Sophie Jeong, Hyperobjects: Episode III – Ground 0, 2022 © Sophie Jeong

《Ground 0》 appropriates the story of a buried bunker infrastructure from the perspective of a persona who resists in order to explore her own destiny in the far future. In the 21st century, defined by destruction, we killed the Earth, and the end arrived. Due to the climate crisis, the pandemic, and the new Cold War, the promises of liberalism and late capitalism met their fate.

While we continued destroying ourselves, the top 1% of people living in the high floors of a solidly built Tower of Babel replicated a secret city inside underground bunkers for survival. A child of the fugitive community born within the collapsed world leads an isolated life. The work imagines what might happen if destiny were thought of not as an end, but as a beginning.


Sophie Jeong, Hyperobjects: Episode III – Ground 0, 2022 © Sophie Jeong

Ground 0 is the third episode of the ‘Hyperobjects’ series. Moving away from a dystopian future scenario, it explores how the perception of a lost present is inscribed and reproduced in our everyday spaces of experience. As a response to the seemingly hopeless fear of the end, it reveals a longing for the unmediated potential of our present and future.

World-building is a way of symbolizing reality. In other words, it allows specific situations and actions to acquire new meanings. One may consider Žižek’s claim that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Its significance lies in restructuring the framework of conversation through artistic practice, allowing us to see how the “work” reveals not only the problems we choose to face, but also the things we take for granted.

It calls for reconsidering beginnings, new multiple entry points, and experiences. Furthermore, it highlights opportunities to provide us with new forms of alliance and means of recognition.

This exhibition is an online exhibition. It is optimized for Google Chrome and a 1920 x 1080 display resolution.

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