Bangtan Hermana Notes: From Connections to Love Songs: Installation Art and Art in Public Spaces in BTS’s Narrative of Kinship

In 2020, when BTS launched CONNECT, BTS under the curatorial direction of Daehyung Lee, I remember thinking: this is unusual. A Kpop group funding global contemporary art, stepping back so other artists could take the space. It asked what connection looks like when it is built, not performed.

CONNECT unfolded during Map of the Soul: 7, an era about shadow and integration. Outwardly, they were practicing what the album suggested inwardly: plurality.

They decentralized themselves. They shifted attention from idol to collective. It felt less like branding and more like bridge-building.

Now, buildings in Seongsu wrapped in red and white tape ask: What is your love song? The question interrupts the street. It slows the body. In the context of Arirang, a folk song carried across generations, that question becomes communal. A love song is not owned. It is remembered, passed on, sung again.

If CONNECT was about network, Arirang feels like root. CONNECT moved through art institutions. Arirang moves through the public space. Gwhanghwamun Square. This is a shift from curated space to common space, from vertical strucyures to horizontal chorus. Not kingship. Kinship.

I return to CONNECT because I see the arc. From building connections across cities to asking ordinary people what song holds them together. From infrastructure to inheritance. Perhaps this is the deeper work: not just releasing music, but rehearsing community until we realize we were never outside the song. We, ARMY, most especially, were always part and participants of the story of BTS.

Apobangpo! Purple and true!

Connect ebook: https://www.scribd.com/.../501858075/Connect-Bts-E-book-en

Connect Video Compilation: https://youtube.com/playlist...

#BTSComeback2026 #BTS_ARIRANG

Silver Linings with Ms. Zee: Hand Building Pottery Workshop at Papemelroti

It was my dream to run a workshop at Papemelroti. Robert and I had a brief chat about it on Messenger during the pandemic. As it happened, he passed on, and those touched by his legacy and love continue. Yesterday, that dream materialized.

I held a Hand-Building Pottery Workshop at the main branch of Papemelroti, where five students played with clay in shared breathwork. My small circle of students was led by Cris Tanjutco. We go a long way back to our reading and literacy advocacy days. Meeting her husband, Galvin, and her son, Asher, felt like coming full circle. It was a family affair. With them were her brother, Mark, and his spouse, PL—both natural at hand-building.

From this workshop, I carry learning experiences too. I need a bigger trolley, that’s for sure. Always make room for student choice and agency. I have yet to master the business side of this endeavor. For now, I hold on to the non-monetary returns of the experience.

Till next clay-ventures!

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A post shared by Zarah Gagatiga (@zarahgeeh)

Bangtan Hermana Notes: BTS Returning With ARMY

Poetry: Three Arirang Cups

I made three Arirang cups.

While smoothing the surface

I recalled

and thought of people

who harmed and hurt

my children and myself.

Who never apologized.

My hands kept moving.

Clay does not argue.

It yields, but not without form.

I prayed for healing

and forgiveness

whenever it arrives.

Not forced. Not demanded. Not performed.

Just this:

smoothing the surface

again and again

until it can be held.

Grace will be given as they burn in the kiln.

zarah gagatiga 02132026

#poetry #artheals #handbuildingwithclay

Author Visit: KYu Responds

Looking Back at the 4th BTS Global Interdisciplinary Conference in KL, Malaysia

 

Reading for Care: The Plant on the Window Speaks

Inspired by the Memoir Writing Workshop by Women Writing last Saturday, February 7, we begin Reading for Care: How Literature Holds Us, a new blog series that centers on attention and awareness to the beauty of words and how it holds space for readers like us. All you need is a pen and a paper (or a notebook) and 10-20 minutes time allotment for journaling.

The instructions are simple: Read the poem for the week. Sit with it. Write responses in your journal.

Note:
This is a reading and journaling space, not therapy. Please feel free to pause or step away whenever you need to.

Here we go!

Arrival: Notice this photo and stay in the moment of noticing. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Do this 3-5 times.

Encounter the poem, The Little Plant in the Window Speaks by Annette Wynne.

The Little Plant on the Window Speaks

by Annette Wynne

If you had let me stay all winter long outside,
Long, long ago, I should have died.
And so I'll live for you and keep
A little summer while the others sleep—
A little summer on your window-sill—
I'll be your growing garden spot until
The rough winds go away,
And great big gardens call you out to play.

When Literature Holds: Journal prompts 

1. What did you notice, visually, in sound, or in feeling, as you read? 

2. Which line felt steady or comforting? Write it in your journal. 

3. What image from the poem stayed with you? Did it bring a memory, 

a place, or a person to mind?

Extending the experience (only if you wish or if the spirit is nudging 

towards generosity), you can:

1. Share a similar photo on your socmed account.

2. Do something artistic or creative.

3. Read more poetry: The Human Touch, Weighing the World

Thank you for dropping by. May you find shelter in what you notice.

Recommended Reads: Continuing the Healing Work of Reading

I'm sharing the texts I used in the workshop on the Memoir with and by Women Writing.

Reading to Settle and Stay with Fragility

• Berry, Wendell. The Peace of Wild Things. Poem. From Collected Poems of Wendell Berry. Counterpoint, 2012.

• Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air. Memoir. Random House, 2016.

• Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. Memoir. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Reading for Recognition (Mirrors)

• Howe, Marie. What the Living Do. Poem. From What the Living Do. W.W. Norton, 1998.

• Baticulon, Ronnie. Some Days You Can’t Save Them All. Memoir. Anvil Publishing, 2018.

• Smith, Maggie. Good Bones. Poem. First published 2016.

 

Reading for Perspective (Windows)

• Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Pied Beauty. Poem. First published 1918.

• Alejo, Bert. Tagpi-tagping Kariktan. Filipino translation of Pied Beauty.

• Evasco, Marjorie (ed.). Viral Signs. Poetry anthology. University of the Philippines Press, 2017.

 

Reading that Opens Possibility (Doors)

• Adams, Sarah. Be Cool to the Pizza Dude. Essay. From Letters from a Father.

• Gay, Ross. The Book of Delights. Essay collection. Algonquin Books, 2019.

• Didion, Joan. Keeping a Notebook. Essay. First published 1968.