여백
여백 留白 Yeobaek – "blank space" – the areas left untouched.
여백 (2022), the seven cycles of poetic musings and soundscapes surrounding death in our private and public lives performed by Ψ-garden over the course of 49 minutes, on July 7th, 7pm.
In Korea, the deceased is believed to enter a journey of forty-nine days in the limbo between one life and another. Passing through the seven gates of perception as they leave behind earthly desires every seven days, the spirit rises from the mires of their previous life and to the heavens.
In addition to its significance in Buddhism, seven is a prolific symbol across cultures that encourages rich associations. It contains the diatonic musical scale, and the Pythagoreans considered it the union of the physical (4) and the spiritual (3). Coincidentally, its shape resembles the first alphabet of the Korean phonetic system Hangul ㄱ (g/k). Seven is also the number of stars in the Big Dipper constellation, which in the east was imagined as three people carrying a hearse with four corners.
Blind ikebana
The vase has fallen
Blind ikebana
여백 (Yeobaek)
2022
Music, poetry and ikebana
49 minutes
Performance by Hyunsuh Kim, German Popov, Lize-Marie Sneep and Anastasia Kučan
Opening by Mark Kremer
Photography and filming by Sergey Shevelev
Ψ-garden is a platform to spawn new forms and meanings of leisure. Which, in effect is a return to the origin of the concept of leisure from the Greeks, who considered it essential to intellectual activity. The Greek word which we translate as 'leisure' was σχολή (scholē), from which comes “school”. Expanding the perceptual spectrum of artistic activities through both ancient and modern technology, Ψ-garden invites for multi-sensory and synesthetic experiences.