'Aeroport Mille Plateaux' offers tourism of absurd
.jpg?w=728)
“Gate 23,” above, and “He (Black)” on display as part of “Aeroport Mille Plateaux” at Plateau in downtown Seoul through Oct. 18. / Coutesy of the artists and Plateau
By Kwon Mee-yoo
The summer holiday season is at its peak and the city is rather calm as many people have left on vacation. For those who are still in town, Plateau, Samsung Museum of Art, in central Seoul, has opened an airport — complete with flight information boards and a duty free store — with an artistic twist.
The art museum got a new look by Elmgreen and Dragset, an artist duo composed of Michael Elmgreen from Denmark and Ingar Dragset from Norway. The two have a knack for transforming the context of a place such as “Prada Marfa,” a Prada boutique-shaped site-specific installation in the middle of the desert in Marfa, Texas.
Their latest project in Seoul converts an urban museum into an airport — but not an ordinary one, including an unreachable gate and a clock that cannot tick.
Elmgreen and Dragset visited Seoul two years ago to prepare the exhibit and derived inspiration from the architecture of the museum. Plateau, located in downtown Seoul, has a unique structure with a glass pavilion and the artists were reminded of another common glass and steel structure — an airport.
“This airport in a museum has a hidden message about diversity,” Elmgreen said. “Museums and airports are places where we artists spend a lot of time so we thought of combining the two. In addition to the architectural similarity, both are made to control our behavior.”
The fictional airport received code “AMP,” which stands for “Aeroport Mille Plateaux,” the title of the exhibit. It came from French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s book “A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.”
Elmgreen and Dragset “staged” an airport within the museum, combining the architecture with readymade and existing sculptures. Some of the works on display were created for the duo’s previous exhibits, but they reused them in a new context.
“We wanted to show how some objects can be fluid in a different context and have additional meanings,” Dragset said.
The Aeroport Mille Plateaux provides a realistic airport environment, yet is absurd at the same time.
After stamping their name onto a plane ticket, visitors will encounter an old-fashioned departures board which excites visitors with exotic destinations such as Karthago and El Dorado. A Giacometti-like walking man sculpture is wrapped by a luggage wrapping machine, which contradicts the original meaning of the sculpture in “The Traveler.”
All the visitors have to go through a security check before encountering the “Modern Moses,” a frighteningly realistic wax figure of a baby left — or abandoned — in front of a cash machine, and a “Donation Box,” filled with a bunch of useless items.
Restricted goods and kept in a showcase as if to be admired and the first class lounge with a mannequin maid is chained shut for visitors. Crucially, the stairway to Gate 23 is broken, stopping the visitors boarding the airplane to embark on their journey.
The experience continues through the museum shop downstairs. At the fake duty free store, visitors will find an interesting mix of goods — some of them are on sale, while others are part of the exhibit such as the Mille Plateaux eau de parfum and A Thousand Dreams whiskey.
“Alcohol is associated with the idea of travel, questioning what true freedom is,” Dragset said.
The artists want the viewers to stop and think about the weirdness of the piece as they believe art functions most when it is not considered art.
“The most important artwork is in your head. Nothing is realized until perceived,” Elmgreen said.
The exhibit runs through Oct. 18. Admission is 3,000 won for adults. For more information, visit www.plateau.or.kr or call 1577-7595.