Preservative Measures_ SAEWOON Market

'PRESERVATIVE MEASURES'

A momentary installation \\\\

Eric Reeder + Boris Oicherman

Painted City

Seoul today by its self imposed regulation is a city of beige. Color emerges in limited quantity most commonly associated in districts of commerce or industrial activity. Color in its sparsity, is inter-woven as a function specific feature, practical or otherwise and in Seoul, programmatic in demarcation. Color has rendered the city of Seoul a map of ‘zones’ to be analyzed and interpreted. Blue; the color of industry as seen from above, in recent years has increasingly become obsolete within the political confines of central Seoul. Color is becoming the beige of everyday expectation, a pacified neutral condition. 

Saewoon Market from above. Light industrial practice evident in blue metal roofs and colored plastic awnings.

Preservative Measures 1.0

Preservative Measures

Reflections

There are always more than two sides in a mirrors reflective performance.  The reflected image itself, in its personified perfection, and the residual effects of light, shadow, and form that are cast off indiscriminately, at times revealing the unexpected. Our work in Saewoon market set out to do just that; capturing an unexpected time in a neighborhood becoming extinct; our method of making record and highlighting what we are unlikely to see at first glance. Boris and I experiment with reflective film. It is light weight and flexible, allowing for variable position and arrangement quickly. Our actions to line the streets with the reflective material are spontaneous and fast, as late afternoon sun transforms the narrow alley passages. Light is bent, refracted, saturated in diffuse color. Diluted in canopy time and adapted for today - the aging industrial base of Saewoon market (and other industrial districts around Seoul), nearly forgotten in tucked away urban positions behind the new front of progressive activity. For the cities residents today, it has become easy to forget the past in Seoul. 

We situate our delicately reflective sheets, collecting/ reflecting color and expanding confined urban space. Moments are captured with the snap of each digital image, a memory in place forever preserved.

All installation photos: Boris Oicherman \ Eric Reeder

Preservative Measures_ Becoming Extinct

Reflected streets_ Public or Private?

The Saewoon neighborhood is paranoid and with reason. Suspicions around each corner as we make our way to the depths of concealed inner blocks. We encounter stares and questions about our intentions. Silence pervades outside of the occasional clap or shuffle heard overhead in sounds carried on a breezy afternoon. Venturing down dead end alleyways we are stopped by raised voices from behind, questioning our destination and motive. We remain impartial given our simple objectives of spatial discovery and where to reflect upon next.  On any given Sunday store fronts are shuttered and locked, outside of a few active businesses choosing to remain open. It is a predominant day of rest for the majority in this working class neighborhood. 

Time is latent in Saewoon, embedded amongst the ongoing adaptive transformations of the neighborhood. Display colored lights are suspended in frozen position on steel screen mesh. Coated with decades of airborne dust particles- a revealing accumulation of stasis and odd preservation. The neighborhood has become a dead end. 

Dead-end Seoul

"unfolded" corner