City 2.0: Eun-duk Seo at TEDxDaejeon City2.0
Hello, everyone. I am Eun-Deok Seo, an 'idle sister' of Dae-Heung-Dong. It's nice to meet you all. Today, I would like to talk about City 2.0. I used '2.0' itself without changing the theme of City 2.0 because I figured it is an appropriate title for the theme. I think the most important quality of the neighborhood 2.0 I live in is 'autonomy'. Still, it may sound quite vague. So, I decided to narrow down the quality a little bit further and interpreted City 2.0 around the neighborhood where I live in, that is Dae-Heung-Dong, which you guys saw in the vedio just now, and the word 'idle sister' which means do whatever you want. The place I live in now is called 'San-Ho Inn'. You guys may ask how it is possible for a grown-up girl like myself to live in an inn.
Well, I'll tell you guys how I came to live in that inn later in this talk. On the other hand, I sometimes host small and shabby shows at the street. Also, I am a guide for the Dae-Heung-Dong tour. Nobody asked me to do it though. I can see that you guys' facial expressions are not very bright to hear this. (Laugh) I am also learning to be a clown. It's my small wish to stay a clown until when I become a grandmother. I can feel that you guys think that I'm a weirdo.. But I would like to share the story about the neighborhood I live in with you guys. I live in the neighborhood called Dae-Heung-Dong. It was an original downtown of the city with a glorious past. It is called as an original downtown along with Eun-Haeng-Dong and Seon-Hwa-Dong, original downtown meaning that these areas were originally the center of the city, and it can be considered the same as a former downtown. The original downtown was left out during the development since the development of the Dunsan area in the year of 2000.
Nowadays, it is called major culture and art scene of the city, and for the younger generation, it is known for its pubs. Today, I want to show you guys another aspect of Dae-Heung-Dong. Think of a pebble you guys used to see when you were a kid. When you picked up one of those pebbles in a garden, you must have seen a lot of worms wiggling. This is how I'm going to show you about Dae-Heung-Dong.
Remember, worms. Since many of you guys are living around Dunsan and Yuseong, I drew the location to show you. This is a map which is not very kind and rather close to a map based on my mind. The area around Exit 5 of the Chung-Ang-Ro subway station between the Daejeon station and the Provincial Government is called Dae-Heung-Dong. Dae-Heung-Dong has a very splendid past. As I told you earlier, the area was developed around the Chungnam Provincial Government Building, and it is know that the building will be moved to the new downtown of Naepo at the end of this year. I am one of the very people who are afraid of the hollowization of the area. Dae-Heung-Dong is often called the main scene of culture and art of Daejeon. In fact, there are quite many performances including street performances, plays and musical performances happening even though they are not as frequent as Hongick Univ.
Or Daehakro. There are also many unique cafes and I recommend you guys go find them yourselves. Not only this, there are also many art galleries. In those galleries, there are quite many events happening too, and now, in various spots of Dae-Heung-Dong, the exhibition called 'The Exhibition Energy' where artists go out in the scene and draw their own paintings. Also, there are other activities happening involving alternative art spaces. There are six small theaters too, as well as a one-week festival called 'Hurray, Dae-Heung Independence', which has been held for five years in the forth week of August. The festival is being held in a very small size, but in the picture, you see quite many people as I intended. The picture shows you the scene where a dance performance is happening. On top of all this, Dae-Heung-Dong is well-known as a entertainment spot. As the CEO of Seon-Yang came today, I would like to make a few suggestions for him. If he has materials to spare, it can be interesting to remodel one of the old pubs in Dae-Heung-Dong and change it into a liquor museum.
People will like it, those who work in the culture and art field will like it, and moreover, it will provide space to taste the company's various liquors so that it may also be helpful to advertise the company name. I heard people around the world will see this talk, and it'd be no harm to remember this. Now, I will start talk about the autonomy. I don't know about you guys, but as for myself, I don't do things when someone else makes me do those things.
For example, even after I pick up a spoon to eat meal, I don't start eating if someone else tells me to eat, and it applies to everything else. In that sense, I was a malajusted girl. It was also not easy to graduate school. In that regard, the word 2.0 representing autonomy was one of the words which made me fascinated as soon as I saw it. The word presents what saved me. The meaning of the word 'autonomy' is the quality with which someone does a certain thing based on his/her own principles, or he/she acts in moderation by controlling him/herself. In this sense, I thought the basis of 2.0 is to determine rules on one's own and do things based on them. Among a few principles with which I make a decision in my life, This is the major principle – I don't act as long as I'm satisfied 80% or more than that. It’s because it is hard for me to find the confidence to cover the rest 20%. Of course, it takes time and I have to think a lot until I find something with which I can be satisfied 80%, but I think it's worth it to endure the 20%.
That's why I make such a decision. When I start to feel tired and the tiredness exceeds 20%, whatever the conditions are, I say like this. Is it ready? That's right, "Lets quit!" The children's story I hate the most is "The Ants and Grasshopper". It's because I have lots of qualities that the grasshopper has. I thought it was unfair to make comparisons between two different species. They had to make comparisons of diligent ants and lazy ones. I felt like I got hurt and froze to death myself like the grasshopper, and this story became the one I hate the most. I'm sure some of you may be like the grasshopper too. That is why I brought the Grasshopper Test. Please read the test first. Not outloud though. This test is very subjective, and you may ignore it. Yes, if you have checked two or more than two, or hoping to check more than two, then you need counselling.
If you come find me, I will lead you to meet lots of grasshoppers. Yes, there are grasshoppers. Of course, the number of them are not as many as you'd think. In Korean society, it is not easy for grasshoppers to live. We feel that we must do things at certain timings and doing nothing is very much underestimated, and in such a situation, the qualities of grasshoppers are hard to be accepted. However, we welcome those who decide to be a grasshopper at an early age. For them, we will introduce you to our young friends so you can be one of us.
In the past, you needed to shout loudly with a flag standing in front of you to gather people. It was until not too long ago. Maybe five or six years ago? However, it is the age of 2.0, which means everybody has their own flags and loose bonds with others. The very basic principle of 2.0 is that you have to be able to stand straight by yourself. It is very hard in this society though. Also, there are limitations regarding people's negative mindset. As for myself, I am quite a joly person, and I'm interested in culture and art and do activities in those fields.
Of course, I have weakness of my own, which is that I'm not patient enough to do one thing continuously. Many of you would know that I used to have many different jobs in the past. Now, I try to accept myself as I am and think that I have a 'modern nomadic quality', my life being a life of moving around like nomads, and such a change of my thinking made it possble for me to have loose bonds of 2.0. To live with your own velocity – it's never easy in this society, but if you take the courage and think about it a bit more, I figured it is something that you can start right where you are. Moving on, now, I'll tell you guys about what my life looks like in my neighborhood. We organized a small planning group called 'Neighborhood Supermarket'. It is a very small one. What's interesting is that I have wanted to be an owner of a supermarket since I was young.
Most of you would know what I'm talking about. You can eat as many cookies as you want, and you can hang out with your neighbors. This is the atmosphere I would like the culture of my neighborhood to have. In such a sense, the panning group aims for a place where people come sit on the wooden bench similar to the one you would see in your neighborhood supermarket and share each other's values and create their culture.
In fact, I feel that cultures around the country nowadays are made from top to bottom. Especially, many festivals are being run, budget being decided from top
133
00:1 –> 00:10:58,972
who do not know well about the (cultural) ecosystem of people from bottom, resulting in cultures being made with money. In such a situation, one of my wishes is that of course, it would take time, but even so, someday, simple and honest cultures from bottom would go upward. Besides this, not only in Daejeon but also in the whole country, the generation gap is quite serious.
I truly feel that communication between the younger and older generations is much required because neighborhoods are where both of them have to live with each other on a daily basis. While pursuing small cultures being made from such a daily life, we, who live and hang out in Dae-Heung-Dong, came to make an event called 'Dae-Heung Bookshelf'. It is held on Saturday, every once a month, and it started from the idea that it could be possible to set up the 'Reading Street' as there are also a lot of other culture and art scenes hanppening in the area. I felt that there are many places around the area where we can communicate with books. There are magazine offices, book studios and Gye-Ryong-Mun-Go. There are also youngsters like ourselve as well as scholars and book cafes. There are children's village libraries, not to mention many neighbors. We wanted to communicate with them and make an event through books.
In this event, we invite authors and sometimes have book concerts, and nothing can stop us. It'll soon be winter, and in rainy, snowy or sunny days, we'll still hold the event. The 'Dae-Heung Bookself' is being held in Dae-Heung-Dong now. I am the host of the event and have to go back to close it. The event is held whether I am busy or you are busy. Now, I will tell you a little bit more about the San-Ho Inn which I mentioned earlier in the talk. The San-Ho Inn was an old Inn built in 1977. It caught the eyes of the artists working around the neighborhood, and they started remodelling the place which was not being used for about 10 years. I looked like this before. It looks OK in the picture, but it had dark atmosphere since it had been closed for around 10 years. We painted the walls with people. I'm not energetic enough but I took part in the painting myself too. That's how we got to open the guesthouse, and in the pictures, it looks better than it actually is.
I recommend you guys come see it with your own eyes. Although we put beds in the guesthouse, which makes the appearances a bit modern compared to the past, but we left most parts of the building as it was. This is the visitor's book where our guests left messages. Oh, this happy uncomfortableness, simple warmness. Yes, it may sound good, but it also may sound bad in terms that it is not convenient. You guys may come to the guesthouse yourselves. We use the house as a guesthouse, but we also provide young people who do culture and art-related activities with a place to stay. Through them, many interesting things happen including small lovely episodes, one of them being a webtoon called 'A Lady from Sanho'. Those who draw cartoons among the group drew our lives. We could see new ones every once a week like Naver webtoons, and now it stopped for a short while because he's out of town, away in a place called Gang-Jeok of Jeju Island.
And there is also a theme song for us. A composer and some musicians made us the song and we sang it. I was singing the theme song there, and I'm sorry to say that the song was not sung by people again. This is a Chirasi library. We made a library by remodelling a storage. There are many culture and art contents produced in Dae-Heung-Dong, and I thought it would be great if we gathered the contents in on place. We tried using the words 'pamphlet' and 'advertisement' for the library name, but they did not sound quite right. That's how we just decided to call the library 'The Chirasi Library'. Also, we don't like moving around because we are in the fine arts field. That's why we tried to make a sports day. The bar right next door called 'Sugar Watermelon' is quite famous, and you can see lots of slim girls there.
And so, we made our own party called 'Salt Watermelon Party' where we get to dance and sing. Things weird enough happen every once in a while. We also made a parody for the café called "Green Roof", which is "Green Table". In addition, we are running "Dae-Heung-Dong Trust" in which we make records of old houses in Dae-Heung-Dong. You guys may have heard about the National Trust. Similar to this, we aimed to preserve valuable things in our neighborhood by purchasing them with money, but the thing is that we don't have the money for now, so we decided to start the project by making records. That is how Dae-Heung-Dong Trust got started. This picture shows a café named "Cheong-Cheong-Yeon", now torn down.
There is a studio builing in the location now. We have made records of 13 locations till now, three among which have been torn down. In Dae-Heung-Dong, there are a lot of studio buildings being newly built, resulting in old buildings demolished. Once, I had an exhibition in front of a pub called "Daejeon Blues" during the festival "Hurray, Dae-Heung Independence". You cannot see it in the picture, but people who collect broken paper took all of the exhibition materials during the exhibition. On the other hand, the San-Ho Inn has been being used as a residency spot for artists. As I mentioned earlier, since we have many friends hanging out with us there, we get to think of various interesting ideas. We sometimes organize small performances by cooperating with people from the old buildings around the area who have planning experiences. What we do for living, though, is running a business. We have to feed ourselves in the end. By doing the blanket laundry and the cleaning of the old two-story building even though it doesn't make any big change, we continue our lives protecting the 20% of our lives.
In my opinion, changing the city is not too much of a big dream. I don't think the government or companies can change it. Of course, there are things they can do. But I think the roles of the citizens are big and when I think how we can change the city, I came to a conclusion that with small but continuous movements help the city become complete. Even though I myself am not big, not powerful, at least, I'm trying to do something, and in this sense, I'm hoping for the image of grasshoppers to change into a good one. In order for that to happen, it is important for us to disclose what our real selves are. To reveal your real self, if you are a grasshopper, duck or chicken, wouldn't it be the most important thing? Be myself – I think this is the very start of City 2.0.
Thank you. .
