Art Works

Project Overview

In the vast universe ruled by darkness, our minds wander among countless thoughts. It is a realm at once mysterious and fearful, where humanity lives as a fleeting being, chasing the illusion of eternity. Yet darkness, within this infinite expanse, is closer—indeed, intimately connected to us. Within the black box of North Korea, its tangled relations and power dynamics deepen the darkness even further.

In the framework of Actor–Network Theory (ANT), the black box refers to the reduction of complex networks into a single entity, obscuring the subtle interactions of actors and forces. This mirrors how the violently reduced realities of North Korea render it a terrifying enigma to the outside world. Within such an opaque structure, individual voices are silenced, while internal testimonies are drowned out by the noise of external perceptions and geopolitical agendas.

On the same plane lies a parallel darkness: a place one longs to reach but cannot, a place one wishes to see but is unable to. The dark matter of the cosmos, filled with profound mystery, stands at the center of this enigma, becoming a crucial actor in the physical network. Like the starlight glittering in the night sky, it is an unseen current flowing between galaxies and clusters. Though invisible, we perceive its presence through the waves and traces shaped by its flow. The video, too, illuminates individual existences not by direct observation but through gravitational interactions, tracing the boundaries of the black box called North Korea. What lies beyond those boundaries?

Project Overview

The term Brazil Nut Effect originates from the observation that, when opening a sack of mixed nuts exported from Brazil, the large Brazil nuts tend to rise to the top. It refers to the phenomenon in which a granular system, randomly mixed, becomes stratified under external vibration. Vibration submerges some while exposing others to the surface. I have witnessed powerless individuals destroyed in the process, and this is why the phenomenon has drawn my attention.

On a vibrating table, I placed a mixture of fine sand and steel balls. The motion of the steel balls driven by external vibration provides the primary sonic material. The sound signals, captured by pickup microphones, are mediated and stored through magnetic tape. With its capacity for free recording, playback, and erasure, magnetic tape becomes a medium well-suited to documenting a social condition that is so quickly forgotten and endlessly repeated.

Project Overview

Panta Rhei employs two reel-to-reel decks and a magnetic tape loop to realize frippertronics, attempting to respond to the question: “Can one step into the same river twice?” The tape loop embodies a recursive temporality, while the accumulated sounds (magnetized information) sedimented upon it render audible the very accumulation of time.

Project Overview

“Amateurism is not a concept that seeks to abolish qualitative judgment. Rather, it is a concept that proposes ways of building criteria from oneself, from right here.” I fully agree with this statement. At the very least, the ambiguous notion of the “amateur” does not function for the artist as an attempt to patch over one’s limits. Whatever might be deemed “professional,” the artist refuses to be defined as an “amateur” or in terms of “amateurism.” This is because the artist’s concern is not confined to the medium itself, nor is it a strategy to foreground the inner aspects of the work as a surrogate for life as a whole, in order to defend against accusations of ineptitude. Ultimately, because nothing can be complete, my own desire not to reach the light remains in potential, while the artist’s practice—because nothing can be complete—becomes phenomenon, an effort to see directly with one’s own eyes.