2006
public art project by the artists' group msk7
South Korea
The 7 artists from the msk7 group - Mona Babl, Christine Berndt, Won-Yeon Chung, Kati Gausmann, Ricarda Mieth, Ulrike Mohr and Anja Sonnenburg on the road in South Korea, travelling from West to East parallel to the border between North and South Korea with four HGVs.
The outer surfaces of the HGVs, the spaces inside them - and the table tennis equipment installed there form a complex game of configuration of binary oppositions and their interstices, zones of connection and division. The side panels of the four HGVs depict large-format panorama views; each panel presents one representation of the Korean coastal strip and one of the political border between North and South Korea. At the staging posts along the route from the west to the east coast, the side panels of the wing body lorries open up and present the play spaces within: four table tennis tables invite you to play ping-pong, calling on visitors to respond and interact.
"The ping pong N-S-O-W happening occurs in the border area between North and South Korea in a period when East-West border experiences in Berlin have been transposed from topographical and political spaces into mental and social tableaux and at a time when the Cold Wars ideologically laden North-South images are being staged anew in Korea. msk7 has opened up a very special shared play space for this kind of border experience set somewhere between ping-pong diplomacy and individuals feeling tugged to and fro, between the extremes of territorial and political tensions."
Robert Krokowski www.kunst-blog.com
Route: Incheon_Imjingak_Cheolwon_Hwacheon_Goseong
_Sokcho_Seoul
