Established in 2003. Live in Seoul.

Psychogeography was first articulated within the Situationist movement in the late 1950s, as a study of the effects of the physical environment on human emotions and subsequently as a concrete intervention into urban transformation. At its birth, this was a revolutionary movement of social critique through urban architecture. Since then, artists have used it in a wider context and a variety of disciplines, mostly as a means of extending awareness of space and time. flyingCity is a Seoul-based artists’ collective, whose work brings together principles of psychogeography with the modern realities of urbanism. At the heart of the collective is an ongoing commitment to active research into the intricate relationship between the appropriation of capital and the resulting urban transformation.
Currently slated for a major beautification project by the city of Seoul, Cheonggyecheon becomes the subject of flyingCity’s investigation in All-Things Park. The artists interview the local, soon-to-be-marginalised street vendors and metal workshop workers, and distil this dynamic information into an imaginary structure, accompanied by maps and diagrams. In this process, they are less interested in revealing concrete details about the urban space and community they have chosen, than in conveying their fascination with the vendors’ economic adaptability to their urban reality.
Modelled after the flexible and creative, yet somewhat chaotic, behaviour of these communities and their production networks, All-Things Park drifts just like the economies inscribed within this urban transformation and as it embellishes an experience from an entirely different part of the world, All-Things Park forms a dialogue between the two cities, Seoul and İstanbul, and playfully provokes thoughts on İstanbul’s rapid modernisation.

Defne Ayaş

www.flyingcity.org

TOBACCO WAREHOUSE