Reproduced cover image of Panmunjom and Other Stories by Lee Ho-Chul, translated by Theodore Q. Hughes, 2004.

Artist Talk and Discussion, Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision
7:30pm Thursday 8 May 2008
$museum admission (free Thursday nights)

Theodore Hughes at the New Museum
3pm Saturday 10 May 2008
$museum admission (12)

Korean studies scholar Theodore Hughes will be presenting a lecture at the New Museum this weekend as part of the Museum as Hub program. The title of the lecture, Everyday Life, Violence, and the State of Exception, makes reference to a titular concept Giorgio Agamben expounds upon in his 2005 book, referring to a state of siege or suspension of procedural codes inherent in times of massive social unrest. While this state may be most common to a time of war or revolutionary upheaval, it is becoming a more familiar condition to citizens of this Western democracy and others as acclimation to an endless, abstracted, and dispersed "war on terror" rages since 2001. Hughes will be lecturing on the complex set of relations between the United States and South Korea since the Korean War, a set of relations "marked by neocolonialism, militarism, Cold War developmentalism, sex work, and commodity fetishism." From the press release:

Paying attention to the ways in which the Museum as Hub exhibition Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision works to unpack the allegorical gesture that has informed this constellation for much of South Korean history, Theodore Hughes examines the relationship between violence and the everyday in Dongducheon.

The A Walk to Remember... will remain on view at the Museum through 9 July, 2008. Sangdon Kim, Koh Seung Wook, Rho Jae Oon, and siren eun youg jung, the four artists comissioned by the Museum as Hub program, will also be having a conversation with Insa Art Space curator Heejin Kim on the evening Thursday 8 May, 2008.