One Day, Maybe is an unusual, intimidating and thought-provoking show by dreamthinkspeak, a remarkable company founded by Tristan Sharps, whose site-specific work has ranged from a Moscow paper factory to a Clerkenwell abattoir and is now to be found in an office block and car park in central Hull in its city of culture year. We take a lift up to a floor populated by smartly dressed Koreans in lime green and grey uniforms with corporate smiles. Each audience member is issued with a K-pad (K for Kasang, the name of a global technology company, which means “virtual” in Korean). It is the 30th anniversary of the Korean Sixth Republic and we are to experience “the future of retail”, play an “immersive video game” and “much, much more”. It is the “much, much more” about which one needs to be mindful.
What follows is South Korean time travel – into the future and past – dazzlingly performed by a 30-strong Korean cast. The show interrogates technological progress (in English and fast-forward Korean), showing it to be an exciting but potentially amnesiac diversion. In our buy-it-now present, it might seem that history never happened. The show contrasts fevered consumerism with political unrest, reminding us of the 1980 democratic uprising in Gwangju, where hundreds were massacred. Revenant students walk among us and a sinister news clip reveals us that Chun Doo-hwan, army general, and former president Roh Tae-woo, involved in the massacre, are now out of jail. The show is technically miraculous but it is the final, low-tech image that makes it a memorial. In a huge conference room, a small candle burns on every empty chair, ending a long evening’s journey into light.
