Moving ‘You’  on the Street :  The Space 32 _  Songdo International Free Economic Zone, 2010

Performance with Floor mattress on wheels at 2010 by Kim Soonim, VDEO 31', C-Print

   On the evening of Sunday June 13, between six o’clock and half past eight, after putting on the pajamas I made out of cotton cloth, I removed my makeup and walked outside, barefoot, pulling a yo [floor mattress] on wheels. I was looking for a place to sleep in the neighborhood of Songdo-dong. The place where I briefly fell asleep was on a sidewalk near a real estate office in front of a traffic light at an intersection.

   People I encountered on the sidewalk during the performance were startled at the sight of a barefooted woman with a long loose hair in her pajamas, walking along with a mattress on wheels. When I fell asleep while the photographer, who was documenting the event, was away, people gathered around me and whispered “call the police.” I woke up to a small disturbance (someone actually tried to wake me up). The sun set while I walked around one block. As I walked under the neon signs and street lamps, I met people who had heard about my performance.

    During the exhibition period, this movable mattress was freely available to participants for taking a rest on the streets in New Songdo City. I asked the participants to write their stories (dreams and reveries shared with their blankets) on a drawing book placed near the mattress, instead of paying a fee. The drifting mattress is a drifting place and it symbolizes a city on the move. The drawing book recorded portraits of people on the movable mattress, resting uneasily for now. After the exhibition, the mattress and the notebook were removed from the site. Although the number of participants was small, I was delighted by the little stories they left.

  translator. Yekyung Kil,  supervision. Esther Yu