Exhibition poster © Seoul National University

The 21st century is no longer an era of prediction. Change is no longer linear—it collides, shifts, and at times surpasses the speed and perception of human experience. Pandemic, war, climate crisis, the deluge of information—the future has already arrived, yet we remain unable to fully grasp it, lingering in a state of anxiety.

《Future Scape Set: Project IF》 begins in the rift of this dissonance. Rather than diagramming the future as a continuation of the past, the exhibition focuses on the conditions and sensations of the present to construct and unfold multiple potential future-scapes. As technology becomes more refined in its predictions, the more data we accumulate, the more certain choices are excluded in advance, and the less room is left for imagination.

Amid a flood of possibilities, what can we truly choose? 《Future Scape Set》poses questions that cannot be answered by scientific data or technological advancement alone, and reconsiders them through the language of art—at the level of sensory experience.

Once an industrial space that produced energy, the Powerplant has now been transformed into a site for generating creative energy. In this exhibition, the Powerplant functions as a “set”—not a fictional stage removed from reality, but rather a space of experimentation where potential scenes are adjusted and tuned upon the structure of reality itself. The works unfold within this set as divergent future scenarios, exploring various open-ended possibilities for a future that has yet to be determined.

“IF” is the driving force of this exhibition. If algorithms perform repetitive calculations within predefined parameters, the human “what if” holds the power to expand questions and transcend boundaries. 《Future Scape Set》 seeks to restore that potential—opening up a space where viewers can encounter an open-ended future through the agency of perception and thought.

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