I remember hearing a story about a new kind of opening being created by a different language that was chosen to fill the gap of exclusion and discrimination that had opened up through language. This has to do with something that Heo Young-gyun wrote in an overview message that she sent before the seminar, which read, “It was a disaster.” 

It isn’t easy to figure out how to put that in the right place without it being trapped within language (words). In particular, I remember my own “disasters” in experiences where I muddied up an actual situation that I really wanted to give a name to by overusing the kinds of expressions that everyone took issue with in the seminar: things like “everyone,” “together,” and “perception.” I was overtaken by a sense of embarrassment over the moments when I seemed to unthinkingly leave it up to words like that to cover up my own inadequacies, like I wanted them to finish things up for me. I remembered times when I habitually used phrases like “not simply X,” and I left it up to the lighting cues to focus on the part beyond the comma, without looking closely at the uncertain meanings in that “X.” 

What Young-gyun said about how “precise expression is a way of broadening the scope of your honesty” is something that will really stick with me. When you aren’t honest, when you ignore things, those experiences over time become heavy as they trail over the floor, attracting the weight of all sorts of dust. When a plan passes through those words on paper, those unseen dialogues and discussions, and becomes an actual time and place, I want to have a more advanced sort of precision and honesty than before. To achieve that, I want to revisit and reexamine the failures and frustrations that have occurred in my planning process—looking for the potential for honesty in those painful moments and reviewing the language that lingers within me. 

–Soojeong Park (DCW 2025) 

It’s a question of how we want relationships to come together, diverge, and reconnect in the temporary exhibition environments that we’re trying to create. These are the kind of very important—yet all too often overlooked—questions that I’ve come to reflect on through this encounter with Young-gyun. What am I trying to reach closely and effectively through this planning? What sorts of relationships are inevitably left out or become distant within this framework? Can I somehow create a point of contact for reaching those distant people, however weakly? It’s about breaking away from the ideals of “everyone” and “together” in order to flesh out the scope and conditions of “relationships” and speak frankly about their limitations—asking whether there’s the possibility of reaching people more effectively. 

–Jihee Jun (DCW 2025) 

Can you learn to love your own weakness? It feels like it takes so long just to accept it. I think the direction that art and the rest of society should be taking is one of helping us accept that weakness as part of us rather than making us hate it more. 

Another thing Heo Young-gyun talked about that really resonated with me was about the importance of “not endlessly expanding your words.” Even when you respect the meaning that a word carries, you also need to combine words or create new ones when there’s a meaning you require that they can’t encompass. It’s an attitude where you don’t just lump everything together using language that only applies to you. 

–Han Munhee (Amo) (DCW 2025)