The following is a brief dialogue between the project curator and team members on the central theme.
Hyerim Jeon: "In the 1980s, Korea laid submarine optical cables to promote soft power. Our generation became the first to be fully exposed to mass media, online spaces, and virtual activities throughout our lives. This influenced our cognitive systems, which I define as 'mediatic/cinematic cognitive systems.'
Where once our minds developed through the 'mother's voice,' it has now been replaced by the 'voice of media.' We’ve grown used to learning how to see, define, and express ourselves through the same representational methods used by media. Perhaps because of that, I often find myself imagining things that could realistically happen, based on the cartoons and stories I used to consume as a child. This leads me to position myself as the protagonist in my own work, exploring the boundary between fiction and reality. Reality may exist on its own, but fiction often relies on developed technology to materialize. My work reflects on existential and social questions through this tension, engaging with philosophical theses and antitheses."
Yoonju Shin: "I believe that for humans, who are born into a state of nothingness, it is media that initiates and guides thinking. People define media differently because the sources that shaped their thoughts vary.
In my case, the absence of parental guidance left a gap that was filled by media. I learned how to think, speak, and understand the world through others' stories, emotions, and forms of stimulation.
The way I think is thus not rooted in a single origin. Different contexts and fragments of information are combined and sometimes clash. Although I am a survivor of violence, I often find myself becoming disturbingly desensitized to others' violence. Surrounded by excessive images and information, the pain of others is consumed quickly, and my own memories become entangled and distorted in the process.
Even though the texts in my work are drawn from my own experiences, they often end up being consumed from a third-person perspective, like: 'Yoonju apparently went through something like that.' At that moment, my memory no longer feels like my own. It is approached in the same way we consume media stories of others—with empathy, suspicion, or indifference.
The images presented alongside my texts each hold their own stories, but to viewers, those stories may seem unimportant. The images overlap, intrude, and instead of forming a coherent narrative, they leave only sensory traces. Audiences sit, absorb, and consume. These images, severed from their original context, begin to drift without meaning.
People piece together these fragments, reinterpreting and remembering in their own way. But these interpretations are always incomplete, sometimes expanding, sometimes forgotten, leaving no absolute truth behind.
My work traces this distortion and scattering of memory and meaning that arise from consuming others' stories. The violence I depict may be mine, but it is no longer mine alone. It remains in a state of distance, shaped by the gaze of others."
Hyeyoon Lee: "As someone who grew up watching anime and cartoons, I was heavily influenced by them from a young age. The dissonance between the just, orderly worlds of animation and the contradictions of reality drives me to question the nature of this gap."