Within the framework of the planned project “ping pong N-S-E-W”, the msk7 collective will travel with four trucks from West to East along the border between North and South Korea. The project is played out over the bodies of the trucks as well as in their interiors. With two large-format panorama views covering both sides of the four trucks, the travelling convoy brings to view natural as well as political borders.

While one side of the trucks depicts coastal areas of Korea as fluid, natural border, the opposite side shows the politically motivated, man-made border between North and South Korea.

At various stopping points along the way, the sides of the Wing-Bodys are raised, turning the trucks’ interiors into a stage on which ping-pong tables have been set up and invite people to play.

The ping-pong tables are each divided into two colours. Drawing on the Korean traditional colours, which play a central role within Korean culture, they are painted red/black, green/white, black/white and red/blue. Black/red stands for North/South; green/white for East/West; black/white and blue/red for Yin and Yang. The colours blue/red are also associated with marriage, the colours of man and woman. They thus symbolise the unification of both forces. In the Korean colour system, the colour yellow is assigned to the centre. The game will be played with yellow balls.

In the metaphorical sense of a ping-pong diplomacy, the public will become a playful part of the installation.


Exhibition period: 28th of October – 1st of November
Sponsors: Art Council Korea, Art Council Incheon, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.
Mobile exhibition space: 4 trucks
The trucks will be placed in various formations.
Exhibtion locations: .....


msk7:
The artists’ collective is made up of six German artists and the South Korean artist Won Yeon Chung. Three of the German artists were born and grew up in former East Berlin; the other three came to Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall from West Germany. In 1997 Won Yeon Chung came to Berlin from South Korea to study art and stayed until 2004. At the beginning of 2005 she returned to South Korea. From the perspective of Won Yeon Chung who had experienced the process of political and personal unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall among East and West Germans, it seemed to her, as also to the German artists of the group, quite interesting to transport personal border experiences both conceptually and formally to North-South Korea – resulting finally in the collective project “ping pong N-S-E-W”.