Project 7 1/2 is headed to some point that is not clearly defined. Yet this point directs towards neither two clear points nor an ambiguous point in between those two points.  The title borrowed from the movie “Being John Malkovich” indicates the space between the 7th floor and the 8th floor. There is no such thing as the floor of the decimal point between 7 and 8. If an elevator stops between two floors, you should push the emergency button and call for help. Nonetheless an independent curator Oh Sunyoung is deliberately headed to this point of breakdown. Something in the breakdown is located “out of order”. 7 1/2 means that one stops itself between the two floors, and asks oneself. One raises the problem oneself, and one has to find the solving method as well.

Project 7 1/2 insists itself space in between, as a passage to another world that operates in a completely different way from among other normal things.

The place of the whole number, the 7th and 8th floor themselves represent the reality in which we are naturally forced to stay there. The place of the whole number represents the everyday real world, namely the world of capitalism. The 7 1/2 project throws a question “What is the act of practicing art in the capitalistic society?” in a somewhat different way through a medium of “space”. What type of figure does the ‘act of practicing art’ have among everything that composes the capitalistic society, neither inside nor outside the capitalistic world? Is it possible to plan the project of arts within the so-called institutional system, and perform the act of arts within the institutions, or to create the space ‘in-between’ without ambivalence that claims the ‘outside’ as an ‘independent’ space? These are what the 7 1/2 project asks. Therefore, the questions quite the space-mediated. It attempts to seek the space ‘in-between’. The ‘between’ is the space of a boundary, a crack, wrinkles, and a surface.

When the 7 1/2 project began for the first time in 2014, it was primarily to seek the discourse for the spatial concept of ‘in-between’. Kim Namsoo’s continual lecture “Anthropological Exploration of Art and Unconsciousness” was a nomadic lecture that takes place in different spaces each time. Kim Namsoo engages with art and unconsciousness, not with art and reality. He wants art to head towards the point which is the realm that cannot be embraced by a direct and holistic discourse. It is a way to move discontinuously from one point to another without a road.

The entry of Project 7 1/2 into Mullae-dong which conducted in 2015 generated dissonance itself. The dissonant harmony is generated between the existing ironworks in Mullae-dong and the artists newly permeate the town. To set up the conditions for the generation of dissonance is a ‘functional dissonance’. A walk that encourages heterogeneity is the act of setting the conditions for generation of dissonance. The workers at ironworks in Mullae-dong who have lived in the work for a long time coming into a conflict with the strange visitors that put their lives and labor on the show.  The identity and the other clash with each other.  Project 7 1/2 has assigned to itself a role of ‘the other’ of Mullae-dong. Life doubts the grounds for the existence of arts itself when the arts try to observe life from the distance. And life and arts conflict with each other ‘in-between’.

‘Mullae-dong’ is the 7 1/2 floor to be ‘John Malkovich’, and it is another name for the wonderland inside the rabbit-hole from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The conflict of the two becomes a ‘play’. The coincidental ‘extreme’ that happens in the street draws an organized walk into the extreme. A conflict occurs between an artist who is the former chairperson of Arts Council Korea and the owner of an ironworks in reality, and it occurs between a walker as well as observer and a liver as well as opposer in the image.  They organize and dissolve themselves in the crack between reality and reality, between role and role.

Mullae-dong leads to Jongno 3(sam)-ga in 2016. The 7 1/2 moves to on one side of Song Bok-eun Scholarship Foundation, and into its surrounding spaces. A hanok (traditional Korean-style house) sellting machinery in a downtown area has a different scenery from Mullae-dong that become hollow after ironworks has left. “Cryptographic Imagination” is the imagination that makes you speak in a language that is not ordinary. Encrypting of everyday signs is realized through the course of rearranging the relationship of the signifier and the signified, and the relationship of the alphabet of everyday signs. The exhibition ‘Sung Chankyung+Sung Kiwan’ is a typical example.  The objects made of junk which the late poet Sung Chankyung had collected during his lifetime under the name of ‘Material Orphanage’ are exhibited in the maze-like alley of Jongno 3(sam)-ga along with his ‘one letter poem’, and his son Sung Kiwan, a poet as well as a musician, tries sound mixing. The elements such as junk, art props, urban space, ‘one letter poem’ and the reciting sound that compose the exhibition react to the consonants and vowels to form a sign. The realization of cryptographic imagination is to read the consonants and vowels and to phonate the sign made of them. The act of phonating is distinguished from the act of deciphering. The 7 1/2 calls the act of phonating the ‘sense’. The phonating belongs to the audience.

In 2017, Mullae-dong and Jongno 3(sam)-ga obtains the name of Indonesia. Korea and Indonesia, Seoul and Jakarta “A Tale of Two Cities: Narrative Archive of Memories” have phonetic differences as distinctive qualities of signs, and, at the same time, work as semantically similar symbols despite the differences. Although Indonesia is regarded as ‘the other’ by us, it has almost the same past with us as it had undergone the Japanese colonial rule, a war after its independence, the military dictatorship, industrialization, democratization, and economic crisis, etc. Therefore, in order to read the sign as a combination of Korea-Indonesia, drawing ‘the other’ into me is crucial. It is oblivion to let the other stay as the other, and we must restore the signs in memory to draw the other into us. Once again, Indonesia and Korea form signs with vowels and consonants respectively. The archive of memories binds the Korean name ‘Haeyong’ or ‘Haeyoung’, the Japanese name ‘Eitaro Hiratsu’, an Indonesian name ‘Huyung’ into one sign, and it presents one body that goes across all those names. This body is not one’s individual body that goes across several names. This body is an unspecified body that embraces ‘the other’ into itself.

In 2018, Project 7 1/2 moves to Gimhae again. The unspecified body defines itself as an immigrant. This ‘other’ moves like a nomad. Thus, they wander to search for the space of 1/2.