Kang Contemporary welcomes you to the online opening 

qbit to adam I, adam

CHAN SOOK CHOI

exhibition duration

February 14 - April 16, 2021

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Chan Sook Choi's works are based on her artistic research – research on the movements of people and things, research on what people leave behind and what memory conveys. Often working with the format of video and topographical sound installations, the artist explores how, through technological and economic acceleration, bodies are displaced by data and virtual space.

Chan Sook Chois Arbeiten basieren auf ihren künstlerischen Forschungen – Forschungen über Bewegungen von Menschen und Dingen, Forschungen über das, was Menschen hinterlassen, über das was die Erinnerung vermittelt. Oft mit dem Format von Video- und topographisch angelegten Soundinstallationen arbeitend, untersucht die Künstlerin, wie, durch technologisch und ökonomisch bedingte Beschleunigung, Körper von Daten und vom virtuellen Raum verdrängt werden.

Chan Sook Choi’s current exhibition at KANG Contemporary, ”qbit to adam I, adam, “ is understood as the first part of a series conceived by the artist beginning in 2019 and titled "Superposition: qbit to adam.” Referring to quantum bits as a unit of measurement for subatomic particles on the one hand, and to the Hebrew word adamah (earth, ground) on the other, Chan Sook Choi's series combines different perspectives on the connection between information and the seizure of land.

qbit to adam I, adam“, Chan Sook Chois aktuelle Ausstellung bei KANG Contemporary, versteht sich als erster Teil einer seit 2019 von der Künstlerin konzipierten Serie mit dem Titel „Superposition: qbit to adam“. Sich auf Quantenbits als Messeinheit für subatomare Teilchen einerseits, auf das hebräische Wort Adamah (Erde, Erdboden) andererseits beziehend, verbindet Chan Sook Choi in dieser Serie verschiedene Perspektiven auf den Zusammenhang von Information und Landnahme.

For several years now, the artist's work has focused on traces that people leave behind in the areas they inhabit – from private properties to territories shared by several states or owned by multinational companies. On a recent trip to the northern Chilean Andes, Chan Sook Choi visited the world's largest copper mine, Chuquicamata, and the nearby former town of the same name. The town's inhabitants were relocated a few years ago due to the large-scale industrial mining of raw materials, so it is primarily the cemetery there that attracted Chan Sook Choi's interest, as it will soon be the last testimony to over a hundred years of human settlement at this location. 

Bereits seit einigen Jahren fokussiert die Künstlerin in ihrer Arbeit auf Spuren, die Menschen in den von ihnen besiedelten Gebieten hinterlassen – von Privatgrundstücken bis hin zu Territorien, die von mehreren Staaten geteilt werden oder die sich im Besitz multinationaler Unternehmen befinden. Bei einer Reise in die nordchilenischen Anden besuchte Chan Sook Choi kürzlich die weltgrößte Kupfermine Chuquicamata und die sich in unmittelbarer Nähe befindende ehemalige Stadt gleichen Namens. Da die Bewohner der Stadt vor einigen Jahren aufgrund des großflächigen industriellen Rohstoffabbaus umgesiedelt wurden, ist es vor allem der dortige Friedhof, der Chan Sook Chois Interesse fand – als bald letztes Zeugnis einer über einhundertjährigen Geschichte menschlicher Siedlung an diesem Ort. 

Chan Sook Choi relates her observations on questions of the displacement of living structures through the principle of land ownership and through the production of material goods to reflections on the acquisition of immaterial goods, of data: For "qbit to adam I , adam" the artist also visited the "Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array" (ALMA), a gigantic radio telescope observatory and international research institute located about 150 km from Chuquicamata, with which various countries collect information from the universe.

Ihre Beobachtungen zu Fragen der Verdrängung von Lebensstrukturen durch das Prinzip des Landbesitzes und durch die Produktion materieller Güter bringt Chan Sook Choi in Verbindung mit Überlegungen zum Erwerb immaterieller Güter, von Daten: Für „qbit to adam I, adam“ besuchte die Künstlerin auch das rund 150 km von Chuquicamata entfernte „Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array“ (ALMA), ein gigantisches Radioteleskop-Observatorium und internationales Forschungsinstitut, mit dem verschiedene Länder Informationen aus dem Universum sammeln.

In researching these two localities as landmarks and emblems of global claims, Chan Sook Choi noted a connection between the fundamental functions of both places, the gathering of material goods and the gathering of immaterial goods – a connection of visibility and invisibility: the visibly documented displacement of human life for the appropriation of "earth" is juxtaposed with the notion of visually unmeasurable particles and waves charged with information and enormous energy.

Bei der Recherche über diese beiden Örtlichkeiten als Wegmarken und Wahrzeichen globaler Ansprüche stellte Chan Sook Choi einen Zusammenhang zwischen den grundlegenden Funktionen beider Orte, dem Sammeln von materiellen und dem Sammeln von immateriellen Gütern, fest – einen Zusammenhang von Sichtbarkeit und Unsichtbarkeit: Der sichtbar dokumentierten Verdrängung menschlichen Lebens für die Inbesitznahme von „Erde“ steht die Vorstellung visuell nicht messbarer Teilchen und Wellen gegenüber, die mit Informationen und enormer Energie geladen sind.

Thus, these are fundamental questions that Chan Sook Choi raises in "qbit to adam I, adam": Is it not the case that once a person dies, his body turns into particles, most of which become part of the earthly, become soil? How then can it be that something like the ownership of land exists? Who has the ownership of bodies that have become earth? And how can we see the data of the earth, the invisible memories inscribed in it? How can we communicate with this material? How to visualize waves created by the movement of the displaced, displaced by the waymarks that the principle of ownership creates all over the world?

So sind es grundsätzliche Fragen, die Chan Sook Choi in „qbit to adam I, adam“ auswirft: Ist es nicht so, dass, sobald ein Mensch stirbt, sein Körper sich in Partikel verwandelt, von denen die meisten Teil des Irdischen, zu Erde werden? Wie kann es dann sein, dass etwas wie der Besitz an Grund und Boden existiert? Wer hat das Eigentumsrecht an Körpern, die zu Erde wurden? Und wie können wir die Daten der Erde sehen, die unsichtbaren Erinnerungen, die ihr eingeschrieben sind? Wie können wir mit diesem Material kommunizieren? Wie visualisiert man Wellen, die durch die Bewegung der Verdrängten entstehen, verdrängt durch die Wegmarken, die das Eigentumsprinzip überall auf der Welt entstehen lässt?

Text Martin Conrads / English edit Carolyn Prescott

exhibition view

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artworkS

Black air

Black Air deals with the human dichotomy in engaging with the land that we occupy, and the critical responses to them. The human need for development, driven by modern rationalism, creates an austere dichotomy with rigid boundaries and stratification to everything. The others in that dichotomy are unable to own land, and become border-crossing nomadic beings. Through such an approach, the artwork redefines the earth as a subject of connected empathy, as well as the founding platform of humanity, and not so much an object of possession.

Text Yeojin Lee

I focus on the vibrations and signs that emerge as a result of human migration.

The movements of vulnerable people – those who are pushed away from or “leak out of” someplace – are an epicenter of vibrations that have opened up unexpected sensations and horizons for me.

My work begins with a deconstruction of incidents that have become hardened; I record new incidents that arise from the vibrations of migrating people to create new localities. These localities are not fixed substances that are endowed by nature; instead, they are more like a phenomenological map that can only be formed temporarily, as the different times connected to the locality and the accumulated energy undergo constant change.

I personally trace these paths, see the faces, and walk on the same ground as I create manuscript collections of different forms. These records go beyond interviews with a particular person, revealing the subjective situations of existence left behind by humans and nonhumans as recorded in particular places. They consist of infinitesimal vibrations that are invisible yet exist – such as light, multiple dimensions, relative temporality, and voices. The voices are arranged within overlapping structures of time into a single narration, which vibrates as it transforms at times into poetry or song.

Through these tiny and vulner-able vibrations, I am attempting to convey a story about cultural porosity and hybridity, including issues of otherness that divide the self from the other; the center and the periphery; the human and the non-human; and trans-subjective reality. 

With a video installation design fundamentally based on performative research and the manuscript collection, along with methodologies extending across multiple disciplines, I create spaces where new localities can be experienced – ground upon which these small, subtle utterances can stand.

Vibrating localities are an experience made possible simply by standing in place. They produce cracks in our centralized guiding perceptions, keenly evoking a political sensitivity that courses in flexible ways through a rigid society.

Pushed away and leaking out

it leaks

It Leaks #1 - #7, 2020, Pigment print on rag paper, 36 x 24 cm

60 Ho

60 HO, 2020, Video still,1-Ch. video installation, Full HD, sound

Special thanks to

Florian Paninski, Oriana Striebeck, Jun Seong Park, Jonas Beile, Sara Khosrawi, Melanie Piorek, Ido Shin, Hugo