Paper short abstract:

Applying Gell's idea of "Vogel's Net: traps as artworks and artworks as traps", I analyze the operational principle of A Korean Traditional Pop's Club in Hongdae, one of the most hippest areas in Seoul, Korea.

Paper long abstract:

A Korean Traditional Pop's Club named as "곱창전골" is an exciting heavy drinking place. It is noted for playing only Korean vinyl records professionally by DJs via request papers from musical drinkers. At the corner of the street in Hongdae, one of the most hippest areas in Seoul, Korea, it has long been in business for more than ten years and yet still struggling to abide from day to day. The floating image of "곱창전골" is improvised by a number of diverse people such as young hipsters, troublesome drunkards, curious foreign tourists, and so on. In other words, this musical image does not stay in one fixed tone as if the floating signifier were continually inscribed and erased then eventually delayed for the definitive signified. Actually, the definite tone is not there, but the colourful tone is always there potentially. No matter what the tone is or is not, a private owner of that place exists in reality. He subsists on the materiality rooted from his huge collection of Korean vinyl records, and DJs add the intentionality on the materiality by their skilled musical techniques. Consequently, the synthesis of these qualities construct a Korean musical trap which lures anonymous people on the street into the place. Some of them, the trapped people, get their names in the process of drunken participation reconstructing a improvising trap in the improvised trap.