Originally commissioned for and installed in the courtyard of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (September 2019 to April 2020), Perpetual Spring is an instance of the type of opportunity afforded by ephemeral projects and their experimental potential. Because of their temporary nature, these projects are allowed to venture into territory sometimes denied to architecture intended for permanence, mapping new grounds for action and future education.
Perpetual Spring and other ephemeral projects have the capacity to unveil forbidden or otherwise concealed synergies between architecture and the city. Ephemeral projects can be used to explore the potential of architecture as re-integrated into a higher totality to confront urgent issues such as climate change and the environment, social inequality and democratic participation, as well as demonstrating the eloquence of architecture in its capacity to convey much-needed civic significance.
In its upcoming incarnation as part of Future School, Perpetual Spring 2 will take the form of a virtual platform. Becoming a vehicle for the dissemination of dialectical knowledge, Perpetual Spring 2 will serve as a potent connecting conduit for speakers and teachers that want to give a lecture, teach a class or lead a short virtual workshop for a faceless but still expansive global audience.
JIHOI LEE is a curator at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Republic of Korea. She curated MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2020: Haegue Yang-O2 & H2O, and Architecture and Heritage: Unearthing Future (2019), organised The Essential Duchamp with collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2018), and curated Superhumanity: Post-Labor, Psychopathology, Plasticity with e-flux Architecture (2017).
JENNIFER LEE is an architect and co-founder of Obra Architects. She is a 2007 Cooper Union Urban Visionary Emerging Talent, 2006 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 SAH de Montëquin Senior Fellow, and an inductee of the Cooper Union Alumni Hall of Fame. She is a Seoul City Public Architect selected by the City of Seoul Metropolitan Government and is also, together with Obra, a designated contract recipient of the New York City Department of Design and Construction Design Excellence programme.
ALEX TAEK-GWANG LEE is a professor of cultural studies at Kyung Hee University in the Republic of Korea and a visiting professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University in India. He is a member of the advisory board for The International Deleuze and Guattari Studies in Asia, Asia Theories Network and a board member of The International Consortium of Critical Theory (ICCT).
Giuseppe Stampone
Born in Clusse (France), 1974
Works and lives between Teramo, Bruxelles and Roma
Teacher of “Visual arts techniques and technologies” in the Academy of Fine Arts of UrbinoSince 2013 Giuseppe Stampone is an associate member of The American Academy in Rome, in the same year he was invited to carry out an artistic residency at the Young Eun Museum of Contemporary Art (YMCA) in Gwangju, South Korea, since 2017 he is an associate member of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in New York. In 2020, he is the first Italian winner of the residency at Villa Romana in Florence funded by Deutsche Bank.
Her work has been exhibited in several international art festivals, museums and foundations including: Seoul Architecture Biennial, South Korea (2017); Ostend Triennial, Belgium (2017); 56th Venice International Art Biennale, Italy (2015); Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Kerala, India (2012); 11th Havana Biennial, Cuba (2012); Liverpool Biennial, UK (2010); 14th and 15th Quadriennale di Roma, Italy (2004-2008); Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, Boston, USA (2016); Kunsthalle Museum of Art, Gwangju, South Korea; Wilfredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, Havana, Cuba; MAXXI - Museo Nazionale delle Arti del 21mo Secolo, Rome, Italy; MACRO - Museo dell'Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy; GAMeC - Galleria D'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy.
Works by Giuseppe Stampone are held in several foundations and public collections including: Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy; Kochi-Muziris Biennial Foundation, Kerala, India; Sidney Biennial Foundation, Australia; Quadriennale di Roma Foundation, Italy; MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy; Phelan Foundation, New York, United States; GAMeC Museum, Bergamo, Italy; Wilfredo LAM Museum of Contemporary Art, Havana, Cuba; Birbragher Foundation, Bogota, Colombia; La Farnesina Collection, Rome, Italy; La Gaia Foundation, Busca, Italy; Museo di Arte Contemporanea L. Pecci, Prato, Italy.