K-CoreaINC. K (section a)

2009, 33:05 min, color, sound, HD video

K-Corea INC. K (section a) is one of seven works in Trecartin's 2009/2010 Rotation. Kevin McGarry writes, "The cast of K-Corea INC. K is mainly comprised of actors dressed as various 'Koreas (sounds like careers), in blond wigs, powder, and office casual attire, the sum of which Trecartin calls 'work face.' The homogenized Koreas represent all nations in a UN-inspired flavor spectrum--USA, Mexico, Canada, Hungary, Morocco, Argentina--presided over by Global Korea, a CEO whose safari-style 'post drag re-take' stands out from her employees' neutered uniforms.

The Koreas are held together in a lightly allegorical cloud, assimilating cultural stereotypes and reductive international relationships as individual basic operating procedures (for example, fiery Mexico Korea spits Spanglish into the phone and busts glass while the others meet with each other). But individuality is subsumed into the group and refracted, collectively, as diversity. This image of the chorus (a loud one!) acquires life as a brand value -diversity- prizing the gamut of voices for the sense of cultural genuineness their confusing disparateness engenders, and the easy harmony that follows from each one conforming to the central look and feel of K-Corea Inc.

The video revolves around an unending 'meeting'- a busy, aimless meeting that goes in circles to evade a traditional narrative arc. The meeting is essentially a party, and the entire company bumps and grinds with itself everywhere from in boardrooms to airplanes. K-Corea INC. K processes ideas of automation and containment, embodied by these hyper-controlled locations and by the seemingly looping actions that take place in them. Air travel, for instance, is a means to rapidly transport contents from one place to another, but while expanding the possibilities of travel, it also drastically compresses the experience of travel into a automated and contained procedure. Meetings, where discrete parts of a corporate body come together to attempt to 'get on the same page,' display the futility of corporate unity, and of individual purpose or voice remaining intact within a corporate culture.

Amid the din of self-negating office politics, one underling aspires to introduce her own agenda to the workflow. This intern--a millennial who wears what she wants, comes in when she wants, and does 'whatever the fuck she wants'--designates herself as North American Korea, a neo-NATO opportunist who stands to capitalize on any sort of merger between her constituents (or their failures to maintain discrete national identities after such a process). In doing so, she also alters the narrativity of the video, advancing a linear plot line, which makes the rest of her company vulnerable to concepts like before and after, cause and effect."

Produced by: Ryan Trecartin, Elizabeth Dee, New York. Global Korea (GK): Telfar Clemens. General South AmeriKay (GSAK): Xavier Cha. Mexico Korea (MK): Raúl de Nieves. North America Korea (NAK): Veronica Gelbaum. USA Korea (USAK): Ryan Trecartin. British Korea (BK): Laura Walpole. Hungary Korea: Sarah Ball. Argentinian Korea: Solomon Chase. Switzerland Korea: Samuel Cormier. French Korea: Lizzie Fitch. Nordic Korea: Mary Ann Heagerty. Brazilian Korea: Adrian Massey. Morocco Korea: Sergio Pastor. Canada Korea: Daniel Spann. Haircut: Jim Drain. Driver: Ashland Mines. Taffy: Mikki Michel Olson.

 
 

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2009