A song connected from A Stage

mixrice has worked with a community of migrant workers in Maseok, an industrial area outside of Seoul, since 2002.

mixrice has worked with a community of migrant workers in Maseok, an industrial area outside of Seoul, since 2002. Through collaborative activity, social intervention, community art, publications and more conventional art making, mixrice probes human rights, transnational labour and the role of artists in society. A song connected from A Stage (2006–14) is a memorial work about the now-defunct Maseok Migrant Theater (MMT) and mixrice’s long engagement in the Maseok community. An informal club of Bangladeshi migrant workers that dates to the 1990s, MMT staged existing and original plays through which participants shared stories, connected with each other, and dramatised everyday experiences. The plays served as an important social and creative outlet for migrants isolated from Korean society and distant from their homes and families. In 2008, mixrice was invited by MMT to work together on an original play presented at the Immigrant Day Festival, which inspired the installation A Stage. The reconstitution of that 2009 installation at SB12 includes a one-tenth scale model of the original stage monument, a wall drawing depicting underground passages connecting and segmenting Maseok, and photographs of the construction of the stage that appear to be scenes of a play. This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 12