Seoul-born and Berlin-based artist Young-jun Tak, whose work spans sculpture, choreography and filmmaking, tells us about how his first job as an usher at the Seoul Arts Centre taught him to study bodily expression, posture, contrast and movement
This story is taken from the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“My first job was as an usher at the Seoul Arts Center, a concert hall and opera house in South Korea. If I was lucky enough to be assigned to supervise inside the halls, I could see world-class stage arts for free. But the six months I spent working there left me with a side-effect – I could no longer focus on the stage, because my job was to police the crowd with an eagle eye, to catch people misbehaving in the audience. It’s bizarre to watch people in this way – even in gay cruising areas you wouldn’t stare at other bodies this intensely. Now, whenever I go to a concert, especially at the Berliner Philharmonie with its encircling seating, my gaze hovers over the audience as well as the stage. I find myself scrutinising all bodily expression, posture, movement. To see hundreds of people in such a concentrated space, voluntarily focusing on and responding, differently, to the same thing, is a great study of bodies in contrast – free or rigid, loud or silent, spotlit or shadowed, tamed or untamed. And it’s a cherished moment of distance from our damned phones.”
The work of the Seoul-born and Berlin-based artist Young-jun Tak spans sculpture, choreography and filmmaking, examining the sociocultural and psychological mechanisms that shape belief systems. He began his career editing an arts journal, turning to sculpture when he moved to the German capital in 2015. During the pandemic, unable to access materials, he started watching dance and stage rehearsal videos on YouTube and became fascinated. “The movements, postures, body parts made these videos so tactile and haptic – they reminded me of sculptures,” he says. Tak’s work has been exhibited around the world, most recently at the Polygon Gallery in Vancouver, which showcased his ongoing series of choreography-based films that take place in settings including a queer club, an elaborate Easter service in Malaga, a popular cruising forest in Berlin and a Norwegian church. The artist will soon release two new films – Boy, Son and Blurry – as well as his first performance piece, Calling.
This story features in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue, marking 25 years of AnOther Magazine, on sale now.
