Hometown to Come, or to Perform Waste

Abstract

In Hometown to Come (2025), Mire Lee transforms the stage into a visceral ruin of Seoul—an urban corpse composed of torn tarpaulins, copper wires, and displaced organs of failed buildings. Commissioned by MMCA Performing Arts 2024: Space Elevator, the work marks the artist’s return to her hometown, reframing it as a site of exhaustion and cyclical decay. Through collaboration with performer Sunhee Bae, Lee stages waste not as residue but as a living infrastructure, animated by acts of cleaning, rearranging, and delirious monologue. The performance suspends linear progress, foregrounding the intimacy between human and waste—bodies that modernity renders replaceable. Refusing repair or redemption, Hometown to Come dwells in contamination, exposing Seoul’s compulsive redevelopment as both ritual and illness. In this homecoming, waste performs back, reminding us that to inhabit the city today is to live perpetually amid what has been discarded.