The Agreed-Kidnapping-Play

Throughout his community projects which often require people’s active engagement, Minwook An has inquired into what constitutes an ideal audience or ideal participants. He states that there are numerous art events and educational programs outside of Seoul, but little participating audience. Sometimes he even thinks of kidnapping people from other places where more people are willing to engage with such projects. He participated as a panel member of the pre-Mediacity 2016 program “Meeting on Community Art: the exhaustion (regeneration) of public art.” An, reflecting this program, reconsidered what he realized during the meeting and produced The Agreed-Kidnapping-Play as a platform upon which he could raise questions for the audience and share the experience with them.

First Performance, The First Challenge : The Untitled Kidnapping-Play
“Every time I work on my piece I hope that people would like it. At the same time, I feel pathetic about how meaningless it is to work on something that has no audience.”

Second Performance, Endless Wandering : A Most Uncertain Kidnapping-Play
“There is no rehearsal. Thus place and situation are all uncertain. Even after a row of agreements an unseen force may transform the hostages into prized guests or plunge them into a miserable state.”

Third Performance, Escape Artificial Hell : The Artificial Ride to Hell Kidnapping-Play
“This Kidnapping-Play transgresses beyond space and time and aims to transform the audience into lively participants.”

Fourth Performance, At The End of Kidnapping-Play : Coffee, Photographs and Kidnapping-Play
“The art organizations I participated in closed or changed their names as they took me in or sent me out. Most of them don’t exist anymore. Anyways, after the place I worked shut down and 2 years after I became a no-income artist from being a jobless person, I just opened a space, since, this is my stock-in-trade.”