Subroutines
Luuk Schröder
September 16
Whole Day
‘Subroutines’ is a series of live-streaming performances made at the old electronic markets grouped around the 청계천 (Cheonggyecheon) stream and the 세운상가 (Sewoon Sangga) in Seoul. In the spring of 2019 the stream was live every Thursday on the Subroutines YouTube channel. During this screening you get to see a short series of excerpts from eleven of the performances that each lasted between twenty minutes and two hours. In the performances Schröder worked with equipment that came from the shops and markets where the streaming took place. The images on the streams contain empty screens, mirrors, frames and broken devices. In the margins of the images the bustling activity of the surrounding markets can be seen. Two streams coincide. The physical 청계천 stream that runs through the electronic market area is overlaid by a virtual stream visible on YouTube. The YouTube streams link digital images with the places where they are made. Where the broken cameras, printers, scanners, motors, cables and materials are made and processed. Companies like Amazon, Ebay and Taobao increasingly hide these kinds of places from sight. The Subroutines streams attempt to use the digital to do the opposite, to reconnect the cultural grit and materiality of the workshops with the flat surface of the computer screen. As the Cheonggyecheon area is slowly disappearing, this work can be seen as a farewell to the neighborhood, and as a renegotiation of the way digital media organize the way we work and live.