By James Trotta
On Nov. 13, 2010, I headed to Platoon Kunsthalle in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul where I listened to lectures from several prominent Korean artists. Called an ``Insight Party,’’ the event was designed by a lecture company “micimpact” to bring open-minded people together and inspire them with the artists’ stories and ideas.
The event did succeed in sharing the artists’ ``insight.’’ One of the most interesting speeches was the final one, delivered by photographer, Kim Joong-man. Of his ideas, I appreciate that since anyone can buy a camera and start taking pictures, what separated Kim from less successful photographers was that he spent more time than others taking pictures. The message here is an important one for today’s youth; everyone is born with the talent to do great things and hard work will develop skill.
The speaker that elicited the most laughs from the audience was probably chef Edward Kwon. Kwon was the most charismatic public speaker of the night and his main message was that chefs deserve more respect in Korean culture. Evidence for this can be found in the expression, ``working to put food on the table’’ (an expression that translates well between Korean and English) and the lack of expressions like, ``working for clothes.’’
Kwon also pushed the audience to respect food when he asked those sitting on the floor to pick up their plates. I didn’t understand how keeping a plate on your lap shows greater respect for food than placing your plate on the floor. Also I must confess that I didn’t understand many of his jokes even after they were translated into English for me. After nearly 10 years in Korea I’m reminded that I still have much to learn about Korean language and culture. The Insight Party inspired me as much as it inspired anyone else.
Fashion designer Lee Sang-bong’s speech was somewhat disappointing because he did relatively little to interact with the audience. Much of the time Lee spent looking at his own visual aids – an extremely common public speaking mistake.
Park Woong-hyun, a creative director known for coming up with hit advertisements, took the audience through his creative process in explaining how he conceived his SK Broadband commercials. The commercials are visually very interesting and the audience certainly enjoyed seeing the work of art that inspired them. This is probably the speech that I most wanted my students to see because the process of creating an ad is a great look at how ideas can be developed. However, I wish I’d had the opportunity to ask him about the ideas of Seth Godin, the author of ``Purple Cow’’ and several other books on marketing.
Godin argues that TV advertising is no longer effective because people tune them out. I asked him if interesting, creative TV ads be successful marketing tools, and Godin answered, ``Not in a reliable way, they can’t, because interesting rarely means effective.’’ In other words, an ad focused on selling will probably be ignored while an ad that’s entertaining enough to catch people’s attention probably won’t be a great sales tool. Unfortunately, the Insight Party consisted only of lectures and I was unable to ask Park to comment.
Jin Bora is a jazz pianist who gave me a much needed break from concentrating on Korean because she spent most of her time playing jazz tunes. I’ve always been a big jazz fan but there was an earlier musical performance I found even more interesting because it introduced me to the ``ajaeng,’’ a string instrument originally used in Korean court music.
Kim Jin-yuk, a producer working with Knowledge e-channel, a popular program aired on EBS, discussed his current work but also made an interesting observation about human nature and the differences between the sexes. He said that men are more likely to look at the world around them passively while women are more observant and better able to experience their surroundings. He claims that this is why when women walk to the fitting room they’ll probably pass all kinds of accessories. Men wouldn’t notice the accessories on their way to the fitting rooms so accessories for men are often placed near the cash registers.
While the speeches were full of interesting ideas the event was less successful in bringing people together. There certainly was potential. The crowd was surprisingly young. I was impressed that so many of Korea’s youth would be willing to spend a few hours on a Friday night listening to lectures and more impressed that they would pay 50,000 won to do it.
I love the idea of bringing Korea’s bright young minds together and having well-known artists share success stories with them. In fact, I wished that I had invited a few of my students from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies because it seemed like their kind of crowd and I thought that they too should be inspired by some of Korea’s most successful artists.
However, despite filling a bar with a mostly young, attractive, and well-to-do crowd, there wasn’t much interaction between people in the audience. The organizers tried to encourage this interaction by encouraging people to wear little stickers with their names and a keyword for networking. These proved to be difficult to read and in the short breaks between speakers people seemed to keep to their groups so very little networking got done.
After the final lecture, I was somewhat surprised at how quickly the crowd exited. Despite their youth, few people were interested in the after party. Part of this can be blamed on the featured speakers leaving immediately after their speeches; perhaps if there had been a possibility of interacting with the artists, people would have stuck around and talked to each other. Just a few minutes later the place was in club mode with music loud enough to discourage conversation.
Even if it didn’t turn out to be a huge networking event, the Insight Party itself was a success. I encourage people interested in art and culture to seek out similar opportunities to listen to successful Koreans share their stories.
The writer is an assistant professor in the department of English Linguistics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.