GANGNEUNG DANO FESTIVAL

I went to the east coast with some friends for a long weekend. We planned on just hanging out at the beach the whole time but were pleasantly surprised to arrive in Gangneung during the Dano Festival :

"Dano, also called Surit-nal, is a Korean traditional holiday that falls on the 5th day of the fifth month of the lunar Korean calendar. It is an official holiday in North Korea and one of the major traditional holidays in South Korea. South Korea has retained several festivals related to the holiday, one of which is Gangneung Dano Festival (강릉단오제)

In the Mahan confederacy of ancient Korea, this was a day of spiritual rites, and enjoyment with song, dance, and wine. Traditionally, women washed their hair in water boiled with Sweet Flag (changpo (창포)),^[2] believed to make one's hair shiny. People wore blue and red clothes and dyed hairpins red with the iris roots. Men wore iris roots around their waist to ward of evil spirits. Herbs wet with dew on this morning were said to heal stomachaches and wounds. Traditional foods include surichitteok, ssuktteok, and other herb rice cakes. ^[3]

The persisting folk games of Dano are the swing and ssireum (씨름). The swing was a game played by women, while ssireum was a wrestling match among men. In addition, mask dance used to be popular among peasants due to its penchant for satirical lyrics flouting local aristocrats.

there were hundreds of tents set up on each side of a river selling food, clothes, gifts, etc.
Some dudes in drag put on a show while selling food

there were also lots of tents selling traditional medicine and demonstrating different practices associated with Dano. Here Luka has incense attached to her hand, which is supposed to help cure disease. Here's a chart of where each organ is designated to on the hand:
We saw an exorcism. music was performed as people lined up to say a prayer and burn some paper.




whole chickens
we ate at a restaurant like this one, in a tent by the water.

pokemon bounce house
At night, A huge parade came through the city. Probably my favorite part. Lots of masks, dancing and people playing drums.
Here several men carry a dragon behind this truck:







Soju Man. Soju's the most popular alcoholic drink here. It's like a rice vodka. It was kind of bizarre to see all the little kids running up to greet soju man. "My dad loves you!"
Cabbage man jamming out
The Minbak we stayed at was apparently owned by a lady who's been on tv several times. I thought these photos were great.
Here's a store that sells various things for Buddhist ceremonies

Korean School for Health and Information Technology... something like that I forget
Junior Jangu players. They were pretty good actually
And I finally got to see a Gayageum performance, which I've wanted to see all year. Unfortunately we only caught about 5 minutes of it...


Elisa, Caroline, Jim, and I being filmed and appearing on a giant screen on top of a truck.





Jim and Elisa


Sailor Moon fan.

Overall one of my favorite trips I've taken in Korea. I'm going to Jirisan this weekend, so more soon.

here's probably the first picture I took in Korea. A crab restaurant in Gangnam

And these are probably the only pictures I took over the winter. They're some of my stuff from SuperSketch, a live music/art event. People project on to these giant tarps that are hanging over a band using an OHP:



I also briefly worked with an art collective here, and did a few shows. Here are some drawing I made over the last year:

This was the best show I've seen all year Kawaguchi Masami and a few members of the New Rock Syndicate. They came over from Japan to play a show at Yogiga Gallery and then at a bar the next night. Totally flooring stuff, very similar to Les Rallizes Denudes. I guess this guy also played in LSD March. I bought a record off of him and we had a beer. very good times.

This was my latest trip. Danyang, South of the city. It was children's day or something, so we took a trip to see some caves. Getting off the train, I was amazed to see these huge rolling green hills. Living in Seoul, I totally forgot that that's what most of Korea is. These pictures are from the Gosu cave:


Going to Gangneung this weekend, and hope to do more travelling with the warm weather. Hopefully a few more post before my time here is up.