COMO&HAPPY SCREEN_OCTOBER 2019 «City Landscape: I AM/WERE HERE/THERE»

2019. 10. 01 – 2019. 11. 06

Exhibition Venue & Open Hours

[COMO SCREEN]

SKT-Tower, Euljiro 1-ga Exit no.4 / Daejeon SKT Dunsan Bldg

08:30 ~ 21:00

[HAPPY SCREEN]

4F, SK building, 26, Jong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul

09:00 ~ 18:00

*Closed on weekends and public holidays

Entry Fee  Free

Organizer  Art Center Nabi, SK Telecom, SK Innovation

Artist  XRT(Extended Reality Art)

Exhibition Inquiry  02 2121 7224

<Exhibition Statement>

We have always lived with our memories just as we are here now at the moment when all of our stories are being accumulated. City Landscape:I AM/WERE HERE/THERE, an exhibition to be held as part of COMO&HAPPY SCREEN in October 2019 at Art Center Nabi, features I AM/WERE HERE/THERE(2018), an interactive VR work by XRT (Extended Reality Art), a Hong Kong-based, technology-driven creative collective. This work demonstrates an imaginary city marked by the historical scenes of Lee Tung Street in Hong Kong before it underwent a process of urban regeneration.

This piece is a virtual reality representation of scenes from Hong Kong’s Lee Tung Street, which was famed as a center for publishing and printing wedding cards. Also called the Wedding Card Street, a street for wedding cards that convey blessings and hold promises for love and happiness, it was locally famous and could have been a piece of cultural heritage, but it has now lost its meaning due to an urban renewal project. Although the urban renewal project did actively involve local residents and reflected their opinions, were the scenes of life and culture there really “regenerated”? XRT, a Hong Kong-based creative collective, relieve regrets about this situation using their virtual reality work. Its member artists denote the tale of a vanished city with the construction of Meta-Hong Kong, a virtual world with no limitations in terms of time or space. They create urban places that are subject to be forgotten or transformed against one’s will and wishes in an imaginary space and bring to mind the social and cultural significations of those places while generating a link between each individual’s memories and their work. 

XRT intends to re-examine the veritable meaning of change by reusing technology like virtual reality as part of their inquiry into the social changes growing cities undergo in the digital era. The exhibition I AM/WERE HERE/THERE is expected to serve as an opportunity for viewers to look around their surroundings and rethink the meaning of their life and scenes. 

<Artwork Description>

I AM/WERE HERE/THERE #2(2018), Video Projection, Interactive Virtual Reality.

Ⓒ XRT All Rights Reserved.

XRT restructures historic spaces that acted as the backdrops of social events during the modernization of Hong Kong in a virtual reality work. The first work of this project calls to mind private memories in places such as Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong-Kok where the Umbrella Movement took place in 2014 while designating them as meaningful spaces. This exhibition tells the story of Lee Tung Street, a street in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, as the second place featured in this series. This street was selected as an object of renewal by the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) in 2007 after the Urban Renewal Authority Ordinance was brought into force in 2000. Its demolition and regeneration caused the Wedding Card Street intrinsic to the local area to disappear, leaving many with feelings of regret. XRT attempts to reconsider the significance of urban renewal through remodeling of the local region’s identity, supporting the citizens’ will for preservation. 

Based on virtual reality, their work invites viewers to become avatars in Meta-Hong Kong. Viewers can see the world before demolition and regeneration took place in order to experience moments from that time and develop a new view of the present. A virtual city emerges as countless imaginary visitors it came into contact with-in different times and spaces amass in Meta-Hong Kong. This work will be displayed as one of the videos on the downtown façade. It is intended to convey the meaning of sound urban renewal to more viewers.

<About the Artist>

Hong Kong-based creative collective XRT’s name refers to Extended Reality Art. Its member artists attempt to re-convey imaginary experiences using realistic significance with works anchored in cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence, extended reality, and immersive technology. They carry out works examining the multifaceted meaning of changes in contemporary Chinese culture and local culture in the digital era and raise questions in search of the point of intersection with art. 

https://www.xrt.world

Exhibition Manager  HyeIn Jeon
Exhibition Curator  Heeyoon Choi

Exhibition Coordinators  Yeajin Cho
Promotion  Yukyung Chung
Video Editing  HoMan Kwon

Video Transmission  Junho Choi

Design  Yukyung Chung