We Make No Progress

Exhibition date Mar 17 ~ May 10, 2021
Location Culture Station Seoul^↗
Directed by Prof. Hwang Kim

<We Make No Progress> focuses on invisible micro-borders in society. The performers and audiences experience the rise of community spirits at the same time, paradoxically with increasingly clearer boundaries between participants while struggling to solve given problems.

Practical design methods applied to the performance, performatively reveal the daily lives of the participants neither create any economic value, nor solve problems.

The Basic Structure of Performance

Place, Time, and Participants

1. A set is built in a designated place, and design workshops are held according to a pre-determined schedule.
2. Three performers, two (participating) staff, and two (participating) audiences conduct the workshop together.

Preliminary Task – Design Probes

1. Two weeks prior the performance, performers, (participating) staff, and (participating) audiences are provided with a ‘preliminary task’ based on a design methodology called ‘Design Probes.’
2. Participants performed design probes in which certain questions were presented in sporadically scattered individual spaces.
3. The completed preliminary tasks are collected before the performance, and the results become the materials for the workshop or the content of discussion and analysis.
4. Since the performer, (participating) staff, and (participating) audiences proceed with the same design probe at the same time, boundary and non-boundary appear at the same time.
5. Performers, (participating) steps, (participating) audiences are invited to look at the fragments of their life, captured moments of everyday experiences, trivial-significant worries, clear-uneasy gazes on the future, emotional distress, and inner self that they are not aware of.

Performance – Design Workshop

1. This work is not created solely for the purpose of viewing a performance such as a play or a lecture.
2. (Participating) audiences are invited to the production process of the performance through a design workshop
3. On the day of the performance, (viewing) audiences can sit together at the workshop table with performers, (participating) staff, and (participating)
4. During the performance, the (viewing) audiences can watch or participate in the ongoing workshop.
5. The audiences only captures the idea of ‘how the workshop works’ instead of actually engaging with the workshop. There are audiences enter and leave the space as if they were watching an exhibition.

Installation

1. On days without performances, the workshop schedule, probe question list, results of past workshops (display table and monitor number 1), and live workshop recordings (monitor number 2) are displayed in the exhibition.
2. The installation is intended to allow the audiences to share the context, process, and results of the work even when there is no performance.
3. The exhibition venue is built in a way that resembles a regular design workshop room without decorative elements.
4. Monitor number 1 displays a digital board on which discussions of past probes and workshops are accumulated. The audiences can view past processes.
5. On monitor number 2, there is a video documentation of the previous workshops. The audiences can share the process of the previous workshops.