SongEun ArtSpace Programmation
Sea of Iron begins at some point in the future with someone searching through data from a discarded Artificial Intelligence monitoring system. The fictitious data retriever is searching for signs of resistance left by anonymous people who shut down the system. The trail-seeking journey reveals that acts of resistance are related to ‘missing’. Gimhae, the setting of the film, is a city where ancient remains of the Iron Age are excavated, and at the same time a huge data center will be built. ‘Sea of Iron’ asks how a solidarity of resistance and disobedience is possible in a society where all daily lives are monitored, recorded, controlled and stored.
About the artist
Hyewon Kwon captures stories of individuals and spaces hidden from historical records and reconstructs them into videos, after researching places associated with particular past events and memories. She graduated from Korean National University of Arts and studied media art at Slade School of Fine Arts, University College London. Hyewon Kwon was selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporary(UK) in 2011 and awarded the Grand prize from the SongEun Art Award in 2019. She also participated in the SeMA Nanji Residency, the Seoul Museum of Art (2016) and the Goyang Residency, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2017). Her recent exhibitions include Common Front, Affectivle (Nam Jun Paik Art Center, 2018), The Arrival of New Women (National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2017).
Credits
Courtesy Hyewon Kwon, Sea of Iron, 4K video, stereo sound, 20m 24s, 2020