Book Launch - Solitary

Solitary

With contributions by Jaeyeon Chung, Tyler Coburn, Sunjin Kim, Hyunjeung Kim, Kyungmook Kim, Min Kyoung Lee, Woochang Lee, Russell Mason, InYoung Yeo, Jiwon Yu

Solitary is a collection of texts written at a wellness center in South Korea designed as a mock prison. This facility is run by an organization called Happitory—a combination of “Happiness” and “Factory.” Happitory offers retreats for teenagers, company employees, government officials, and the general public. Some sessions involve drama therapy, others are led by Buddhist monks. Most intriguing is a program called “Solitary Confinement,” where one can spend twenty-four hours of technology-free time locked in an individual cell.

To create Solitary, artist Tyler Coburn commissioned ten practitioners (including himself) to spend time in solitary confinement at this wellness center, where they produced texts using the materials on hand. Certain questions drove their writing. How does one square the relaxation promised by Happitory with the way solitary confinement functions in actual prisons? What types of thinking and writing become possible through its restrictions—no book, no Internet, just writing materials? How might the emphasis on writing relate to texts by Oscar Wilde, Antonio Gramsci, Kim Dae-jung, Shin Young-bok, and others produced during periods of imprisonment?

Taken as a whole, Solitary is unique in being both a collection of texts and a collective artwork: an experiment in site-specific writing.

For this event, Tyler will give a talk about the book, followed by a conversation with researcher Michelle Wun Ting Wong. Tyler and Michelle previously worked together on “Memory Machine,” a digital project developed from the Ha Bik Chuen Archive.

Tyler Coburn is an artist, writer, and teacher based in New York. His work has been presented at such venues as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bergen Kunsthall; Hayward Gallery, London; Para Site, Hong Kong; and Kunstverein Munich. His texts have appeared in e-flux journal, Frieze, Dis, Mousse, ArtReview, LEAP, and Rhizome.

Michelle Wun Ting Wong is a researcher who also writes and curates. She received her PhD in Art History from The University of Hong Kong in 2025. Recent curatorial projects include Reframing Strangeness: Ha Bik Chuen’s Motherboards and Collagraphs at Para Site (2025). She co-runs the independent art space New Park with artists South Ho Siu Nam and Billy HC Kwok.