American hoop dancer Sonja Gades / Courtesy of Sonja Gades
Seoul Culture Club, a festival of diverse performing arts, is holding its second major show for two dates this Friday and Saturday.
This time it presents 11 performers coming from six cultures, whose performances will include singing in various styles including rap, spoken word, dance, acting and a short film. Justin Nemeth and Conan Kim, two of the three co-founders of Seoul Culture Club, will host the 120-minute show in both English and Korean.
“Seoul Culture Club’s mission is to create diverse performances for the people of Seoul, highlighting Seoul’s diversity and multilingualism,” Nemeth told The Korea Times.
The event will be at Eulji Space, an independent theater in downtown Seoul.
Despite expressing a lot of satisfaction with the venue, the organizers are hoping to expand into wider territories and reach more communities in the future.
Kim mentioned he hopes to “develop Seoul Culture Club so that it can be held in more diverse regions and venues in the future to create a platform for more multicultural artists to perform and interact with the public.”
Jadis Camila from Cuba will perform pop songs as well as her own creations at this weekend’s Seoul Culture Club. Courtesy of Jadis Camila
For this event, the club’s second since its premiere in June, the theme will be “Season for Change.”
“Each artist is taking the theme differently,” Nemeth said. “Some refer to it as the change of weather, which we are currently experiencing in Seoul, the beginning of autumn, the falling of the leaves … while others take it as a season of change in their life — their move to and from Korea, or the change in their artistry as a performer.”
Korean American photographer Antonia Giordano will present a selection of her photos and give a talk. “Change, in the piece, is explored as it is reflecting on my previous self, and my present self and the change that has occurred since coming to Korea,” she said. “Photography is a two-dimensional medium, but for me this is a different way to experiment with photography in a more three-dimensional way by using written word and performers.”
Each performance lasts between eight and 15 minutes. A total of six languages will be featured — English, Korean, French, Spanish, Swahili and Amharic — with simultaneous subtitles provided in English and Korean.
Kenyan visual artist Josh “Mathematik” / Courtesy of AFROHADA
Kenyan visual artist Josh “Mathematik,” a graduate of the Korea National University of Arts and co-curator of AFROHADA, will give a poetry reading and screen the short video “This Land.”
He said his performance will “take the people of Seoul on a visual journey to Nairobi, Kenya, a place they might have never been before. To help change the way they see the world, open their eyes to new lands.”
American Holland Paige and Canadian Ash Verbanac will sing Western pop music. The performance, according to Verbanac, is “changing our friendship allowing this performance to change our friendship for the better. We are becoming closer, deeper and more creative from this show and we hope this is just the beginning of our collaborative artistry.”
The first show is on Friday at 8 p.m., and the second begins at 6 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets cost 15,000 won.
“Seoul Culture Club is here to stay as one of the most diverse artist collectives in Korea,” Nemeth said. “SCC is growing and the hope is to create more diverse and polished performances eventually moving into plays and film.”
Visit euljispace.com/seoulcultureclubticket for tickets or follow @seoul.culture.club on Instagram for more information.