Strange Meetings (2017)

Strange Meetings testifies to the impossibility of creating clear boundaries by tracing the entangled relationship between the U.S. and the South Korea in regards policies against STD (sexually transmitted diseases) in the U.S. military camptowns in South Korea in the 1970s. STD treatment facilities, or so-called' Monkey Houses', burgeoned during that time and women who served in the camptowns were forcibly detained and subjected to medical treatment as a measure to reduce the pervasive spread of venereal disease among US soldiers. Strange Meetings documents a former STD treatment facility in Soyosan at the outskirts of Seoul in South Korea. To maintain clear boundaries, the building was utilized during the 1970s to isolate bodies of those who were presumed to be contaminated from those deemed clean. As a host of strange meetings, the site today, however, materially bears witness to the entangled relations behind its establishment and the impossibility of creating neat separations. The decomposing building is being encroached upon by rubbish and surrounding vegetation. Knotted together, each feed on each other, leaving holes in the structure and breaking down distinctions between inside and outside, architecture and debris. And beyond being an abandoned site in decay, it now serves as a backdrop for another strange meeting: A performance takes place against the back side of the building every weekend, which inadvertently complicates the relationship between past and present and diffuses the reading of the site by overriding but potentially also purging its history.