Re-tracing Buro

Drifting Nearby / Publication by Re-Tracing Buro

2021 – Graphic Design by Wooseok Jang / Texts by Namjoo Kim, Jidon Jung, Jongwoo Lee and Re-tracing Buro

Drifting Nearby: transition of the public in a post-pandemic city
For six years before heading to Paris from Seoul, we surveyed the transformation of urban spaces in Seoul’s neighboring cities, Busan, Taipei, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. This journey was a chance for us to broadly see the urban reality that has been shaped by various economic and social forces, and to closely study the alternative practices taking place in these cities’ peripheries.
This book’s title and the theme of this research is Drifting Nearby: transition of the public in a post-pandemic city. Our situationist approach in experiencing urban space through a “drift” was to bypass the social norms put in place by France’s three lockdowns since the break of COVID-19. Under the lockdowns, movements were restricted to a radius of 1km² outside the place of residence, which thereafter extended to a radius of 10km². Even after the lockdown was lifted, freedom of movement was still controlled with a curfew of 7 p.m., which later changed to 9 p.m. With the public areas shutting down, people flocked to shopping malls and commercial facilities. While parks, museums, movie theaters, and libraries were inaccessible, shopping malls were still open, and for us today, public spaces may perhaps be closer to shopping malls and cafes. In this context, our drift began at a radius of 1km² and expanded out into the numerous surrounding and periphery areas outside the set boundaries, bypassing the one-way restrictions applied in public areas.
Temporally, this research follows the development of the COVID-19 pandemic for two years from 2020 to the end of 2022. Spatially, it follows the paths taken in and out of Paris, crossing the boundaries of public spaces, closed cultural spaces, streets, parks, subway stations, overpasses, urban peripheries, public architectural spaces, and private properties. The book introduces these visual images in 5 subcategories. Under the theme of “Fear of Touching,” “This Way, Please: the world of one-way streets,” “Fearless Speech: Guerrilla intervention against the crisis,” “Tropical Malady: the spread of lockdowns and palm trees,” “Grand Ensemble: the dream of a failed group,” visual images accompany Re-tracing Buro’s research essay, in addition to the various inputs by novelist, architectural historian, urban researchers that expand the scope of the conversation.