HOPE IN A COLD CLIMATE
I’m currently working on a book for Thames & Hudson called How Art Can Give You Hope. It’s picture-led and intended for a wide readership. More on this project later, but now, as we begin 2026, I want to share some thoughts on hope, focusing on some positive - hopeful - signs.
‘Keep yourself alive’
There’s a trend in Korea amongst young people to take sets of four passport-like photographic ‘selfies’ in shops that are sprouting all over Seoul. I use this interesting phenomenon as a jumping off point for some reflections on the violent nature of image-making.
Acorns
I’ve been getting to know the oak tree. Turns out there are more kinds than I expected. Over 500, in fact. But in the UK and France there are basically just two indigenous species: the Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) and the Sessile oak (Quercus petraea). Here in Korea, there are six indigenous species, and they are very different one from the other. Within just half a mile of our house we’ve identified five. Here are their acorn
The Geese have arrived (earlier)!
I have noted the arrival of the geese in a couple of previous posts. This year, they arrived about a week earlier than last year – in the last week of September. Why?
Masks….Yet Again.
I spent the summer in France, and it was quite a shock to suddenly be somewhere in which wearing facemasks was no longer mandatory in public places, as it still very much is in Korea. I am also back in the classroom teaching students face-to-face, or mask-to-mask. I am finding it a terribly demoralizing experience. The masks of my student make it difficult to recognize them, but even more awful, completely erases one of the most important markers through which I can receive signals of a student’s active engagement with my teaching – their mouths. This post incloves some more reflections on cultural difference as revealed through the protocols of wearing facemasks.
Holding Heritage to Account
In today’s blog I include the second part of my talk for the International Conference on World Heritage, which was held in Korea in early September. The overall title was ‘World Heritage. Old Newness’, and my talk was entitled ‘Cultural Heritage as ‘Memory Event. The Case of Dansaekhwa’. In this second part, I widen the focus of my reflections to consider the crisis in the idea of ‘heritage’ in the West, and how it might relate to the idea of heritage in Korea.
