Four professors (Cho Hyun Chul, Kwon Jin won, Kim Dae-hong and Lee Jae-seung) and nine female students from the Seoul Institute of the Arts were received last Sunday at Palazzo Mauri by  Mrs Camilla Laureti, Spoleto council’s cabinet member for Culture and Toursm.

The Seoul Institute of the Arts, which has been collaborating with La MaMa Umbria since 2015, visits Spoleto twice a year for 4-month internships. In summer, a larger group of students from the Seoul Institute stays in Spoleto to carry out artistic and cultural projects.

Recently, seven students from the Seoul Institute of the Arts have been participating to a two-week creative residency in Rome thanks to the collaboration with Roma Tre University and they stayed two weeks in Spoleto for the production of the DMZ: Dissonance, Technology and Freedom show staged last Saturday at Cantiere Oberdan in Spoleto as the final moment of the international residency between Seoul, Rome, New York and Spoleto.

DMZ is the acronym of Demilitarized Zone, and refers to the border that separates the two Koreas, also known as 38th Parallel, an area that in recent months has been the focus of international media attention. In this collaboration, the term is also used symbolically to define the digital dimension that separates, and at the same time unites, the two spaces. A dimension promoting creative collaboration, exchange of expertise and cultural interaction. This particular international creative residency was held simultaneously in New York and Italy. The two places were connected through the telepresence system, allowing a group of Italian and Korean students to work together, participating in a series of workshops and seminars on the use of media in performance and theatre as a tool for social relations and activism.

The Korean delegation, accompanied by Andrea Paciotto and Adriana Garbagnati of La MaMa, met Spoleto council’s cabinet member Camilla Laureti and talked, among other things, about the possibility to extend the collaboration between the South Korean Institute and the city of Spoleto.