Hometown to Come—Performance by Mire Lee: MMCA Korea

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea presents Hometown to Come, a new performance by Mire Lee, as the last program of MMCA Performing Arts 2024: Space Elevator from 28 to 30 March 2025 at the Multi-Project Hall in MMCA Seoul.

This performance, Hometown to Come, was named after being inspired by the album of the same name by musician Minhwi Lee, who participates as a performer in this work. The performance also features actor Seon-hui Bae as a performers.

MMCA Performing Arts 2024: Space Elevator is a year-round project probing humanity’s space-directed desire and its potential reifications from various artistic perspectives. As the last participating artist in the project that has offered monthly programs at MMCA Seoul since 25 May 2024, Mire Lee illuminates the remnants of humanity’s ambitious attempts such as space development. Fragments of large mechanical structures such as spacecraft and elevators, as traces of frustrated dreams or ruins from past successes, simultaneously attest to humanity’s never-ending ventures and shortcomings. Lee has produced distinct works that integrate aspects of the female body and mechanical movement while dealing with the debris of industrial civilization, the unique performativity and temporality revealed in her installations prompting the perception of contemporary times as a paradox that “has already yet not yet arrived.” The artist sees these markings of development as “infrastructures for troubling times” (a concept proposed by Lauren Berlant that refers to

patterns, habits, and norms that spatiotemporally reproduce a specific form of life beyond mere physical structures) that are destined to coexist with the museum and theatre, that is, social relations in their practical entirety.

Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “This performance, which marks the grand finale of MMCA Performing Arts 2024 and the final destination of the Space Elevator, comprises fragments of the time and space selected by the artist Mire Lee to provide viewers an opportunity to ruminate on the prospect of alternative collectives and modes of existence.”