HERE BE DRAGONS

URBAN MOUNTAIN RANGES

The following is an article by Mr J. S. Gale written in 1900. He was a presbyterian missionary who spent eleven years in Korea, and also wrote the Korean-English Dictionary (Yokohama, 1897)

Mountains are all personified in Korea. They are dragons usually, and according to their formation, graves situated on them are propitious or unpropitious. It never does to build a house upon a moving or flying dragon. If the personal influences of a hill site be too strong, there will be many goblins, and the house will come to destruction...There is always associated in the native’s mind the idea of guardianship with the mountains. Seoul, the capital, has to its north its guardian mountain Sam-kak-san the three-horned mountain... Graves too must have their guardian peaks or the family will not prosper. A common saying in geomancy, “Dragons do not see stones, me do not see dust (in the air), dogs do not see snow, tigers do not see paper.”

People are born according to the formation of the hills on which their ancestors’ grave are situated. A craggy geomantic formation brings forth warriors, a smooth well-rounded formation brings forth scholars - a pointed formation brings forth writers - an opposing formation brings forth robbers - jade peaks bring forth beautiful women. Of course all of this must be viewed and tested by a geomancer, to know what forms are destined to appear.

Mr. Sin-Ki-Sun, the present prime minister of Korea, remarked recently that Korea could never be independent, because she had so many mountains. “Mountains,” said he, “depending as they do on each other, denote dependence.”

The mountains are unavoidable in Seoul, and no matter how far the city spreads, there will always be the tip of a mountain looming in the skyline. Few cities have such an available opportunity to look back at itself. Given this, and the importance of mountain to the culture of Korea, it no wonder that so many people choose to climb them every weekend. In doing so you are given the chance to see yourself within the city, where your home is, and where your friends and family are - your place within the world. They may be a heterotopia unique to Korea, a antithesis to disorienting effects of travel by subway.

URBAN MOUNTAINOUS

In recent times, new shapes has risen out of the ground obscuring the old mountains and perhaps creating new ones - the APTs. It is doubtful that these have the same resonance.

MOUNTAINOUS URBAN

The view of man to mountain and mountain to man has always been an important one. It is a shame the view of man back to mountain is becoming increasingly rare.

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FORMATIONS OF CONTRACT

via Shorpy submitted by Dave edited by TD

One evening recently, I had a conversation with Cristina Gerada about the Free Unit, and she happened to mention that at Maltese funerals everyone recieves a little bookmark memento mori of the deceased. These are kept in the backs of drawers and in boxes on top of wardrobes, but somehow always avoid being thrown away. After a while of pondering we decided that this was because to do so would be to throw away the last remnants of the deceased. Whether you know them or not, by accepting the memento you agree to guard the continued existence of the recently dead, as long as your conscious will allow - a contract of memory.

Memory seems to play an increasingly important part in the development of 6 FEET UP, and contracts of memory are at the core of its subject matter. How then to represent this? 

I was reminded of the old photographs you often see, of football teams or game hunters or beauty queens and though they might not mean any thing to me, they represent an event to those present at the moment captured. The photo is not a contract by itself, but it records the shared experience, and thus contract of memory between the sitters. The nature of that contract is obscured to all but those directly involved by the passing of time. It may have mutated, as the relationships between those involved may have changed, but what remains constant is the photograph, irrefutably proving that at some point an experience was shared.

So, to commemorate the signing of my Free Unit contract, I propose a group photograph of everyone present. The result should have the faces obscured - so that the event forms the contract, not the photograph. Each person knows who they are, and has an idea of the part they played - but the truth of that will, like memory, evolve alongside the project itself.

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