culture – Letters by Soo

January 6, 2019January 6, 2019

Some Experiences of 2018 and Goals for 2019

Experiences of 2018

1. loved

2. made life long and diverse friendships from my time in California in the summer

3. tested myself as the CEO of my own company– and dealt with and am continuing to deal with the everyday prospect of rejection and personal rejection and observing myself responding to and living these moments, well, or not so well.

4. saw the fruit of my strong relationships with the women in my life

5. revealed a personal long term trauma of mine from childhood to a room of 60+ colleagues and strangers > which unintentionally sparked a wonderful and effective road to recovery, healing, closure, and peace in my life. It was a mixture of owning the experience and being of the age and emotional maturity to really own it. I’ve talked about this trauma to other people before and when I was younger, but I was never “there” emotionally and mentally to free myself from the burden of my experience. This time, it seems I was.

6. actively sought to support, pray for, and aid the people in my life and colleagues I met once or more than a couple times through my work.

7. experienced very little depressive thinking and anxiety

8. had the opportunity to travel and experience the most wonderful new things nearly every month

9. lots of family loss and pain because of health problems + dealing with the painful history my immediate family shares.

10. learned to love my body and myself even more. Not over exceedingly. Just accurately.

11. practiced killing my pride and the areas of my close-mindedness

12. Experienced both the bliss and fortitude of not comparing myself to anyone and the pain of putting myself down or making myself insecure by comparing myself to others throughout intermittent months

Goals of 2019

1. Be a better listener. More actionably, stop interrupting and learn to put pen to paper if my thoughts keep overruling my desire to listen to the other and overwhelming my head and tempt me to interrupt conversation.

Enforce the mindset that a conversation with ANYONE = a precious time to show my appreciation for and understanding of them through LISTENING – action.

2. Stop my pattern of mumbling.

3. Last year to become fluent in French

Take it as a black or white scenario. Winner takes all.

(This kind of harsh mentality might not work for everyone, but I’ve found that for me, when I deal with mental absolutes when setting expectations for myself, I end with half or half + the expectations I set myself. )

4. Be increasingly there for my family members, H, W, J, and J while keeping boundaries for the life and identity that I am uniquely constructing for myself on my own terms.

5. Learn how to say NO – two reasons – 1. protect my wellbeing, and my limited energy (if I keep saying yes, I’ll run myself to the ground) and 2. check bullshit from others as the first sentence is uttered or written. Find a way to stay kind and respond or ignore messages without feeling guilty and without bile to people who seek to take or have an agenda that is not wise or in service to you or others?, or… I feel like there is a wiser way of going about this. But I haven’t come to the answer yet.

6. Have ATEM succeed

7. Work better to protect the marginalized and misunderstood, particularly those with issues I am personally passionate about:

sexual harassment
- check people, even if they are people who are more powerful than me or men I have a personal attachment to.
gender discrimination
- grow as a woman who denies expectations prescribed to her present and future (be independent! Be a wife! Don’t be a wife! Don’t quit your job! Quit your job! Be more dependent! Be less dependent!). Grow as a woman who determines what it is to be herself on her own terms. Grow and inspire by example. Currently, it means being secure and proud of the fact that I want to 2. continue doing fulfilling and meaningful work, and 1. [In the future] devote all of my resources to be the best family woman there ever was. I want to have a wonderful husband and I want to have children. I want to devote myself 100% to my partner and am okay with throwing myself 100% to support my partner’s career aspirations (if and when a family exists), so long as when the time comes that I am asked to make a sacrifice, the changes are decided on “together” with the mutual understanding that it was needed not because I am a woman and it’s the responsibility of the woman to fulfill the family rearing needs, but because it was my choice, my honor, and my joy to take that choice for the family; I am 100% supportive of any partner making career changes or stepping back from something for the family as a whole. That is my definition of being a woman and a person on my own terms.
racial discrimination
- be more vocal in the public sphere and during my day to day commute when I see this happening for example on NY subway platforms.
domestic violence
- explore and identify projects I might want to get involved in either with my resources with time or finances
- think proactively about the future: while there are not many in my personal network that are married, the numbers will rise with time, and it is important to be diligent and create a strong foundation for my female (not excluding males too) relationships now of openness, compassion, and willingness to listen, so that if the time ever comes these people (or even me) have someone to fall back on and trust or send an SOS too.
lack of access due to socio-economics – financial/human capital
- immediately actionable: use the professional and personal network I have to nurture and help individuals in the ways I can.

8. Visit my mom in Korea

9. Go back to France. 🙂

10. Find a new system to reincorporate an optimal rate of reading and doing/seeing art (things I love) as I continue to build ATEM – system I continued into 2018 with and worked with throughout the year doesn’t work anymore due to the immense time suck I’ve had with my personal time due to work demands and stress (stress, because when super drained, it is hard to read, even if you do have that hour).

David Zwirner Gallery: Endless Enigma: 8 Centuries of Fantastic Art

Chris and I go on a lengthy art gallery hop through Chelsea, and I’d have to say this was our favorite pit-stop: David Zwirner Gallery, a stellar power house.

We had to gulp down our cappuccinos.

So happy to see works I’ve never seen before in person from artist like Max Ernst and Rene Magritte. I have a particular attachment to the Dada and Surrealist movements.

A rather tempered work of Hieronymus Bosch:

Siren-like beauties– very much like the Valentino SS 2015 Campaign. I’d say almost identical in interpretation. I’m not sure about the strength of Leonor Fini’s other works, but my goodness, to have this in my home:

Things that make my childlike soul go hop!:

Amazing mastery of painting, and the chemistry between the movement of the waves vs. the wood like whorls of the levitating mass:

The power of women:

The detailing and lifework on this was superior:

Birds and wood:

Running until October 27 @ David Zwirner Gallery

October 15, 2018October 15, 2018

The Dreamers, a story of denial, withdrawal, and sexuality– how French.

(written, but unpublished from August 23, 2017, age 24)

The Dreamers is not for the sexually faint of heart, but it is truly a story to behold.

The lines that stayed with me:

“One of us, one of us!”

The scenes that stayed with me:

When Isabelle’s hair catches on fire, and Matthew is instinctively aflutter with trying to take it out and the scene fuzzes out and in–and everything seems to just slow down with that gaze..

Obviously, one of the most sensual and irreverent sex scenes I’ve ever seen. Isabelle and Matthew having sex for the first time in the kitchen whilst Theo makes some eggs for himself in the background, copping a cig, with a literal revolution (student demonstrations) and chaos unfolding on the streets.

Theo and Isabelle playfully slams the door on Matthew in the rain. And he’s locked out. A true third wheel in the most unnatural sense of the word. Matthew is left standing for moments that seem like a life-time, exasperated, dejected, rejected, third-wheeldified. So much passive aggression in this scene. SWEET RICHNESS.

All the gazes!

The best scenes and moments are left untouched so you’ll have to watch the film on your own if you’re curious to and want to understand what the hell I mean from the above.

But here’s a couple of photos to brief you 🙂

August 13, 2018August 13, 2018

Palais de Tokyo, August 3, 2018

May 22, 2018May 22, 2018

Youth and Beauty Culture In Seoul

Pale faces. Straight eyebrows.

Girls walk around with rollers in their hair in public.

Guys walk around with masks covering their nose and mouth (and I’m not sure it’s for the air pollution).

Guys wear foundation.

Girls’ hairs here are impeccably blow-dried, waved, or flipped.

Red-orange lipstick is very popular here.

I walk down the road, and I see a visible, consistent, pattern of young adults staring at other young adults doing the down-up, check-out thing.

There is a pressure to be “thin,” 105 – under thin.

In a moment of relapsed insecurity and all things folly, I think to myself, “thank god I’m tall. It stretches me out.

Speckled on the streets, faces pass me by, similar to the ones I’ve seen on the ads which have accompanied me up the escalators many a commute in Gangnam.

In good humor, I ask myself, “would I have survived in this environment of intense scrutiny over appearance?”

(as a young girl, surely not.)

March 27, 2018March 28, 2018

The Wynwood Guide: Miami

Everyone has probably visited Miami once in their life, if not for Spring Break, or for the lovely beaches. If you’re tired of hanging out in the loud or sheltered parts of Miami, and want to venture out of South Beach and Collins Ave., here are some recommendations for you to explore the blossoming neighborhood culture of Wynwood.

Art:

Being the art lover that I am, I made it a mission to visit every mappable gallery in the design district; these are my recommendations for galleries that impressed me with their representation of artists and newness of objects that I would not see if I was in New York:

Art by God : A wonderful store and gallery that I can spend hours in. There was an amazing $4000 Queen of Congo piece I wanted to leave with on my last trip, but I contented myself with buying a small bust of an African boy made of serpentine stone and crafted by an artist from the Shona Tribe (for those interested, the Shona are a people from Zimbabwe, whose ancestors built great stone cities in Southern Africa in days long past!).

Tresart Gallery

To note: It’s a pleasure to hit up art galleries in Miami because they have such a fair representation of Latin American artists, something I haven’t seen much of in concentration in Chelsea or the UES.

Design:

Ranivilu Gallery – functions as part gallery, part design store.

There was also Glottman, which was very popular amongst the people there, but it didn’t do much for me. The products it carries look like that of every other design store, but perhaps you might enjoy it.

Ice cream:

Dasher & Crank: For ice cream tourists, this is a must.

Coffee (or avo-toast for the women):

Dr. Smood: Great interior and awesome cafe concept. Healthy, but with a twist. They offer cashew milk as an option for their drinks, and it’s a great addition to the coffees I’ve drank in New York. I think in New York the extent to our coffee explorations are Nitro brews, grass-fed butter bullets, propolis/bee additive brews, and Australian concept brews.

If anyone knows of a coffee shop in NYC that offers cashew-milk based coffee, I would love to know.

Food:

KYU: A modern asian style eatery. Good for drinks.

Coyo Taco: A very popular taco joint. If you are into tacos. Me– not so much.

Stores:

Plant the Future Wynwood: Recommended by my lovely friend, Thier, and I loved it. I’m not sure if the staff knows what they were doing and I certainly did not think they had a service mindset, but the interior concept of this plant store is cute and fun to walk through. The store has everything from modern potted plants to plants potted in animation characters.

ANTIDOTE: A sustainability focused womenswear concept shop. Owned by a stylish woman who owned a boutique in France and decided to open another concept in Miami.

February 26, 2018February 27, 2018

Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983

So much experimentation and fun in the 70s and 80s, I wish I was a part of it:

Customized Matchbooks for Club 57’s 1983 *Matchbook Show*

Complement these visuals with the 1967 track of ze Vegetables by The Beach Boys.

PSA*** Let me just say MoMA’s current exhibits are amazing (Specifically, three). This is a good month to go. I won’t spoil it for you, but there are some new, reckoning art for you to see.

Running through April 1 at The Museum of Modern Art.

Complement these visuals with the 1967 track of ze Vegetables by The Beach Boys.