MPa Hair Shop Düsseldorf: Art Beyond Function

With MPa Hair Shop Düsseldorf, Seoul-based creative collective PLASTICPRODUCT introduces artistic practice into this functional environment while its everyday operations continue. Presented in collaboration with YŌDA HAIR in Düsseldorf, the project brings performance, sound, moving image, and design into a shared setting, examining the relationship between artistic autonomy and practical necessity.

At the centre of the project is dictee, a performance presented on October 17. Two
participants sat facing one another while hairstylist Kazunori Yōda moved between them,
cutting their hair alternately. Their conversation followed the familiar rhythms of a salon
appointment, although each participant spoke a different native language. The shared
activity created a physical connection while linguistic differences complicated mutual
understanding.

Conversations and ambient sounds were recorded in real time. In a separate space, sound performers extracted words and sentences, isolating, repeating, and rearranging them into sonic compositions. Simultaneously, the haircut was transmitted live to another area, where automatically generated subtitles appeared on screen. Speech, sound, image, and text offered distinct representations of a single event.

This transformation of language invites a reading through Roland Barthes's investigations
into signs and signification. In dictee, speech acquires a material dimension through
fragmentation and repetition. Rhythm, tone, and the relationship between words and their
representations become perceptible in their own right. Meaning unfolds across several
media, exposing the distance between expression and comprehension.

Visitors could move throughout the salon, encountering different aspects of the
performance across several spaces. The work took shape through the interplay of live
action, mediated images, reconstructed sound, and audience movement. Its spatial
arrangement encouraged visitors to assemble their own experience from these
overlapping perspectives.

The project's central tension concerns artistic autonomy within an environment governed
by utility. Immanuel Kant's account of aesthetic judgement offers a relevant philosophical
framework, particularly his distinction between aesthetic pleasure and practical interest.
The haircut serves an identifiable purpose, whereas the performance opens an experience whose significance cannot be measured by the service's outcome.

Both activities retain their respective identities. The salon continues to function as a
workplace, and the artistic intervention introduces another mode of attention within it. Their coexistence makes visible the different expectations governing practical activity and
aesthetic experience.

This inquiry extends to the garments and accessories developed for the project. Connected robes can be worn individually or joined together, allowing two people to share a single structure. Haircutting capes can likewise be connected by zippers and feature transparent front pockets through which wearers can view their phone screens. A leather bag inspired by hairstylists' tool bags completes the collection.

The designs reconsider familiar objects through subtle changes in form and use. The
connected robes introduce a shared structure into clothing ordinarily designed for
individual bodies, while the transparent pockets accommodate contemporary habits within
the conditions of a traditional service. Practical requirements become opportunities to
examine how objects organise bodily experience and social interaction.

Across the performance and the designed objects, PLASTICPRODUCT works with
existing functions, redirecting attention towards their underlying conventions. The artistic
dimension emerges through changes in perception, relationships, and context, while the
salon's practical activities remain present.

MPa Hair Shop Düsseldorf demonstrates how artistic autonomy can become perceptible
within the functional world. Its significance lies in the encounter between two different
modes of experience: one directed towards a concrete result, the other towards forms of
attention and interpretation that exceed immediate utility. Through language, sound,
moving image, and design, PLASTICPRODUCT turns an ordinary haircut into an occasion to reconsider how meaning is produced and how art occupies everyday space.

The project ultimately leaves open a fundamental question: how does art preserve its
autonomy while sharing an environment shaped by practical needs? At YŌDA HAIR, this
question unfolds through the duration of a haircut, where service and artistic experience
coexist without losing their distinct purposes.

MPa Hair Shop Düsseldorf is on view at YŌDA HAIR, Stresemannstraße 28, Düsseldorf,
Germany, through October 31, 2026.
Exhibition: MPa Hair Shop Düsseldorf
Artists: PLASTICPRODUCT × YŌDA HAIR
Performance: dictee, October 17, 2026
Venue: YŌDA HAIR, Stresemannstraße 28, 40210 Düsseldorf, Germany

All Images: PLASTICPRODUCT × YŌDA HAIR, MPa Hair Shop Düsseldorf