KOREAN NEW YEAR

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2000
text, New Year's calendar

The original installation was at the Mackey Apartment in Los Angeles. Text and a New Year’s calendar from a Korean Supermarket in the kitchen of that apartment.
In exhibitions that followed the New Year’s calendar was updated to the year of that exhibition; the sink of the kitchen became a drawing (adhesive vinyl).

Text:
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i live here more asian than ever before – i become more conscious that i live here more asian than before
my parents are more chinese than the chinese in china :i realize, at dinner with a friend
the rice i cooked with japanese curry – japanese curry to which i have added tofu and some mussels
the beer we drink is ‘HITE’ a korean beer
all the ingredients that i got – i bought yesterday at this korean supermarket
the pop-songs, a compilation – i got the other day in china-town
‘V-channel charts’ – since i had no idea what music was now ‘current’, ‘up to date’ – since i hardly knew any interprets…

here i was – living by myself again -a new apartment: empty – how would i fill it up? even before getting to the decorative part before making myself comfortable – what would i eat – what would i cook – how?… i haven’t been cooking for myself for a while, i realize when i picked up the package the other day i stopped at a supermarket – i looked inside standing there i wondered what i could buy – what i could cook – i remembered a korean supermarket just a few blocks away -this thought made me more comfortable filling my shopping trolley i have not been to korea i don’t speak korean – nor do i have a certain affection to it – but still, something familiar rose even when the cashier asked me in korean … something i can’t quote … assuming by my appearance i am ‘one of them’ ‘I am korean’ – – i simply nod, – said enough what she asked me – what i responded to – i received a korean new year’s calendar -hanging above my sink…
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Image 04: Another text work in the living room at the Mackey Apartment. It was installed above the dining table on the wall one saw first when entering the apartment.
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perhaps the reason
why i don’t go to the chinese supermarket
standing next to the frozen shrimp
i constantly see my aunts
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korean new year was produced during the Schindler Residency at the Mackey Apartment in Los Angeles. It is part of a group of works around coming home – daily structures of life.