At Yonsei University, the whole Kim family has come for the lecture. The room is full and I am greeted by a historian, professor Chang-gyun HAN, who studied in Paris years ago. I have been asked to speak in French with an interpreter translating sentence after sentence. Soo-Bok is introducing the session.
This morning, Seoul is grey and this serious pollution reminds me of Mexico City, where I once woke up with swollen eyes after the first night. On this Day 2 in Korea, from the 22nd floor of my room in Namdaemun, I can already grasp a lot in one glance: contemporary skyscrapers, but also…
Sunday, May 17: as I wake up in Kaltene on the Baltic Sea, little do I imagine that the rest of the day will usher me to one of the most extravagant journeys of my lifetime. Between Latvia (2 million people) and Korea (50 million people), between Riga (700,000 people) and Seoul…
When I was invited by architect Zaiga Gaile to join the jury of the 2015 Architecture Awards in Latvia that she would be presiding, I had no idea that it would turn out to be one of the most interesting and intense experience of these last months. I had met Zaiga two years ago, when…
A book tour offers great opportunities to enrich the book that is being presented. How challenging to listen to readers, public, journalists, curators who illuminate the text with their comments, questions and interpretations!
An Ode to Tom Luddy. Before leaving Palm Beach for Miami where I’ll fly to the West Coast, I called my friend Tom Luddy in San Francisco. How to describe this gem of a human being? On top of having created of the Telluride Festival and found for Alice Waters the name of her…
The Omni Hotel in Dallas, facing the Convention Center, prides itself for its 1001 rooms. As soon as I step in, I hear that this week-end the hotel hosts the grand celebration of The Walking Dead (the most successful TV series of the day), with a two-day gathering of actors and fans.
With Mark Rothko: Towards the Light in the Chapel, I embarked on a 3-week book tour throughout the United States. I decided to emphasize my particular angle – the social, political and geographical aspects of Rothko’s trajectory and impact. But on the day before my departure…
As the city of Amsterdam is about to live under the spell of the 17th century absolute master for the coming three months (with Late Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum), the city of The Hague is ending a five months fervor for one of the 20th…