New Town New Wave2018

New Town New Wave comprises two screens, each showing a fixed camera shot of 20 minutes duration. The first shot frames a high window situated on the stairs leading up from the basement level of the KBS building and through which a Korean Maple sways in the wind. In the second shot, afternoon light tracks across the foyer leading through to the empty KBS theatre. Although the ambient sounds of the building can be heard, the primary soundtrack comprises a 1976 reel-to-reel KBS archive transmission called New Town New Wave. The broadcast introduces a Nongyo (Farmers’ Song) called Imsil Dulnorae from the village of Duwol-ri. Set against Lyken’s shots, the broadcast is an anachronistic presence. The now decommissioned KBS building has a quiet air that is disrupted not only by the propagandist editorial direction of the 40-year-old transmission but by the sheer communal vocal effort and collective energizing it features.