Transcending Hierarchies

The experience of the global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic over the past few years has brought about significant turning points and reflections in the real world. The sudden “pause” that contemporary civilization, which seemed to be constantly advancing towards progress and prosperity, encountered recently has caused tremendous disruption in various aspects of life. However, the world did not entirely come to a halt. Despite the blockage of traditional modes of interaction between people during the era of non-contact and standstill, the non-physical network known as the Internet remained intact. This interconnected web that tightly binds the world together seems to be a steadfast promise that our connections and bonds will not be severed, regardless of how our physical existence and the form of our lives may change.

Looking back, the Cluetrain Manifesto, which boldly proclaimed that “hyperlinks subvert hierarchies” in 1999, has seemingly missed the mark. The Cluetrain Manifesto envisioned an open and decentralized world where barriers to information and knowledge would be dismantled, offering a hopeful future in which users could bypass and dismantle traditional power structures and hierarchies through the hyperlinks of the Internet. However, the world today appears to be accelerating in the opposite direction. Class divisions still exist in various forms, and instead of subverting hierarchies, we are witnessing an exacerbation of information inequality through data monopolies and infrastructure concentration, leading to unprecedented levels of inequality and human alienation.

Nevertheless, the world is progressing towards an era where physical contact is no longer necessary, and as we are forcefully thrown into a world where we can no longer feel each other’s warmth through our skin, it may be necessary for us to embrace the hopeful concept of the “telematic embrace” mentioned by Roy Ascott, with a glimmer of hope in our hearts. In this new era, different from online networks, there is a need to pay closer attention to the potential of art to foster relationships between people. Through its critical function, art brings to the surface that which is hidden and unseen, stripping away and capturing forgotten individuals, thoughts, history, beliefs, and more within the social hierarchy, acting as a tangible network of links and intermediaries.

The exhibition ‘Transcending Hierarchies‘ seeks to once again explore the relational aspect of art and cautiously contemplate whether art as a physical network can provide clues to rescue humanity from hierarchies and marginalization in ways that the non-physical Internet network could not achieve. This exhibition focuses on the perspectives and approaches of two artists, Min Jihun and Yang Nayeong, as they contemplate and observe the world. Min Jihun employs strategies that twist perspectives, reversing and recombining machines and humans, while Yang Nayeong introduces a series of strategies that involve observing and capturing objects in urban spaces, allowing us to glimpse how they reveal and overcome hidden hierarchical structures.