Exhibition Catalogue

2017-11-05

Goo Jeonghwa, Unmakelab, Lee Sooyoung

Nam June Paik Art Center
KRW 15,000

“Our Bright Future – Cybernetic Fantasy” aims to come out of the dichotomous debate over whether technological development will bring us utopia or dystopia and start by asking questions that we need right now, through the works of the participating artists: How much better have we become than our ancestors who destroyed machines for taking their jobs? Can we escape from the capitalist command of automation system and imagine the life of co-evolution of humans and machines? And what it means to be a new human that will be newly born in the fourth industrial revolution empowered by networked digital information technologies?

The exhibition is composed of three sections of Robot, Interface, and Post Human. Each of them is intended to create various questions. The Robot section features Nam June Paik’s Robot People and Robot K-567, Yang Zhenzhong’s Disguise, Jinah Roh’s An Evolving GAIA, Jongjun Son’s Defensive Measure, and Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman’s im here to learn so :)))))). They not only successfully catch the conflict and oscillation caused by the coexistence between men and machines, but also accuse the man-machine cooperation system of being cracked. The Interface section goes deeper into the crack of the man-machine cooperation system to try to make a new seam. PROTOROOM’s Feedback of MetaPixels-Language for Digital Atoms, Unmake Lab’s Rumor in the City and the City, and Joosun Hwang’s Mind!=Mind take down the black box of machines which isolate humans, and relocate the position of humans in the midst of machines. Besides, recent works such as Bae In Sook’s The Sum and Dianaband’s Phone in Hand: Choir Practice are also presented, suggesting the solidarity of humans through machines. And the Post Human section shows that the time has come when the boundary between the human and the non-human, having been destroyed by cybernetics, must be re-established in a network of horizontal relationships. Taeyeun Kim’s Island of A-life cultivates the artist’s DNA injected into a plant; Špela Petrič’s Miserable Machine converts mussels’ muscle contraction to the human labor system; !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s Random Darknet Shopper-collection presents an unexpected result of the products purchased by a random shopping robot; and Unknown Fields’ Rare Earthenware shows the process of collecting the raw material used for smart technologies, telling us that humans have been the geological power who has power over all creatures on the earth.

In his “Cybernated Art” in Manifestos(1965), Name June Paik wrote that “some specific frustrations caused by cybernated life, require only through accordingly cybernated shock and catharsis.” So his argument is that the healing of the suffering in this cybernated life, or smart life of today, is possible only through smart technologies. The truly smart life is not the objectification of each other in which robots replace humans or in which humans control robots, but connecting deeply inside the technological environment and thereby making new interfaces between the human and nonhuman. The participating artists in the exhibition “Our Bright Future: Cybernetic Fantasy” encourage the birth of a new human by making cracks in the cybernated system and actively inquiring about our technological environment. In this way, the participating artists warn against the end of the geological era which has been led by humans, and requires the birth of the new human, by creating a new relationship between the human and the nonhuman.

Forword
Curatorial Statement

Our Bright Future(Goo Jeonghwa)
On Lnterference Interface and Junction (Unmakelab)
The Oscillation of the Boundary: The Map of the Posthuman(Sooyong Lee)

Exhibition View
Opening Performance
Technical/Media Workshop

Artwork List
Artist CV