"Truth is the beliefs we create about it.
I believe life is a living theatre, and I am interested in the multiple, overlapping truths created when they collide. We all participate in this play by taking on the role of identity, and life is one of those strange and special moments when we are aware of it, and most of the time when we have forgotten it.
My art is devices superimposed on life. They are made to blur the obvious, to crack the intact, and to create mistakes. My work is concerned with the conditions for creating events and testifies to the situations, scenes, and events that combinations of conditions create. These are pseudo-devices for strange functions.
This is a self-generating scene, a structure. This is a collective psychodrama."
Docent Programme (2024)
Perforamce, Constructed Situation
Size Variable
The <Docent Program> was a work unveiled as part of the exhibition <Skin, the Deepest Part>, held at the Sehwa Museum of Art from January to April 2024. In the <Docent Program>, performers took on the role of 'docents' at designated locations, introducing and explaining other artworks in the exhibition. However, the performers were required to undertake additional tasks unknown to the audience, acting as 'codes' that activated the event. The artist named these performing docents 'interpreters,' and the main content of the 'code' given to them included the following:
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The <Docent Program> is an 'event' repeatedly executed through specific codes.
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The <Docent Program> is both a part of the 'exhibition' that operates independently of it and a meta-event that leverages it.
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Each iteration of the <Docent Program> inevitably varies in content.
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The docent is a being that pretends to be 'human.' Whether the docent is human or not will never be revealed.
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The docent is a being that floats in an independent dimension. The docent synchronizes with our present and operates communicably only when the door of a special event opens. This door opens only for 30 minutes.
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The docent's main tasks are twofold: firstly, to explain the exhibition and discuss art, and secondly, to reach the next level of 'relationship' beyond the interpreter-audience relationship during this time.
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The specific tasks the docent performs are as follows:
Interpreters performing the role of 'docents' are not provided with a script beyond the above content. They fulfil their public role by adding their subjective interpretations as private individuals while explaining the exhibition. Simultaneously, as private beings, they navigate the fine line of discomfort, sharing personal stories, holding hands, walking together, and when the scheduled time is up, stopping all movement and standing still like a broken machine.
Human Conversation 5 (2024)
2-Channel video of Live Documented Collective Psychodrama
Collaborated with A.I Chatbot (gpt4t)
Size Variable
<Human Conversation 5> is a series derived from <Human Conversation 1>, <Green Lighthouse>, and <What Are Sweet Dreams Made Of?>. It combines scenes where human participants (interpreters) spontaneously answer 36 questions with responses generated by artificial intelligence. The questionnaire, consisting of two sets, borrows partially from <36 Questions That Lead to Love> proposed by American psychologist Arthur Aron in 1997. The questions are structured to require specific imagination regarding sensory experiences, memories, emotions, beliefs, and worldviews in connection with the speaker's identity.
The individuals appearing in the video are placed in improvisational situations where they must use their imagination to create hypothetical identities, ranging from simple attributes like names, gender, and physical characteristics to complex episodic memories. (This setup adopts the operational mechanism of the artist's previous works - a structure that generates identity through improvisation, as seen in <Green Lighthouse> and <Club Reality>.) Through this process, six identities - Melinda, Maxine, Solomon Marconi, Max, The One Who Moves with the Wind, and René - possess the bodies of two figures appearing on screen. As the monologues of these six characters overlap, each screen plays mono frequencies with a 5Hz difference; combined, these frequencies create theta waves, known to form in the brain during dream states.
Spooning (2023)
Music from two different playlists leaking out of two headphones placed in an enclosed shape
Playlist : I will always love you (Whitney Houston) + Too much love will kill you (Freddie Mercury)
Reality (Richard Sanderson) + Dreams (Cranberries)
Strange Dream (2023)
Generative Exclusive Event (Performance)
Size Variable
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The audience is contacted 3 days before the date of their reservation.
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The audience receives a message asking them to find the person standing with the earplug in their ears at the subway station (Gyeongbok Palace) gate No.3, and at the appointed time, they find the person there.
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The person standing with the earplug passes the earplug to the audience.
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The two people wearing the earplugs hold hands (share an umbrella when it rains) and walk wordlessly for twenty minutes toward an unknown destination.
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Two people stop at a particular place for a while during their journey.
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The person, who has been travelling with the audience, suddenly goes somewhere alone.
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On the way out, ‘the person’ turns around and looks at the audience, just once.
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All of this happens without words.
Musk Melon (2022)
Digital Print, 13 x 18cm
(Fake Portrait using Chat GPT and Midjourney)
"In a short while, from 2 PM, there will be a meeting with the second wave of emigrants (formerly known as migration candidates) and their families. It seemed that they wanted to observe what kind of emotional bond might be created among us who share the same fate. MetaA&Idea arranged this meeting. Those waiting lay in the lounge chairs in the lobby, which had an unusually high ceiling, and watched a documentary on a massive ten-meter-diameter screen installed on the ceiling. The documentary showed the moment the life wave within the body transitioned into a digital pulse with a "ping!" sound like dominos falling. A close-up of a Melon's face, mixing awe, joy, sadness, and excitement, was inserted when the first wave of emigrants transitioned with a "ping!" sound. Ping!"
Excerpt from Chapter 6, <Discovered Memo B (Reporter's Notebook)>, in <The Green Lighthouse>.
The Green Lighthouse (2022-2023)
A framework encompassing a novel, testimonies, installations, and videos
based on a 9-week collective psychodrama
<The Green Lighthouse> is both a standalone artwork and a unified worldview that ties together multiple creations. It is a collective psychodrama framed within the context of several short stories, including The Migration of 2052. Documents such as Testimonies and Agreements intentionally blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, existing in an ambiguous realm. (The exact boundary, however, is deliberately designed to remain unknowable.)
Set in 2052, <The Green Lighthouse> is inspired by the author’s fictional novel of the same name. The work unfolds as a situational drama where nine participants, all strangers to one another, write fictional diaries over 35 days.
The project envisions a future 30 years from now, where technology enables people to create entirely new lives and identities—much like crafting characters in a novel—and “migrate” to this constructed reality, completely severed from their original existence. (In this alternate reality, life endlessly repeats, and participants believe they have transcended death through this process.)
Participants come together to collaboratively design their "alternative-new lives." Following these sessions, an event titled Last Night as a Biological Being takes place, and the records of this event are transformed into a fictionalized narrative.
A link to the text The Green Lighthouse, which serves as the foundation and framework for this project, is included. The text was freely distributed within the exhibition environment.
The Dream During the Nap (2022)
Generative Exclusive Event (Performance)
Size Variable
This exhibition, which can only enter one person at a time, allows the audience to enter the space barefoot and wearing an eyepatch. (Also, cell phones and wristwatches - or anything that can be used to check the time - are all told to take off before entering.) The audience hears a brief message from the receptionist at the entrance of the building and a small handbell is handed to them. And here's the message sounds like,
"Well, are you ready?
From now on, please listen to what I say very carefully
because this is happening only once in your lifetime.
You will go inside through this door, through the stairway.
There is a handrail on the left side, I’ll guide you till then.
Walk down to the stairway, and go inside the space.
There will be someone who’s waiting for you to come.
Find the person, and hand this bell to the person. They will leave once they are found.
Please wait in there. Bear the time, wait, and wait no matter how long.
We don’t even know exactly when it will be but believe me,
someone will come to find you in the future just as you did in the past.
The most important rule is to keep your eyes closed. Do not take this off until you are found.
Well, the time has come. We are going inside now."
The audience enters the exhibition space by carefully walking down the narrow and long stairs barefoot while wearing an eye patch. The exhibition space is filled only with darkness and fog, with the lights turned off except for the subtle natural light seeping through the narrow entrance. Every time an audience member comes in, they perceive the space only through the tactile sense of their feet and fingertips and tactfully encounter the other person who has already been there waiting. After the previous person leaves, the audience member is left alone, waiting blindly, not knowing exactly how long it will be before the next audience member comes in. When the time comes, they are discovered by another audience member through the subtle sound of a ringing bell. The discovered audience member takes off their eye patch, recognizes that the space is empty, and leaves behind all the subtle lights and ambient sounds that permeate the space from the outside. They then climb out again through the stairs they came down.
Club Reality (2022)
Collective Psychodrama (For 11 Weeks)
Size Variable
<Club Reality> is obviously a play, but it's a bit of an odd situation, structured so that no one knows what's a play and what's not. This is an 11-week chain of events, a reality show, or a situation play. The most important premise that makes the worldview of <Club Reality> work is that you should only tell lies here. All things are contrived, and therefore all ultimate judgments are deferred.
Eleven participants, hiding their real identities, join the gathering as someone else they created themselves. All members of the gathering promise to believe each other that their existence is real, and perform weekly pre-planned episodes. Every day for 11 weeks, they write a diary from the perspective of a fictional existence they have created themselves, which is finally put together in the form of a 'testimony' and serves as an important clue to reveal that the event existed. The final scene of the private gathering is transformed into an exhibition and a public party with jazz music. Spectators who have submitted their names and detailed personal information in advance wear a name tag of 'another person and pretend to be that person, enjoying the party. It is structured so that everyone has someone at the party who is pretending to be themselves.
<5 Codes for Club Reality>
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Be someone else.
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Write their diary every day.
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Create moments through imagination and improvisation.
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Meet others and build relationships.
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Follow these four rules permanently.
Sweet Thoughts (2021)
800kg of Desert Sand, Honey, Mummified Rice Cake, Round Glass Mirror,
330 x 330 x 30cm
A Dance with a Wolf (2021)
Generative Exclusive Event (Performance)
Size Variable
In a space with a rather unusual structure in which the lift is installed directly on the outer wall of the building, the audience is instructed to take off their shoes and enter the lift. Only one person can enter at a time, and there is a fixed time limit of 10 minutes. The preliminary information given to the audience is, "Take off your shoes and go inside, go to the machine room on the 3rd basement floor, and when the door opens, put on the headphones in front of you and walk into the space. When the music goes off and the lighting in the space is completely dark, you should use the lift. I will ride and come back."
As soon as the lift door is opened, the audience discovers an artificial meadow with real fallen leaves spread out with a thick scent of grass. The side and ceiling of the space have an industrial appearance like cement and steel structure, and a large blank screen is installed in the front. As the audience enters, a yellow tungsten light slowly falls on the screen and the floor halfway, then slowly turns off again after 10 minutes.
The audience puts on the headphones on the pedestal in front of the lift and walks into the space. Then, the audience meets an 'interpreter' who stays in the space (looks like a regular audience and is also listening to something through the headphones), and he/she and her 10 minutes of space-time together.
The information about the work is provided limitedly to the audience, the interpreter, and even the artist himself. The artist cannot directly see what has happened during the work. Any form of archiving by anyone is prohibited. The work remains only as a personal experience and memory of the audience and the interpreter. All texts related to the exhibition are provided after the audience exits, and the audience reads the text as if tracking an event that has already occurred.
Do Androids Feel like Dancing? (2019)
Constructed Situation
30 Androids, and much more human audiences
Size Variable
About thirty performers playing 'Android' (artificial humans, who are indistinguishable from humans), are mixed with the audience and watch the exhibition. Performers only have 1: 1 contact with the artist and do not know who the other performers are. Only the artist knows that they are performers, and this is kept secret until the end. The space in which the work is displayed is empty except for the time of the performance, and only the naked man who dances in a trance is reproduced repeatedly.
When it's time for a performance, two performers standing in front of the piece ask the audience by handing out the cards that say "search for the title of the piece, 'Do Androids feel like dancing?. Listen to the music that is being streamed online. Try to feel the emotion you have right now". People dancing around begin to appear. It's still unclear why they dance, and it's still unclear whether they are a performer or just the excited audience. The task that is given to the performers is "to listen to streaming music and dance more and more passionately. If there is a signal 5 minutes before the music ends, stay stationary like a mannequin for 5 minutes and leave naturally." Audiences and performers are mixed and dance without knowing whether the one who dances beside you is designed to dance, or just actually excited to dance by their free will. When the signal comes through online streaming (5 minutes before the music ends), performers(or the audience as well) stand there for a while, like dozens of standing sculptures, and leave the scene as naturally as the audience.
Tell me that I'm here 1 (2019)
Performance of running on a treadmill(until the battery of the drone dies), wearing a VR headset, and being chased by a camera drone.
VR headset, treadmill, camera drone.
Size Variable
A performer stands on a treadmill, wearing a VR headset. Just behind the back of his head, a camera drone starts hovering, making noises. The drone is filming the performer from behind. The performer starts running. He sees himself running in real-time from behind, through the frame of virtual reality, while physically running. The performer chases himself and is chased simultaneously, in the frame of virtual reality, and runs on the treadmill, sweating, without knowing how much longer to run. The drone hovers until its battery dies and goes down.
Human Conversation 1 (2018)
2-Channel video of conversation based on the script written by A.I chatbot
Size Variable
<Human Conversation 1> is part of a video experiment based on conversations between two AI chatbots. The actors, who appear on the screen one by one, have various conversations for about seven minutes, starting with simple greetings. Most of what they say is sentences written by chatbots, not written by people. The artist intervenes in the content of the conversation, creating a situation in which one part of the conversation is indistinguishable from the other.
In response to the question "Can a machine think," computer scientist Alan Turing argued, "If we can't distinguish the reaction from a computer from a human, then the computer can think." The artist creates a situation in which we cannot distinguish whether or not the person in front of us is human, and intervenes in their conversations, further blurring the boundaries. Through this, he asks what the identity and boundaries of the future humanity will be augmented by technological development, and explores what are the conditions that constitute the essence of our existence.
