《SF2021: A Fantasy Odyssey》 introduces
contemporary art practices seeking the possibility of new thinking against the
backdrop of the expansive spectrum of science fiction narratives.
In this moment of time, we are at a point where the futures depicted in the
historically important science fiction novels are becoming a reality one after
another. In fact, how accurately these ‘ancient futures’ have predicted the
present reality is not of much importance. Whatever has been anticipated, we
are actually living in the world they imagined – from climate change and
artificial intelligence to self-driving vehicles. With this in mind, the
exhibition explores the chaotic world and virtual reality in the era of the
pandemic through a newly-created worldview based on the artistic presentation
of science fictional imagination, to connect the future brought about in the
present.
To this end, the exhibition defines the notion of science fiction with
a focus on the temporality of the genre: ‘Something that already exists
but has not yet arrived’ or ‘something that should be told in the form of
fantasy as it exists as unarrived future despite already being in the
present.’ Therefore, the exhibition considers ‘fantasy’ as a ‘possible
condition’ that builds reality, independent of its ‘content’ – such as its
value as a binary opposition of science fiction or material for genre
diversity. In this sense, in this exhibition, fantasy functions as a code to
interpret science fiction and construct the structure of the exhibition.
As
with contemporary art, science fiction can be seen a kind of fantasy that
reveals things that cannot be represented in simple terms. Then, it is possible
to consider that science fiction can be a useful window to show that reality is
already a fantasy. Hence, the current exhibition looks at science fiction
through its relationship with reality, telling a story about ‘what science
fiction can bring us when we create and appreciate it.’
《SF2021: A Fantasy Odyssey》 presents fourteen Korean and international artists with works in
various media encompassing traditional and digital painting, experimental
cartoon, photography, video, sound, installation, and text. In the works by
these artists, the seemingly science fictional themes and backgrounds – the
universe, time, virtual reality, dystopia, and posthuman – are presented as
potential ways of new thinking that constantly renew our lives. Here, the
specificity of science fiction acts as a driving force for imagining and
creating a different world, offering a critical framework for observing the
world.
And the world in this context is one that has been ‘newly conceived
based on reality.’ It is a world that preoccupies what is not in our possession,
what we try to correct, and what we wish to perpetuate, as well as a place to
explore the possibility of a different life, here and now. Through this world,
what we can preoccupy could be, for example, the transition of our
anthropocentric way of thinking, and furthermore, reflection on others. How
will we coexist with constantly diversifying others in the near future when
science and technology reach a magical state beyond our understanding or within
the spacetime that might have already arrived where we are?
How is the process
of receiving new forms of posthumans and seeking different forms of existential
conditions happening? The purpose of this exhibition is to reflect on reality
by imagining and applying the sounds in reality – the sound created by
encounters of unfamiliar beings and the one made when the future that has not
arrived yet collides within the present.
It is true that the historical time is
infested with repetitive improvement and worsening of humanity’s problems –
race, gender, disability, and poverty, among others. In this circumstance, if
the world in science fiction is accelerating the clock of reality by
constructing itself increasingly – hopefully toward the opposite direction of
an apocalypse – the world of science fiction is then an ethical world that
stubbornly tries to connect with the alienated and excluded beings in our
society. Although that science fictional world is of dark ruins, there exists a
will to affirm and accept life positively, which ultimately leads to our evolution.
