Reading Performances
The 14th Seoul Mediacity pre-Biennale Inheriting the Future is a new project format that brings together both an exhibition and reading performances. The reading performances bring to the surface sensations long submerged beneath the many layers of meaning surrounding the works. They are further expanded through four literary texts: Plato’s Symposium, Kim Tae-yong’s Kokdu: A Story of Guardian Angels, Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, and Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question. Cutting across time and space to speak of existence and the world, these texts stand in as proxy questioners of the themes brought about by past Biennales.
Due to reading performance’s performative nature, the act of reading aloud generates different sensations each time depending on the person who is reading and the conditions in which this is carried out, revealing complex layers surrounding the action itself that cannot be reduced to a single meaning. Summoning the events of different times condensed within artworks, Inheriting the Future lays claim to, through reading, the endlessly proliferating possibilities of newness.
＊ This program will be conducted in Korean only.
＊ Reading materials will not be provided.
＊ Program details and duration are subject to change depending on on-site conditions.
＊ The Last Question is included in The World’s Great SF Stories (Koryowon Media, 1992), which is currently out of print. However, the full-text may be accessed through designated PCs in the National Library of Korea and partner libraries. Please refer to the following link to search the list of partner libraries: https://www.nl.go.kr/NL/contents/N50201020000.do
＊ Selected excerpts from Bartleby, the Scrivener and Symposium will be read.
View excerpt pages from *Bartleby, the Scrivener* (Seoul: Minumsa, 2024)
p.9p.12 ~ p.18
p.20 ~ p.21
p.21 ~ p.34
p.36 ~ p.55
p.57 ~ p.76
View excerpt pages from *Symposium* (Gyeonggi: Acanet, 2020)
p.32 ~ p.35p.44 ~ p.49
p.55 ~ p.68
p.70 ~ p.77
p.98 ~ p.100
p.109 ~ p.127
p.127 ~ p.135
p.142 ~ p.146
p.157 ~ p.176
