Summer Edition 2022
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