Wendy Bokyung Kim

Pyeongyang coffee is an enacted performance project designed to provoke a shared cultural experience to stimulate discussion of reunification between North and South Korea.

Through the act of making a coffee together, mediated by a series of objects with particular gestures embedded in their handling, two people - one from North and one from South, enact the greeting and toasting gestures of each culture as they enjoy a cup of coffee together.

The project is located in a middle-ground of cultural complexities using the aspects of subtle gestural difference: the gestures hold within them elements of respect, anticipation, conviviality and deference.

The project is situated in the near future 2030, where North and South Korea, while remaining separate, have free trade and population movement.

Materials created for the project include props, coffee tower, timeline based on primary research and speculative design, and a film.

Taste of the year 2030 is an interactive exhibit and pop-up workshop which aims to question what the future of ethical consumerism could be and to challenge audience members to consider their own role in shaping that future.

The project draws on first-hand research into how various top-end companies conceive of and construct what we perceive as ‘tasteful’. It then goes on to question to what degree that framework of ‘taste’ consciously or unconsciously filters down to consumers, and to ask what the environmental / social / economic impact might be. Are we allowing materialism to lead us blindly into dystopia all in the name of good ‘taste’?

This project speculates on a new form of blockchain communism in United Korea in 2055. This possible future is imagined through a series of objects, adverts, products, and a film. The project asks: How can we foster sharing to resolve resource scarcity through systems, policies, and objects?

In 2055 when resources have become scarce on earth. North and South Korea have united and the country has become an experimental zone, free to develop its own form of governance, economy, and lifestyle. Eventually, in United-Korea, everything will be shared through a system of ‘blockchain communism’ where the government has total access to a database of everyone’s sharing habits. 

The project imagines a United-Korea in which “social credit cards” are used as currency. These cards will create five different social classes to access, share, and rent utilities. Each level of card will require a minimum annual amount of sharing to qualify, and each citizen will be able to progressively work their way up to become ‘alpha’, the highest class, by increasing their sharing behavior. The higher the social class the darker the card becomes. 

‘Ration S’ will be a collection of government-produced essentials designed to reinvent the notion of sharing. The tag of each product would show instructions, along with the amount of times people have already shared the item. Along with everyday items such as toothbrushes, clothes, and tea, the government issued ‘share book’ will also regulate the sharing and distribution of less familiar items from a resource-scarce future such as cockroach milk cubes with four times the protein of cow’s milk.