Poster Designed by Gyuhyun Kim
IG Fortuna Kino der Jugend
Exhibition Curation: Hyelim Jeon
Participating Artists: Hyelim Jeon, Yunju Shin, Hyeyun Lee, Chaebin Han, Juyoun Oh, Hani Gimna
Space Coordination: Yunju Shin
Documentation: Yunju Shin, Hyelim Jeon, Hyeyun Lee, hani Gomna
Installation Support: Thadeusz Tischbein
Reference Exhibition : 'Game Society' at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea https://www.mmca.go.kr/exhibitions/exhibitionsDetail.do?exhId=202302010001614
As the first initiative of Project Media Narratives Explorers, a group of six Korean artists—including the project team members—came together through an open call. While they share a common cultural background shaped by growing up in Korea, the media worlds they engage with and define reveal both points of intersection and divergence.
The exhibition explores how Korea’s strongly narrative-centered media environment is reflected in each artist’s work, examining how their creations intertwine within shared cultural and historical contexts. It also highlights how each artist’s subjectivity intersects within the media sphere in ways that are at once similar and distinct. Special attention is given to the use of narrative-driven media, as well as to the modes of expression shaped by media consumption and trends, with the aim of connecting each artist’s unique narrative through multiple perspectives
The venue, IG Fortuna, is a space with a history as a Kino (cinema), making it a fitting site for connecting these themes. The exhibition will take an immersive and interactive approach, incorporating various media such as two-dimensional works, installations, and video.
As the space has not yet been fully renovated, it will not serve as a traditional white cube. Instead, the exhibition embraces the raw character of the venue, intentionally blocking external light to create a setting in which each artist’s narrative can be experienced and explored. In this environment, each work will both rely on and merge with the light of the video projections, forming a cohesive and interconnected narrative. Each work is closely interconnected, and I aimed to reflect this through the exhibition layout. By curating and designing the entire exhibition myself, I hope that the sequence guides the audience through each artist’s unique media narrative.
by Hyelim Jeon
> Exhibition overview, video documentation by Hani Gimna
1.Hyeyun Lee
¥€¥ Exchange Office
¥€¥ Exchange Office explores the relationship between labor and money through the core concept of exchange, examining the fluctuation of value between countries. The artist, an "anime kid" who grew up watching cartoons, talks about the contradictions of the world in the gap between the world of cartoons and the absurdity of reality. The work reflects the position of individuals in the international labor market and its variable value. The artist has experienced this firsthand as a foreign worker and international student. Today, the value of labor transcends the borders of individual countries. Exchange rates reflect not only currency fluctuations but also a country's political, economic, and social status, which affects the value of labor itself. The artist recreates this reality in the setting of an exchange office. In this space, viewers exchange their working hours for a fictional currency called “Nodong”. This "Nodong" is the currency of a country created by the artist, and its exchange rate fluctuates in real time. Consequently, viewers experience the changing value of their labor over time. This piece invites viewers to do more than just participate; it allows them to directly experience how fluid and relative labor is in the capitalist system. It also raises fundamental questions about the economic structures we take for granted.
2. Yunju Shin
An Intimate ‘___’
This work is an extension of my ongoing exploration of violence and trauma rooted in childhood. Violence is not simply remembered as an event; it leaves an indelible mark on both the body and the mind, resurfacing repeatedly as a sensory experience. Prolonged exposure to intense stimuli in early life conditions the brain to respond with anxiety, even in safe environments. These traumatic imprints have shaped me beyond childhood, persisting as fragmented, non-linear memories that emerge as vivid images or hazy impressions. Without a stable home life, I turned to media such as games, comics and online videos as a way of understanding the world. These were not just entertainment, but tools for emotional expression, building relationships, and shaping my perception. Consequently, my memories, senses and trauma were shaped by mediated experience. Memory becomes unstable and fluid — a continuous present rather than a fixed past. By translating these memories into text, I explore how internal sensations can be made external. The trauma then shifts from subjective recall to something that can be observed and reframed. Through a third-person perspective, I deconstruct the cyclical nature of trauma and consider the possibility of moving beyond it.
3.Hani Gimna
Gérard Lucas
In this experimental performance film, she intersects how a historical neurodivergent figure named Gérard Lucas handles language with the process of an AI image generator creating images. Both practices have in common that the mediating role of the mediums takes priority over the meaning. She looks at the performance with cinematic technique and theatrical elements which is mediated by the act of filming with choreographed camera movements through the lens of Gérard and AI. This means none other than reflecting on the configuration of the elements that make up the performance and asking practical questions such as how one should adjust the aesthetic stakes of those elements within their interrelationships. The conventional dynamic between the camera person and performers is reversed, and the act of filming and being filmed is entangled, camera functions such as shifting focus take the protagonist's position. Through this, this piece will become a battleground where what its components express and the materiality of those components alternately pulsate.
4. Juyoun Oh
It is Raining Heavily
It is a poetic interactive light installation that explores diasporic existence within a fabulative world. Inspired by the metaphor of a boat’s journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape, the work delves into themes of communication, transformation, and uncertainty. The project began with a question: “If I were to express this life in another world, how might it take shape?” This question led to the creation of a fictional space where ambiguity and change are embraced. Inspired by the artist’s personal experience, the work reimagines the post-apocalypse not as an end, but as a space of becoming and renewal. This fictional landscape serves as a conceptual ground to reflect on change, survival, and connection. At the center of the installation is a flashlight equipped with a touchpad, symbolizing a fragile but persistent boat. Visitors activate light signals through touch, which are reflected by mirrored lighthouses, creating a silent dialogue of presence and absence. In this imagined world, uncertainty is not feared—it becomes a condition for renewal, connection, and poetic exploration.
5.Chaebin Han
Projekt Fork: Morphing Illusions, Morphogenetic Drift
This project unfolds across two interconnected parts: an AI-generated image series that visualizes the self through faces shaped by others’ words, and a video that explores how identity is continuously reshaped through the interplay between the self, others, and the machine. Together, they examine a composite presence formed through entangled reactions, traces, and signals—a way of being. The first part, a photo series, investigates how self-image is mediated by the gaze of others. Sentences collected from others are combined with the artist’s facial data and processed through AI to generate new faces, which are then layered. These overlapping images reflect the tensions between externally imposed identities and internal self-perception. The second part, a video, follows the fragmentation and reconstruction of identity within a network of information, sensation, and machine logic. It traces how the self becomes a shifting formation—shaped by disruption, error, and entangled relations—revealing identity as a hybrid and continuously evolving presence.
6.Hyelim Jeon
Episode 2. The Poets of Dead Tradition
This episode is part of Season 3 of the project series Maladaptive Daydreaming. It consists of a three-part omnibus video reflecting on the meaning of existence. The first part explores the protagonist’s reflections on the meaning of her own existence, the second uses Dalgu-sori as a metaphor for death, and the third reconstructs a conversation the artist actually had with ChatGPT about the meaning of existence.
Mileyh, the protagonist, is a copied version of the artist. For some unknown reason, she finds herself connected to a delusional world where the cat [Stranger] lives. She suspects that the reason she connected in that world is because she has died. Yet, she continues to question why she is here and what this place exactly is. Through the conversations, she gradually begins to search for the meaning of existence and death. Stranger is also a copied version of the artist’s cat. Through an AI-based conversational format, he assists her in her search for the meaning of existence.
AI generates outputs by recombining information extracted from humans themselves. The artist poses the age-old philosophical question of existence to the AI, which constructs its knowledge from the internet — a vast repository of human expression and thought. The AI, embodied as Stranger, or Hypercat, serves as a metaphorical representation of the exchange between humans and machines.
>Overall view of the exhibition space
>Reflections on the Project’s First Exhibition by Curator
I must admit that when I first conceived this project and began planning its sub-activities, I was deeply driven by the desire to do it well. I poured myself into generating ideas, constantly thinking about how to make the project, the exhibition, and the works even better. That hasn’t changed even now. But after completing this first summer exhibition, I’ve come to realize just how many unexpected details demand attention — and how accidents can happen anytime, anywhere. It truly feels like climbing one mountain after another. I’ve learned that resolving problems as they arise may, in fact, be the very purpose of learning — and perhaps the quiet virtue of doing this work. And with each step, I feel more acutely how passion and pressure rise together — hand in hand.