Pohang's Steel Art Festival

Living in Pohang is a bit like living in a science fiction city from an alternate universe.  POSCO, the giant steel maker, has it's hands in everything and feels a bit like an omnipresent father or grandfather.  The skyline is dominated by POSCO's factories, the university is directly funded by POSCO, the art museum is a steel art museum funded by POSCO, most of my student's parents work at POSCO, which means quite a bit of my income, and everyone's in Pohang is directly related to the amount of steel POSCO can sell, on nearly every block, deep in the country, tucked into tiny neighborhood's, POSCO buildings pop-up, many of the public schools were founded by the POSCO Education Foundation, the fireworks festival is sponsored by POSCO, the roads, the train lines, the port, all of the infrastructure is heavily indebted to POSCO's need to move people and move steel.  All of this is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a thing, one of the quirk's of living in Pohang.

From all of that POSCO money and POSCO steel comes some really good things.  Among a hundred other things, the school's are highly competitive, the university does amazing work in robotics and stuff I don't understand, and the city is dotted with giant steel art sculptures, with a new set debuting every year.  This year's group feels particularly strong to me because of some of the interesting social commentary that seems to be happening.  If you haven't been to Youngildae Beach to see the new sculptures, you should.  They're impressive uses of all that steel.  As always, here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

There were little signs naming and explaining each statue, but I didn't look at them.  I like this one, but I think it's interesting that the artist decided to play it straight with the barbell.  Why not put some tiger's up there, remind the people where the strength of Korea comes from?  It is impressive in it's giganticness.

If the bottle is a soju bottle, maybe we've got something here.  Soju and food fueling the workers of the world as they run from one end of life to the next.  Or it could just be that the guy who built it was staring at a table and decided to put all the pieces into a statue.

The fetishization of the female form in video games is presented here in a way that suggests the character knows she is being objectified, and despite the heavy metal armor she feels naked and vulnerable, exhibiting the need to cover up and reject the male gaze, while being forced to stand on display.  Not shown here is the pedestal on which the statue is placed, an obvious overture to the sex symbol status characters such as these receive as a form of both idolization and objectification.

This is an older one that reminds me of the sentinels from X-Men.  Giant steel monsters coming to take your freedom/protect your freedom depending on which side of the fence you're standing on. 

They're of the same mind, but the child is coming between them.  They're only half while the child is whole.  What does this say about parenthood?  That we give up a half of ourselves, that our relationships, even those that are the most fundamental prior to the birth of our children, are ultimately fractured by the arrival of our progeny?  This was one of my favorite's.

I did look at the sign for this one and it's called "The Businessman."  It seems a bit optimistic to me that most businessmen are metaphorically armed with shields and pikes while riding a horse.  If I were making a steel art sculpture titled "The Businessman" I would have a tiny man with his pockets turned out, on his knees, his family huddled behind him, in front of a giant money hungry troll named "Corporato."  But I don't make steel sculptures.

Two weeks ago Sara and I were walking our dog and we saw a guy standing in the parking lot just like this.  As we walked past, he turned away, walked ten feet forward, then planted again, staring at the ground.  No phone, no newspaper, just dejected staring.  

Ah, some hope in the guise of childhood connections to the natural world.  The giant snail is not a disgusting creature to be tossed into the sea or eaten, but a pet and a friend.  

Some of the statues are pretty straight.  Here's two people frozen in an eternal game of ping-pong.  Maybe it's not so straight after all.  Maybe it's a statement on the nature of life and work in the modern age, the attempt to balance the personal and the professional, and the ultimate futility of it all, by suggesting that we're all frozen just the way we are.  Social and personal mobility become impossible.  We enter the match and then we are frozen, thinking that one more point may be the key to the next match, while in reality never even moving the ball.  Maybe I should have read the sign explaining the statue.  

I still don't know what to make of this one.  On the back of the head is another face, this one with circular black glasses, still decidedly feminine, but without any hint of being in anyway fundamentally different from the front face.  That is to say, it doesn't seem that the shopping and the glasses have withered the soul of this cat.  There's no Dorian Gray situation, consumerism isn't eating this cat, it might just be a two faced cat, which is cool in its own way.

Sara and I were at the beach walking the dog and checking out all the shells and cool stuff washed up on the shore.  I've got some pictures of some gnarly tiny octopus and some starfish looking things, and I'm hoping I can get another post up in the next couple days or so.  Anybody else have any thoughts on these statues?