Sunpil Don, Four Feet Walking Station_Atomic, 2022, mixed media, 50×42×45cm

This work takes a critical view on high-resolution reality landscapes through the operating structure of a unique video genre called ‘special shooting.’ The work consists of three-dimensional sculptures in the form of figurines and narrative footage, emphasizing the strong connections between material and reality through loosely interconnected objects and films. This video installation reflects the desire to reproduce reality based on high-resolution and new technologies while relying on computing languages, incorporating the methodology of ‘special shooting’ that preserves reality by embracing certain constraints. It raises awareness of the risk of high-resolution reproduction that combines the large-scale capital and authority of technology, with the act of simulating reality in a time when the status of analog and digital have come to be equal. At the same time, it experiments with the reality and potential worlding of small objects and materials.

Morehshin Allahyari, She Who Sees the Unknown: Aisha Qandisha, 2018, 3D printed resin sculpture, reflecting pool, single-channel HD video, 7 min 11 sec

Aisha Qandisha is one of the most awed jinn in Islamic culture. She is the jinn of rivers and is known as “the opener”. When Aisha occupies men, she allows the incoming of jinn or demons by opening up their body and turning it into a traffic zone. She Who Sees the Unknown: Aisha Qandisha conveys a personal love story of women and femmes who have experienced toxic masculinity and emotional abuse. Their collective experiences are recollected through the power of Aisha and a ritual of spirit possession. Moreshin Allahyari focuses on the tears of those who are often invisible and silenced, especially women of color.

Mooni Perry, Palanjungcheob, 2022, single-channel 4K video, color, sound (stereo), 2 min 24 sec

Mooni Perry’s film project, Missing: when my dog can’t even come back as a ghost, tells the story about cloning (of animals) as an ‘artificial suture’ to overcome the loss and emptiness resulting from losing something or someone one loves, embodied as an oriental fantasy. A reading performance video shown in this exhibition, Research with me, Missing: when my dog can’t even come back as a ghost, intersects the story which refers to the intermediate state after death, disappearance, mourning, and different religious views on death, with the cloning business. At the same time, the work conveys the potential fantasy of East Asian fantasy novels through pansori[1] of sorikkun[2]. Palanjungcheob is an animation piece that offers a glimpse of the main characters leading the project and their perspectives on the world.

[1] Pansori (판소리) is traditional Korean musical art, a form of Korean storytelling folk song, performed by a vocalist and a drummer.

[2] Sorikkun (소리꾼) refers to a professional singer who sings pansori.

Song Min Jung, Scene, 2022, single-channel Full HD video installation, infinite loop, color, sound

“Scene” as a noun means a view, incident, or place. It also is a theatrical term that refers to parts making up a film or drama, comprising a series of actions or dialogues occurring in the same place at the same time. As its title implies, the artist visually organizes a particular scene in the gallery, which leads the audience to track the past and become part of the present scene/place/time to engage with the work. Being placed in a relationship of reading and modifying each other between one place and another, the experience of resistance combines and diffuses with other moments that create an atmosphere of an organic and relentless conversation.

eobchae, AMAEBCH, 2022, single-channel Full HD video installation, color, sound, 12 min 11 sec

AMAEBCH begins with being presented to Bisamuncheon[1], the king of the other world presented in Seol Gong-chan Jeon[2] written in the early Joseon Dynasty. Bisamuncheon is a cross-world scripted by eobchae and appears on the acrylic screen through natural language processing, artificial intelligence ‘GPT-3’, and the rider sensor that recognizes things. The humankind in this work continuously asks rude questions even though they can access time and space beyond present lives. The scene of the oracle that shows the question and answer between a person who asks and a person who metaphors, encourages us to question the way our fate is in league with the liquidity indicator.

[1] Bisamuncheon (비사문천(왕), 毘沙門天(王)) refers to Vaiśravaṇa; the guardian of the North in Sanskrit, one of the Four Heavenly Kings and is considered an important figure in Buddhism.

[2] Seol Gong-chan Jeon (설공찬전, 薛公瓚傳) refers to the tale of Seol Gong-chan, a novel written by Chae Su (蔡壽, 1449-1515 before 1511.

Youngjoo Lee, Apparition, 2022, ceramic masks, modified virtual reality headset, metal stand, chair, VR video, dimensions variable, 3 min 50 sec.
Music composition: Jacob Cooper

In Apparition, the artist portrays an image of the relationship between nature and humans by revisiting her own experience with a local therapist in South America, using four ceramic masks each representing land/roots, a lizard, a jaguar, and a raven. The fifth mask is a transformed virtual reality headset rendered from an endangered musk deer, representing the last moments of countless animals and plants that once existed on Earth. The audience experiences the last moments of this musk deer through VR video and participates in the ceremony to honor the spirits of endangered species.

Keiken + Gabriel Massan, Uxkme, 2022, lightbox print, 225cm×151.8cm×10cm

Keiken’s Morphogenic Angels and the Bubble Theory raises the question of the way ego and consciousness are represented. Keiken believes that future technology and simulation lead us to a clearer understanding of how consciousness is created. The artist points out that egos do not grow arbitrarily but instead relate to each other like an omnidirectional network that divides, merges, and spreads like a single bubble. The work features an upgraded version of human ‘angels’ living in the world 500 years from now. Playing ‘Dream Bubble Simulation Game’ on Uber 3000, an autonomous car that provides simulation therapy, the ‘angels’ observe their pasts as Baby and Soul Knight. The VR invites the audience to enter the Uber 3000 shown in the video and fully immerse themselves.

Clara Jo, De Anima, 2021, three-channel video, sound (stereo), 30 min 48 sec

De Anima presents a fantasy narrative encompassing the genres of documentary and animation and explores how various race, economic, and metabolic systems inherent in the global medical system arouse fear of infection triggered by the non-human world, as revealed by the incidence of COVID-19. The three figures that appear in the video are adapted from various remarks the artist came across in Myanmar, Kenya, and France, revealing the complex relationship between humans and the wild. This work was initiated in 2018 from a field study with Smithsonian wildlife veterinarians in Myanmar. The sacred cave presented in the video becomes a hotbed of international conflict that intersects and reflects various ecosystems as well as a spiritual platform between humans and animals, science and religion, and nature and politics.

HONF(The House Of Natural Fiber), INGSUN, 2022, mixed media, iron structure, DIY electronic circuits, plants, video, microcontroller, textile, dimensions variable

HONF is an artist collective based in Indonesia. Their work INGSUN starts from the ancient Java philosophy of seeing the divine as a painter and human as a painting of the divine, connecting the traditional philosophy, mythology, and culture of Java to today’s technology and knowledge to share various activities and wisdom. In ancient philosophy, humans are distinguished by the external world called Lahir, and the internal world called Batin. Indeed, “Ingsun” means a truthful heart and consciousness in Batin, a space where humans can be connected with God and a bridge between the internal and external worlds. Based on these philosophical thoughts, Banyan tree (life), Nyai Roro Kidul (water), Dewi Sri (land & fertility), Sanctified Heirloom (power), Cantile (lust), and Temple (connection) are composed to resonate with today’s technology.

Sunjeong Hwang, Tanhamu_the times of dancings, 2022, 4K video, color, sound, 13 min

The Tanhamu project encompasses material metabolism between Earth and humanity in the current geological era, based on research and perspectives on the circulation of mushrooms (mycelium), network systems, mycelium networks, and symbiotic relationships of the Wood Wide Web. Tanhamu_the times of dancings is the third work of the Tanhamu project, exposing the relationship between non-human objects and humans, while expanding the fungal system in groups on the ground. Deviating from anthropocentric thinking, this film modifies non-human communication to dance, and aims to reveal the point where human movement and senses are connected to non-humans by using operations such as generative neural networks. Through this, the project offers freedom to the metabolism of beings (ourselves) and conveys speculations on the expansion of the senses.

Chytridiomycota Garden

Ascomycota Garden

Basidiomycota Garden

Anna Kim & Vishal Kumaraswamy, Psilocybin Gummies Melting into Hyphae, 2022, 3D installation

Curator : Ritika Biswas

What are the aesthetics of subterranean beings? How do they enmesh with the subaltern in mycelial ways? How does a psychoactive mushroom feel upon entering a digestive tract? Are we capable of perceiving its intelligence, labour, and gifts?

This project asks viewers to interrogate their conceptions of rationalist frameworks of intelligence by inhabiting, transiently, a fungal being entering a gut microbiome, allowing a divergence and diffusion of selves across the multiple encounters across these hyphal growths.

Li Yi-Fan, Howdoyouturnthison_2022, 2022, video, 4 min. 3 sec

Curator : CHEN Hsiang-Wen

Li Yi-Fan uses 3D animation as his primary medium. And is now creating a technique of connecting physical and digital bodies and swiftly manipulating characters by combining VR technology and game engines. His method aims to simplify the time-consuming 3D animation process to be more intuitive and to highlight his production efforts. We can see ourselves in a specific situation through VR, which is the same principle as when a dead being revives in a game. The artist asks where our subjectivity is in the video and game worlds or modern life, inseparable from digital technology. Is it in the body that belongs to the physical world, the clone in a cloud, or has it already been computer-coded?

Clara Jo, The Conclave, 2022, 3D installation

Curator : Mara-Johanna Kölmel

The Conclave transports visitors into a mysterious cave, an other-worldly realm populated by composite species. Their corporeality emerges from digitally-mediated surfaces, the interplay of animal, mineral, plant, and human parts. Accompanied by reverberant sounds of dripping water and swarming bats, Clara Jo’s installation speaks to how deeply entwined human and non-human bodies are within the rapidly changing landscapes of our Earth.