Nam June Paik Art Center presents an exhibition CHERRY-GO-ROUND by eobchae and Ryu Sungsil from October 1, 2019 as the second part of the 2019 Random Access Project. eobchae, an audio-visual production consisting of three artists – Nahee Kim, Cheonseok Oh, and Hwi Hwang -, mainly showcases works that address social issues from a critical perspective using and adopting contemporary audio-visual media which have been spreading at an accelerated pace in the post-internet era, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Sungsil Ryu portrays the narratives of black comedy created by tracing consumption patterns with installation, performance, and media. This Random Access Project introduces a new work titled CHERRY-GO-ROUND by eobchae (Cheonseok Oh and Hwang Hwi) in collaboration with Ryu Sungsil.

The video piece CHERRY-GO-ROUND is composed of vlogs by ‘Cherry Jang’ and ‘Balhaelite1′ from the near future and videos in the second-person point of view, divided into the three points of time – past, present and future. It reflects contemporary people and society in a state of accumulated fatigue that mitigate or are obliged to mitigate the phenomenon, rather than solve the root of certain social issues that they are confronted with at the moment through a series of ‘fictions.’

Besides, CHERRY-GO-ROUND uses diverse forms of screens we are familiar with. Fragmented information that spreads on the timeline and private fragments of many unspecified people including you and me that are shared in real-time through a one-person media are projected on the screen. The artists capture a point where the impacts of the online world bring actions and reactions to our present life in which the boundaries between virtual and real are blurred. At the same time, it highlights an individual or social ‘desire for recognition’ consumed in the communication system of contemporary media, whose form the work takes along with a fictional story.

CHERRY-GO-ROUND candidly reflects on our ways of producing and consuming media and images nowadays. In addition, it provides us with an opportunity to face the present overwhelmed by helplessness as if stuck in the merry-go-round, which goes around in circles in fact, even if it seems to run to a better place in harmony with beautiful melodies and colorful lights.

“(…) They are doubtful about the axis of opposition – progress, and reaction – by putting together three-segmented narratives. In this way, eobchae and Ryu Sungsil present questions as follows:

Who calls themselves avant-garde?
What does their so-called avant-garde practice advance?
Can we know the direction of rotation inside the wagon wheels?
Are the wagon wheels rolling forward? Or the direction toward which they are rolling may be the front.”

-Period : 1 October – 24 November 2019
*There is no opening ceremony for the exhibition on 1 October.
-Venue : Nam June Paik Art Center Eum-Space

eobchae, an audio-visual production consisting of three artists –  Nahee Kim, Cheonseok Oh, and Hwi Hwang -, mainly showcases works that address social issues from a critical perspective using and adopting contemporary audio-visual media which have been spreading at an accelerated pace in the post-internet era, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Sungsil Ryu portrays the narratives of black comedy created by tracing consumption patterns through the media, including installation, performance, and media. This Random Access Project introduces a new work titled CHERRY-GO-ROUND by eobchae (Cheonseok Oh and Hwi Hwang) in collaboration with Sungsil Ryu.

Nam June Paik Art Center presents the Random Access Project aimed at introducing promising artists who share Nam June Paik’s experimental artistic spirit and at understanding contemporary media art. This year’s project will take a different form from the previous group exhibition in 2015; random accesses to young artists are available in multiple places of the Nam June Paik Art Center.

CHERRY-GO-ROUND
2019, single channel video, color, sound, 26:57

CHERRY-GO-ROUND is composed of vlogs by ‘Cherry Jang’ and ‘Balhaelite1′ from the near future and videos in the second-person point of view, divided into the three points of time – past, present and future. It reflects the current social atmosphere that one only mitigates or is obliged to mitigate the phenomenon, rather than solves the root of certain social issues that one is confronted with at the moment, through a series of ‘fictions.’ This work projects contemporary people and society in a state of accumulated fatigue where it is common to return to or follow the past in order to solve the problems, while fundamental problems still remain.

The work is composed of three parts. Part 1 is a vlog that shows a process of whitening the Earth as much as possible based on Cherry Jang’s own principle of ‘brightening.’ Cherry is committed to a social activity called ‘picnic’ on a regular basis using her spare time for the purpose of reducing the amount of radiation falling onto the surface of the Earth. This vlog shows not only her activities to ‘protect the Earth,’ but also her intention to take advantage of them as a channel to expand the capital of her reputation.

Part 2 is set in the present which introduces the ‘Pinatubo Option*’ that Shenzhen City takes as a means to circumvent the climate change issue to keep the existing authoritarian political and economic system. As Cherry Jang’s ‘brightening solution vlog’ series seen in part 1 gains cult-like popularity, this fictional country or society demonstrates how the ‘eco-friendly’ image of Cherry as a brand is created and consumed in order to neutralize the image of geoengineering industry.

Part 3 deals with an adventure of ‘Balhaelite1′ taking place in the ‘City of Shenzhen 1′ in 2049. ‘City of Shenzhen 1′ is a city where ‘Electronic President,’ an omniscient AI software developed by Shenzhen City for rapid and accurate decision-making, has realized planned economy in the dictionary sense. ‘Electronic President’ succeeds in temporarily dealing with the turbulence coming after the failure of ‘Pinatubo Option,’ a geo-engineering solution. Predicting the decline of productivity after the adoption of a planned economy, Electronic President strives to solve social problems by dispatching ‘Balhaelite1,’ who came from the periphery. But the reality of his solution, which was revealed by Balhaelite1, was to form a market in which Cherry Jang’s products are sold and bought before the advent of the planned economy.

In this way, the work combining three-segmented narratives illuminates an innovation towards a better society with doubts based on the opposing positions of progress and reaction. Ultimately, eobchae and Ryu Sungsil poses questions as follows:

Who calls themselves avant-garde?
What does their so-called avant-garde practice advance?
Can we know the direction of rotation inside the wagon wheels?
Are the wagon wheels rolling forward? Or the direction toward which they are rolling may be the front.

*Pinatubo Option: It is a geoengineering scheme to form a reflective layer of solar radiation energy by artificially injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect solar radiant energy, mimicking the phenomenon that 20 million tons of sulfate aerosols reflected radiance like small mirrors and lowered the average global temperature by 0.2-0.5 degrees as a result of the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. But it may cause side effects as it changes the patterns of precipitation and weather circulation systems. However, this plan was never carried out because of the side effects, such as climate change, ocean acidification, and change in precipitation patterns. Above all, once started, it must not stop. Moreover, it merely controls the temperature increase instead of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.