Friday, March 06, 2009

More unwanted liquids

Korea is hard on me. Today I took black coffee. I do all sorts of things here I would never do in my American life. But there's something about hanging out w/Koreans, and also w/Europeans, that makes me drink coffee. And, more unwillingly, sit in obscene amounts of secondhand smoke.

This was my lunch. Honey cinnamon toast. Michael took Dohee and me to a lovely photo gallery/cafe and we just launched into our meeting. His Australian designer friend stopped by for a bit, and told me about a nearby place called Cook & Book (sisters, one a chef, one a book artist). Then, the performance artist that she wanted us to meet arrived.

Dohee had told me about this guy a while back but I never made the connection b/c I was just overwhelmed with other things. But wow. This guy is the real deal. I mean, the consummate performance artist. Impeccable, gorgeous, and insanely well-connected. I loved how he talked about performance art not being visual art or music or dance or theatre while still encompassing all of those things. And that he never imagined he would do this kind of work, but here he is, making amazing work and making a living doing it.

Michael and I were blown away, and after several hours (we eventually migrated to Kim Baek-Ki's office), tried to recover over dinner and then tea/coffee.

[The office.] It's almost too much to digest. During the day, I got a call from the professor down south, so I'll hit the road next week and she will make reservations at her university's guest house so accommodations are all taken care of. I'll get to meet the national intangible property holder for hanji screen making! Plus visit two museums.

Raining, pouring, pouring. Tomorrow I see my joomchi teacher and then back to my dyeing teacher. I have to call my jiseung teacher to report of my progress/lack of progress. Haven't touched my Korean homework. It's endless. Fantastic. Exhausting. Korea.

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