An interesting bed pan that is exhibited in the museum park
Photo: Imago/Zuma Press
The intestinal contents represents a stimulus body for a sexually sensitive mucous membrane, “Sigmund Freud announced in the second of his” three treatises on sex theory “(1905). In 1914, Sándor Ferenczi attributed the “ontogeny of money interest” to the anal phase. On June 5, 1935, Theodor W. Adorno wrote to Walter Benjamin: “You should read everything that existed of Freud and the very important Ferenczi about the anal character and the anal problem.” In 1962, the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Paula Heimann, who was expelled from Germany in 1933, opened the “Anality as a prototype of creative ego services. Such a creative ego performance is the »Mr. Toilet House «, the toilet museum in the South Korean city of Suwon, located 34 kilometers south of Seoul. This museum is called “Haewoojae” in Korean. The word is guided by “Haewooso”, which means “place to get rid of his worries”.
Museyroom
The strength lies in the museum. Don’t you think? Go in! Every month we present one in text and image. Just as James Joyce wrote it in “Finnegans Wake”: “This is the way to the museroom.”
In “large full universal lexicon of all scientific and arts” by Johann Heinrich Zedler (Vol. 1, 1732) it said: “Disposal, Häußgen, secretly opened, secret, the necessary place in terms of a housekeeping, when people can relieve his body. The Teutsche, on the other hand, have the unsuadful way to leave them open. Therefore the nasty sight and stuck to the neighbor can falsify the air; So it is necessary to stick to it and to get to the bad face and smell through new statutes. “
The South Korean entrepreneur Sim Jae-Duck was born in January 1939 on an outer toilet of his grandparents’ maternal side, for which no such help had yet been offered. In Korea, too, it was forgotten that the English poet John Harington had already invented a water toilet in 1596. But his place of birth, according to Sim, was deliberately chosen: “My mother followed the advice of my grandmother, after which people born in the toilet enjoyed a long life.” Sim grew up with the nickname “Gaeddong-Yi”, who means dog coat.
In 1995 Sim Jae-Duck became mayor of Suwon, started a campaign to improve the toilets and from then on called himself »Mr. Toilet «. “Sanitary facilities, particularly clean and safe toilets, can protect millions from illness and death,” he said. In 2007 he pointed out that, according to the UN investigations, two million people would have to die annually because the toilets are inadequate and the defective sewer system spreads death.
Sim Jae-Duck wrote a book entitled “Happy to be with you, toilet!” And in 2007 was instrumental in the foundation of the World Toilet Association. Sim had his house rebuilt – in the form of an oversized toilet bowl. After his death in 2009, Sim Jae-Duck’s house passed to the city of Suwon. Since then, the two-story Mr. Toilet House made of glass, steel and concrete has been available to the citizens as a museum-with free admission, also for the associated almost 2000 square meter toilet culture park.
On the museum’s 1st floor, the story is told from the clumsy toilet to the high-tech toilet. In addition to Korean and Chinese night dishes as well as European bed pans, you can see different shapes and brands of toilets from all over the world as well as the various symbols with which they are publicly marked. The centrally positioned former toilet by Sim Jae-Duck is also to be admired. It consists of a transparent special glass, which can be made optional at the push of a button. The second floor is reserved for alternating exhibitions, such as a presentation in which it was shown how faeces can be transformed into valuable energy resources. In 2024 the exhibition “The history of the toilet culture movement in Suwon” was seen.
Kitsch and toilet are close together in the outdoor facilities of the park around the Mr. Toilet House. Passing a huge, golden shit with wings and figures that make your emergency, a path leads to historical Klos Koreas. For example, to a portable toilet dish made of porcelain, in which the kings once emptied. The extinguished exit of the stool was brought to their personal physician, who examined whether the gentlemen were healthy.
The Nam June Paik Art Center, which was also located in Suwon in 2008, has more to do with video art than with Lokuskultur. Works by Nam June Paik (1932-2006) are primarily shown here. The American visual artist and composer from Korea is considered a founder of video and media art. In the 1960s, Paik was one of the protagonists of the fluxus movement alongside George Maciunas, which concentrated on the process-like under the motto “Everything flows”. In 1962, the fluxus – international festival of the latest music took place in the then municipal museum Wiesbaden with the participation of Paik. When an exhibition in the Nassau Kunstverein was reminded of this groundbreaking event in 2022, night pots stood around. Asked what it was all about, the artist Ann Noël connected to Fluxus replied: »Fluxus shit comes in.
“My mother followed the advice of my grandmother, after which people born in the toilet enjoyed a long life.”
Sim Jae-Duck