In 2017, Studio COM (hereinafter “COM”) presented City Cortanea at Archive Bom, an exhibition that envisioned a fictional metropolis, Cortanea, where architectural typologies were converted into objects. The city COM imagined reminded people of a pre-modern transcontinental city. The title Cortanea was a kind of dialectal riff on the Latin Collectanea, meaning “excerpt.” COM’s City Cortanea extended well beyond the exhibition format. COM installed bookshelves mimicking Gothic spires in their first studio (Bogwang-dong Office of Studio COM, 2016), and interpreted the form of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris for shelving at bookstore ohye. Their “excerpts” were not confined to foreign history. They spatialized imagery from printmaking works (Artist Proof Shop, 2016), derived a chair’s silhouette from the curve of a client’s bowler hat (Daechung Park, 2017), and translated forms collected from books into exhibition design (Artists’ Documents: Art, Typography and Collaboration, 2016) . The “excerpts” of COM represented the material intersection between designer and collaborator.
For this exhibition, COM collected and categorized their visual influences to distill a series of keywords. Among these, we chose to examine the recurring Western architectural motifs, such as towers and arches, that mutate repeatedly within COM’s body of work. When a designer maintains a consistent attachment to specific forms, what drives this? What constitutes COM’s familiar yet uncanny reference points? What circuits activate in memory when a designer constructs an object, and its form?
Unexpectedly, this inquiry into form traced back to a childhood spent playing in our rooms. We identify as “apartment kids,” a generation devoid of the natural tactile exploration of alleys and courtyards found in neighborhood play of hide-and-seek or ball play. Instead, we were captivated by the virtual spatiality of video games and comics and mysterious atmospheres they created. “European architects and designers may find rich references simply by strolling through historically preserved cities, but we have no other option but to acknowledge the influence of the processed, transformed creations found on CRT monitors and glossy magazine covers,” COM confesses. The virtual experiences of the screen, filling the void of local reference points in “Korea as of now,” propelled them into imagined worlds of horror, thriller and mystery. In these virtual worlds, the castles and towers served not as structures or entities, but as atmosphere and backdrops for narratives and events.
Through this exhibition, Walkie-Talkie Gallery invokes COM’s archival memory. We randomly aggregate the diverse visual imprints that have left traces on COM, such as sentences from literature, song lyrics and imagery drawn from comics, games and cinema, and attempt to recontextualize these fragments through a process of selection. These elements endure as a collective memory for those who share a generational timeline with COM. The process of materializing these memories into objects may evoke a sense of delight akin to receiving a gift, or perhaps a recollection of a specific era. Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that COM explicitly recognizes and reveres these reference points, and as designers, they have consistently openly cited these sources throughout their practice. We inhabit an era where all images are instantly accessible through social media. In this context, our work inevitably functions as reference, quotation and excerpt. Yet, when we acknowledge influence, we connect with and carry forward those references. In this exhibition, COM’s act of summoning these references is not merely for the restoration of memory or nostalgia. It suggests that imagining the interstices between memory and experience may itself become design, reflecting a quiet hope that personal yet universal self-narratives remain possible within the realm of design and objects.
Curated and written by Nari LIM, CEO of Walkie-Talkie Gallery
