Space After Spectacle

It is an apartment construction site that represents Korean urban residential culture.

Once the shantytown on the hills was bulldozed, an apartment complex with a rich town’s name took the place. Out of the fear of losing a competition and despite the price premium for being close to a flashy neighborhood across the river, I ended up buying a unit. While this numbered rectangular space built on the air is legally mine, I am anxious. The concern of selling this property already gives me a headache, although I just bought it.

About five decades ago, Guy Debord has warned the world that it would be full of people just like me. He named the particular loss of inherent worth and the form of worshipping commodities as “spectacle.” Spectacles have degraded us into spectators no longer capable of reasons and emotions. While we are surrounded by us on all directions, we ostracize ourselves.

Meanwhile, apartments have become the very symbol of spectacles. Construction site floors are flooded with cryptic numbers, signs and codes. The fence screen that encircles the entire outer wall must be trying to hide what happens on the inside. Wires are so tangled that nobody could possibly guess where they are connected to; thin steel frames are connected by some means, and then get covered with thick cement. Yesterday’s floor becomes today’s ceiling, and bumps develop from smooth surfaces in a day. How does the world disturb us? The very process of spectacles are as much as spectacle as the outcomes themselves. I feel anxious and nauseated.

For I do not possess the level of intellect to give a logical account of my social standpoint, I wish to speak through photographs. Spectacles are not mere sets of images; rather, they are the social relationships among the people mediated by these images! Since our modern history was not built upon our willful choices, we have become secularized. For that, I give my best to be more meticulous.