1. Crack as ‘Disease’
(1) An Abnormal Body That Reinforces Normality
In the novel ‘Crack: Do not Updates.’, the protagonist “Hajin” lives in a world where a central server governs humanity. Humans regularly undergo updates provided by the central server in order to maintain the most efficient and optimized state. Hajin, who had been living in a Flesh state while continuously updating, one day discovers that the back of her hand has cracked, revealing faint traces of bone. She has contracted Crack disease, in which the skin literally splits.
After becoming unable to receive updates due to the crack, she attempts to update through illegal underground channels in order to return to the Flesh state, but fails, and ultimately becomes Bone, with only bones remaining. The crack that appears in her body draws her into a dark domain. However, there she encounters beings similar to herself—Bone 1, Bone 2, Bone 3—who also suffer from Crack disease, and together they dream of a revolution that will dismantle the system that excludes Bone.
Hajin receives a message: “The user’s update status is outside the normal range.” This message suggests not only that they exist beyond the scope of the system’s management and control, but also that cracks continue to occur somewhere despite the system’s constant updates—that is, areas beyond the system’s control are continuously being generated within the world.
However, the attending physician of Crack disease patients shows no interest in or effort to resolve the problems of those who cannot update. Ultimately, this society excludes beings that fall outside the system’s manageable range, concealing them outside the system in order to maintain a clean, efficient, and flawless condition without deficiency or failure.
Because updated Flesh beings use a different language from Bone—the previous version of humanity—Bones outside the system can only communicate among themselves. Their language, belonging to beings who are almost nonexistent, is a dead language. However, paradoxically, in the novel they attempt network hacking using this dead language that only Bone can use, and are able to identify flaws in the system. Furthermore, the fact that they exist outside the range of management and control proves their individuality and singularity.
In that sense, the state of Bone signifies a certain possibility, yet this possibility is defined as “vulnerability” through the system’s indoctrination. Bones feel shame and helplessness about this vulnerability and must hide as if infected with a disease. Bodies afflicted with Crack disease gamble all their wealth for the slim chance of successful updating to become “normal” mainstream humans, but the hope they place in this gamble eventually transforms into deep skepticism.
Rendered invisible as if they do not exist, stigmatized as abnormal, and classified as beings incapable of speech, Bones are pathologized through Crack. In this way, classifying unmanageable beings as a disease group and excluding them from society not only erases their existence but also proves the system’s control, while reinforcing the normality of Flesh within a society sterilized from disease.
2. The Body That ‘Molts’
(1) A Flexible Body That Has Shed Its Skin
Here, the crack that transforms Hajin’s body primarily signifies an internal rupture, but from another perspective it can also be understood as molting—shedding the skin of flesh that surrounds the bones. If one considers the body consisting only of bones, like Bone, as the standard of the body, then flesh becomes a shell that envelops the core. When a chick hatches from an egg or an insect undergoes metamorphosis and sheds its shell, what changes is only the body, yet they begin to live a new phase of life with that transformed body.
Although it is the weakest state, it is also a state that has departed from the original condition and holds the possibility of becoming anything. Here, “weakness” is not vulnerability imposed by others as a stigma, but rather a soft and flexible state. Hajin, too, becomes a weak being excluded from the system as cracks appear in her body, but through that rupture she sheds the flesh that had cushioned and enclosed her, becoming a flexible being capable of imagining revolution.
The updated body may appear to shed its previous shell and gain something new, but in fact, through the process of updating, emotions—one’s individuality and uniqueness—are erased. While the updated body becomes endlessly hollow under the name of novelty, the cracked body, in shedding its shell, instead reaches the most vulnerable state. From that weakness, it is able to generate the strength of revolution.
Moreover, by losing the flesh that had softly protected her, Hajin comes to recognize the beings that had been excluded. Although it was not the result she desired, by becoming Bone she is finally able to perceive the system’s selective exclusion, surveillance, and governance, and to resist it. She is also able to form a community and organization in opposition to it. Crack reduces Hajin’s body to its weakest state, but enables her to imagine and enact what could not be conceived within the system.
(2) Stripping Away the Quantified Body
In Topography of the Body(2025), one witnesses a state in which the human body is converted into data and individuality evaporates. The black papers attached to the wall of the exhibition space and swaying in the air are prints of this unfolded blueprint. The artist modeled her own body in 3D and then unfolded its surface to create this diagram. Rather than a drawing that simplifies the body into geometric forms such as hexagons or cylinders, this blueprint fragments the recognizable form of the body along countless intersections and lines. The 3D-modeled body erases information about whose body it is and what characteristics it has, and the fragmented, unfolded body no longer even appears to originate from a physical body.
This work is also the result of converting a physical body into data through 3D scanning, and then re-transforming that data into a material form as paper in physical space. Logically, turning the body into data and then back into material could be considered a process of “restoration.” However, in the process of inputting a real body into data, having the program recognize that data, and converting it back into a form that can exist in the physical world, countless errors and distortions occur.
A body that has been scanned, diagrammed, and repeatedly quantified is no longer a body by the time it returns to physical space. Therefore, if one were to fold the paper according to the artist’s blueprint, the countless intersections and lines might produce an unimaginable form. Through this process of transformation, the artist shows that converting something into data and then back into material can be both a form of violence and a source of new possibility.
The artist specifically quantifies her own body among many bodies and installs its “skin” on the wall. In doing so, she first appears to become a subject of the system by quantifying her own body, but then removes that quantified layer by shedding its surface. Even if that layer grows back like nails or dead skin, the gesture remains. Subjects under the system’s governance are constantly monitored and quantified, but at times they reflect on those standards and remove them from their own bodies. By presenting the stripped shell of the quantified body to viewers, the artist may be attempting—like Hajin and the Bones—to shed the flesh that envelops her and position herself alongside the excluded.
3. The ‘Code’ That Dismantles the System
(1) Vulnerability Will Become Your Responsibility
One may recall the update notifications of the Microsoft Windows operating system. After recommending updates, the program eventually ends support for older versions. From that point on, outdated programs become vulnerable to security risks. The support system no longer takes interest in or responsibility for issues arising in older versions. In short, once support ends, it means that “whatever problem occurs will be your responsibility for not updating.” This overlaps with the neoliberal reality in which all responsibility is transferred to the individual under the name of freedom.
The phrase “If you like this Please Buy it,” which can be read in the exhibition space, suggests that if one desires something (p), one should purchase it with money (q). If one considers the contrapositive, not purchasing (~q) becomes equivalent to not desiring (~p). Since the contrapositive of a true proposition is also true, there is no logical error here. However, within this logically valid proposition, the existence of those who lack the capital to purchase cannot be imagined. Thus, not possessing something becomes both the result of one’s choice and one’s responsibility. The message Hajin receives—“Please update as soon as possible”—similarly gives the illusion of choice, while in fact assigning all responsibility to her, even though she had no ability to choose.
Those who recognize this system—one that performs exclusion while pretending to offer choice—begin to detect the marks of Crack disease in one another. Bones gather and form a community, learning how to exist together as Bone. In order to end their prolonged marginalization, they attempt to overturn the dominant world through revolution. However, as non-mainstream beings, they lack the power to confront the mainstream. The system detects their revolution, responds swiftly, and executes them without hesitation.
The bodies of the executed Bones are then used as data to repair defects within the system and upgrade its ability to detect and control previously unmanageable entities. Ultimately, the revolutionary potential of these marginal bodies is recycled as a resource for updating the dominant bodies, further reinforcing the system’s surveillance and control.
Bodies that had the potential for transformation through molting are reabsorbed into the system. Because they are regarded as those who refused to update and initiated rebellion, their execution and reuse are justified. Individuality, defined as vulnerability, is excluded; the excluded enact revolution; and their rebellion is punished—this scripted narrative unfolds seamlessly like a play.
(2) Code That Hacks the System
“If you like this Please Buy it”—this phrase also carries another context. It appears when using a “crack” program that generates or patches serial numbers required to install paid software. It suggests that if one likes the program, one should purchase the official version with legitimate payment.
Within the worldview of the work, “crack” is both “disease” and “molting.” In another sense, it is also a “code”—a program that generates or inputs serial numbers to enable installation. Software operates according to the rule that it can only be installed with a valid serial number. A crack disrupts this rule and dismantles the system’s order. As in everyday usage, crack in this work functions as a hacking code that breaks down the system.
In the novel, the beings called Bone, who are becoming cracked, themselves become codes that dismantle the system. The system excludes them as diseased entities. Their revolution, although unsuccessful, still functions as a code that disrupts the system. Likewise, Topography of the Body reveals how the human body is measured, quantified, and managed within the system in order to produce averages. In doing so, it exposes the rules of the system. This exhibition itself can thus function as a hacking code against reality.
4. Between Bone and Flesh: An Error-Filled Intermediate Zone
Throughout the exhibition, the artist hacks the system through the narrative of the novel, her actions, and the forms of the works. Within the autonomous space of the exhibition, revolution occurs, fails, and repeats. Then is the message of these works simply to call for revolution?
In front of the sign reading “If you like this Please Buy it,” lies the 3D-printed work Cracker(2025), shaped like a bitten cracker. The title “Cracker” is ambiguous. If read as the agent performing the verb “crack,” it refers to someone who dismantles the system. But like the snack called a cracker, it can also signify the object being broken. Thus, subjects like Hajin are both the ones in whom cracks occur and the active agents who crack the system. This dual proposition suggests that such subjects may themselves become another dominant system.
Is it an illegal update center, the central server’s server room, or perhaps the base of the Bones? The overturned nest-like structure Bone and Fleshes, which evokes speculation about what it once contained, forms a loose relationship between the two states in the novel—Flesh and Bone—through its wire and 3D polymorph structure.
If extended further, bone can be seen as the “individual” and flesh as the “system” or “world.” Moving carefully between the two, presenting both “flesh-stripped bone” and “bone-covered flesh,” the artist plants an intermediate zone between bone and flesh throughout the exhibition. Through this, the exhibition does not simply advocate revolution but instead raises questions about the relationship between humans and systems—humans who are governed by systems, who enact exclusion within them, and who attempt revolution.
The artist does not provide a direct answer to this question. Instead, through the act of making the work, she seems to choose to remain in an intermediate state—neither Bone nor Flesh—where she can observe both from a distance. In that process, she perhaps imagines the possible collapse of the system.
