Imaginary Cities: PC Bangs

In 2005 I spent four months living and working in Seoul, Republic of Korea, thanks to the University of Melbourne’s Asialink programme. During my residency, I visited approximately 40 PC방 (PC bang, Internet gaming rooms) and ‘live-wrote’ a series of prose poems about imaginary cities. Combined digital and print reissue scheduled for 2025.

 

  • City of the big one, the whopper and the raised eyebrow. City of tales so tall they call them riddlescrapers. City of a thousand hits and one junkie’s promise to tell all. City without a story arc. Follish little boys trundling barrels down to the px for spare candy. Two old men fighting in the…

  • City too big to be called a city. City too large to fit on any map. City too huge to have a name. In the city of Mega, it never rains. The colossal pap of remediation hits me. Hey, maybe you only live three times. Sidewinding down to the intermission between tracks one and two.…

  • A film-strength city situated, obviously, deep in the marshes. Canals full of treacle and drains that drip. Body-parts moving infinitely towards their obsolescence, pulsing nevertheless with the isotope of hopeless life. Hopeless life, staggering towards reproductive symmetry. Symmetry, between our bodies and the city’s design. Blank signs, stretched across a broken boulevarde. Dream spurts, like…

  • City of garrets and all-night nature rants. City of the invisible line between smoking and non-smoking areas, waves of smoke billowing freely across this demilitarized zone while observers from both sides wo-man their monitors. City of freak scenes and bad acne, too much foundation and red blood dripping from the lip. City of faux-soundtracks to…

  • City of radiation and pliers. To find meaning in the ad breaks between sutras. City of radio free emoticons. Television is a sheet of glass between eternity and magnetism. Decomposition comes naturally. We are of the worm. This electronic charge re-situates my poles. I crave great density. Listen to the crystals dictating terms for an…

  • City of vapour trails and suns that set like eggs in a sky of brandy. City of drivers on auto-pilot and air pregnant with the rumour of the first snow. Snow so fine it falls in shards and can only be seen in the light of the eerie streetlamps. Wan glow so eerie it makes…

  • City of emphasis mines and gravity bombs, assassination attempts and mourning news. City of lightning and turtle boat people. City of city slickers in emergency ponchos goose-stepping through puddles of rainbow-infected grease. Monumental city, shouldered with statues of great and far-flung revolutionary bandits. City of the comet Kohoutek and the Sun King. Wave your pink…