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.

 

  • > Page not found. Viva! >> Vera blissful and breathless in daylight’s profusion, singing through grass streets stretching seawards to the pipelines, shoves the matter deep in her coat pocket and marches, unfollowed, along cool bitumen avenues, her feet seeking skin prints in the improbably husked net. >> Brims of water and the morning, sirens…

  • Viva! Page not found. Viva! City of marshall arts. Viva! Grape soda. Viva! Song lyrics spread from mouth to mouth. Viva! Your mouth, my lips. Viva! Trouble girl. Viva! City of endless planes. Viva! The angel of hips. Viva! Snowy boots. Viva! Timpani. Viva! Pansori. Viva! Ko Un. Viva! Hiddink. Viva! Holland. Viva! Pa ra…

  • City of organisms. City of organs. City of tissue. Organisms that change shape depending on the flow of traffic. Organs that thump and glow, in time with the jingling of beggars in the aisles. Tissue that blows in the wind and is mistaken for snow, finally alighting upon a loudspeaker. City of poisoned organisms pelting…

  • City as weary as a tree that cries leaves. City on the edge of hopelessness, on the duckboard of despair. The pathos of a rushed existence, coupled with an addiction to shuffling. Manacled to the winter sun-dial, I tripped upon a field of transparent snow. Windows were curtained, dogs barked all night at the makkolli…

  • City of sadness engines and wet kindling. The tell-tale signs of tampered seals, broken message sticks and gravity defeated. Neon diodes for restless leaves. Coming to the end of a demolished line, and realising that you’ve left your instruments at the coup. Riots raining down like spent cartridges, with no way of telling who’s abused,…

  • The ajumma comes to the end of her story – the slicing of a giant onion into irregular chunks – and looks up at me as if I am about to leave. The truth is, I just sat down. She tosses the white stories into a pink plastic tub and picks up a second tale.…

  • There was a trumpet somewhere but it was tarnished and could only play the theme from F-Troop. There was a drum but it got broken when someone I once knew drove a fork through it, just for something to do. There was a guitar but three of its strings were missing and noone took me…