YANG ZHENZHONG 杨振中 - Disguise, 2015
From July 20 to November 05, 2017, the NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER in Seoul presents the exhibition “Our Bright Future – Cybernetic Fantasy”. This artistic journey made up of different international artists pushes the limits of contemporary reflections on the technological environment and its rapid evolution.
The exhibition shows contemporary artists’ thoughts and reflections on the rapidly changing technological environment. Since the Great Exhibition in 1851 at Crystal Palace, London, the rosy future promised by the state-driven technological development has brought about today’s fourth industrial revolution led by the internet and digital information technology. However, the belief that technological advance will open a new world for human beings has, in return, produced the fear that the very technology will also take away jobs from humans and even their identity. The exhibition will exhibit the work of artists such as Taeyeun Kim, Jinah Roh, diana band, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Kelvin Kyung Kun Park, Insook Bae, Nam June Paik, Jongjun Son, Špela Petrič, Yang Zhenzhong, Unmake Lab, Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman, Protoroom, Unknown Fields, Joosun Hwang.
In his manifesto “Cybernated Art” (1965), Nam June Paik argued that the frustration and suffering caused by cybernated life could be overcome only by cybernated shock and catharsis. Will Paik’s independent path of ‘anti-technological technology’ which he adopted by avoiding the dichotomy between utopia and dystopia be able to provide an insight for us who are just at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution?
To answer this question, the works in this exhibition track down the history of cybernetic and the thoughts it has developed by interpreting organisms and machines from the same perspective.
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