Creating Spaces of Difference in the City: A Case Study of Space Tal-Koum

Ryu Do-Hyang 

This study presents ‘Space Tal-Koum’ in Mia-dong, Gangbuk-gu, Seoul, as a concrete example of Lefebvre's notion of differential space and analyzes the production process of this space. ‘Space Tal-Koum’ is not a pre-constructed entity created for users but rather a space that continuously changes its character and constantly opens its value to the outside world. In this place, diverse space users with various tastes, classes, ages, genders, regions, and nationalities encounter each other with different intensities of power, producing something common that cannot be reduced to monetary value or personal possession. These users voluntarily engage in a weaving of relationships that is not identical to the recognition struggle of social standards, sensing and imagining a new being-in-common rather than pursuing utility or convenience. The core driving force of ‘Space Tal-Koum,’ operated by pure private capital and volunteers, is analyzed not by systemic factors such as financial stability or various program supports but by the heterogeneous relationships marginalized by the dominant spatial usage rules of mainstream society or external relationships that cannot be subsumed into a single spatial attribute. The heterogeneous and external relationships mediated by 'Space Tal-Koum' do not build a romantic community outside capitalism but rather produce a living life as a creative play that alters the closed boundaries and hierarchies of capitalist territories. This promotes qualitative differences that can be overlooked in similar multi-purpose spaces led by capital or administrative power, signifying the grassroots spatial politics that rearrange the relational forms of everyday life.

Space of Difference, Urban Community, Space Tal-Koum, Tal-Koum Art School, Spatial Politics

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