Installation view of 《News from Nowhere : Laboratory of Spring and Autumn Collection》 © SCAI The Bathhouse

Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, both born in 1969, are a Korean artist duo active since 2009. Back then, they had already established their artistic careers; Moon mainly with her paintings and experimental video works while Jeon with his sculptures and installations, which were partly introduced at the SCAI THE BATHHOUSE in 2009. In the center of their practices, there is a long-term multidisciplinary project News from Nowhere.

The project aims to contemplate roles and meanings of contemporary art, functioning as a platform of their artistic practices in diverse forms of media, such as films, installations, photographs, workshops, books, websites, and newsletters. Their first collaborative work in the project was the two-channel film installation El Fin del Mundo(The End of the World, 2012), premiered at 《dOCUMENTA 13》 and now in the collection of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. More recently in 2022, the duo’s large-scale solo exhibition named after their project “News from Nowhere” was held at the museum in Kanazawa.

Installation view of 《News from Nowhere : Laboratory of Spring and Autumn Collection》 © SCAI The Bathhouse

This exhibition centers on the moving image installation Phantom Garden(2024–2025), presenting works that explore the artists’ speculative vision of the future. The background of Phantom Garden is a world without spring and autumn. Meteorologists warn that Japan and other parts of the world may soon face a future with only two seasons, summer and winter, after the disappearance of spring and autumn.

Like many of their earlier works, the artists construct a worldview reminiscent of science fiction. Sook-Kyung Lee analyzed this representation of the future as a “critical dystopia,” confronting the dystopian elements of our time. Within this world stands a solitary protagonist described as “an accumulated presence of all previous knowledge.” In Phantom Garden, however, the protagonist also embodies accumulated ignorance, having never experienced spring and autumn.
 
A cast aluminum installation titled Prosperos Botanica(2025) will also be presented. Plants have often appeared in the artists’ previous works as “transporters” conveying essential knowledge and memory across time and civilizations. In this exhibition, aluminum functions as another transporter and as the residue of a lost past that reflects modern and contemporary society while hinting at possible futures.

As media archaeologist Jussi Parikka argues, aluminum is one of the materials that characterize modernity and underpin much of computer science and media technology. It is also a residue of industrial production, such as the fine aluminum dust generated in the polishing process of digital devices. Through this material, the artists raise questions about the material conditions of contemporary civilization in an era defined by technological development and resource competition.

Installation view of 《News from Nowhere : Laboratory of Spring and Autumn Collection》 © SCAI The Bathhouse

A couple of days ago, Moon & Jeon shared the concepts of new works representing the Spring and Autumn Collections. One is a stalactiform sculpture that embodies the scent of spring. The other is about sonic lighthouses that guide ships across the silent sea after the extinction of the Earth’s marine ecosystems. Through olfactory and auditory senses, the artists navigate toward seasons that no longer exist. These works extend the project’s long-standing interest in memory, environment, and the transmission of knowledge across time.

 
Jung-Yeon Ma
Professor, Department of Film and Media Studies, Faculty of Letters, Kansai University
Guest curator, The National Museum of Art, Osaka

References