Introduction

Exhibitions

Publications

Release dates

Project types

Commissioners

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earth-2023-05-29

Source: Google Earth, captured 29 May 2023

The literal meaning of utopia – “an ideal state” – is “no place.” The Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) is a space created as a result of a violent clash between conflicting ideas and desires for utopia. As a site that does not belong either here or there, it is also a kind of utopia/nowhere. The empty container lot at the Dorasan Station is where Here/There is temporarily installed. It seeks to reclaim the site – which is nowhere therefore nonexistent – as a specific place, highlighting its dual identity that resists an either/or categorization. The work is an exercise of reimagining a space that is neither here nor there as a place that is here as well as there.

The letterform is constructed against the surface grid of the enormous container yard. The words are so big that they are not easily recognizable from anywhere but from far above: an impossibility given the sensitive nature of the site. This inaccessibility makes the meaning of the work even more poignant.

Photo: courtesy of Inter-Korean Transit Office