Chasing Aurora During the White Nights: A Cephalopod––Fusing With Friends!

2022

Hur Hojeong

An existential ‘face’ hovers around the world. This face is deprived of the entire range of gender-class-(culture/)capital symbols and is endlessly seeking for friends. In a community of friends, namely a new terrain of community, nation state and borders vanish. The ones who are liberated from the physical condition of the real world interact with each other overcoming the individual self and strive for an equal distribution of resulting things.

This is neither a novel nor science fiction. It is a social vision of an actual project on an experiment conducted by artist Eunsol Lee in collaboration with her colleagues. Her new work Midnight Sun Daze (2022) is the present faced by ‘Kimberly’ in a world where the light never turns off––of neverending white nights––and suggests Lee’s reality accessing another dimension mediated by Kimberly.

Before starting with all the stories, I would firstly need to introduce Kimberly Lee. She is neither a character mobilized by the artist just to create a narrative nor a pure artifact. A few years ago, Eunsol’s social network account was hacked. The hacker changed the account name into ‘Kimberly,’ about which Eunsol spent months without noticing. Kimberly was extending her life there in the meanwhile. Even after recognizing this fact, Eunsol decided to keep Kimberly as she is. In the end, the artist took her hacked Instagram account @kimberlylee_ as the terrain of her work, planting ‘Kimberly’ accessed by Eunsol into an activated online ecosystem. Even within the current reality where Instagram accounts turn into tradable commodities, Eunsol and Kimberly aren’t defined by the relation of ownership. Instead, Eunsol respects the autonomous system that is an extension of reality as well as keeps certain distance from it and confronts Kimberly as a figure who lives in a parallel reality.

The artist introduces herself as one who “continues to produce series projects in an attempt to sustain Kimberly’s existence” and whose work is “motivated by such a sense of responsibility for the virtual figure.”1 What does it mean that her work itself is focusing on sustaining the existence of Kimberly? What is actually expected from Kimberly, so much to strive hard to construct the conditions of (co-)parenting her? As a quick answer, Kimberly proposes to become a mediator for a utopian realization of a parallel reality. With no doubt, the ‘parallel world’ in this case indicates the web-based world.

In 1989, the first computer scientists who invented the World Wide Web advocated international research collaboration and proposed to employ material and immaterial ideas and knowledge as public property. Considering the first expectation projected onto the Web as such, it was predictable how swift the fascination for a Web-utopia could spread. However, as time went by throughout the development of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, the expectation and the reality grew more and more discrepant. Web 2.0 accelerated universalizing the presence of Web itself to the public and guaranteed the right to access, which almost appeared democratic. But platforms and browsers provided under the monopoly of global conglomerates soon ended controlling the distribution of information and applying advertising and consumerist mechanisms everywhere. The Web of the next generation recognises and detours such problems, characterized by user-customized supply of information and intends to compose a decentralized network on which users can communicate without relying on specific platforms. Blockchain and cryptocurrency are symptoms of the arrival of Web 3.0 as such. ‘Blockchain’ is a network based on peer-to-peer interconnection without the mediation of a central server. The occurring cost for the support and maintenance of interconnection during the process also gives way to a specific economic logic, resulting in the formation of ‘cryptocurrency’ for charge and payment.

The dream of the Web updates itself, regardless of its initial objective and vision long-lost under the constant domination of capitalism. It is a dream of boring holes in the centralized network of distribution and forming a new one for the public elsewhere. The ones who test a positive future of blockchain and cryptocurrency still draw a utopia. Within the optimistic vision of Web 3.0 era, Kimberly (1) strictly maintains her freedom, (2) while endlessly multiplying herself and her possibilities (3) and attempts to secure a solidary community. Midnight Sun Daze is a short film about Kimberly’s journey for such attempts.

The idiosyncrasy of Kimberly lies mainly in her being a cephalopod, moving with legs under the head. Kimberly’s appearance hovering only with her head is strong enough to stimulate uncanny imaginations and reminds of so-called posthumanist discourses. In Midnight Sun Daze, Italian neurosurgeon Dr. Sergio Canavero (1964–) appears as the conversing partner of Kimberly and tries to transplant a living human head onto a brain-dead and paralyzed body.2 Since the human-machine of posthumanism, the human body that can be extended by and toward machines is expected to realize the ideal of ‘normality’ and ‘perfection.’ Here, a cephalopod head as life itself and subject of rational judgment seems to be an adequate response to Canavero’s concepts. However, Kimberly chooses a broader range of freedom instead of adhering to Canavero’s prediction. Along with ‘the body,’ Kimberly discards other symbols that represent gender, class, etc., survives without a host and drifts freely around the world.

Kimberly refuses to be absorbed into the world mapped by Canavero, but reproduces––or self-replicates––her ‘cephalopod’ self (therefore, Kimbery with her long, fluttering red hair is one as well as three at the same time). Furthermore, she tries to evolve through mutation and sets forth the destiny of a cephalopod. As the artist highlights in her new work, now Kimberly absorbs discrepant elements that are extrinsic to herself and dreams of the leap of herself through metamorphosis. Similar to a magic that fuses ordinary material to obtain primary elements, Kimberly summons unknown ghosts to create a new self. Midnight Sun Daze narratively composes Kimberly’s journey who makes use of magic such as sorcery and alchemy.

Two-channel screens that are planned to be installed in the exhibition are a spatial expression of such an idea. The screens, which initially display one space, present images split in upper and lower parts from a certain point. On the upper screen, Kimberly’s journey is described, while in the lower, sorts of derivatives appear, seemingly bulging out from the journey on the upper screen. Kimberly calls out ghosts of the others whom she encountered during the journey to use them for her own transformation, which mostly fails. Every failure is marked with traces on the lower screen. The ghosts (spirits or demons) who failed to transcend linger at the bottom, multiplying in strange forms or clogging together in unexpected shapes. As Kimberly finally accomplishes her magic toward the end of the work, the evidences of failure that has accumulated on the lower screen emerge toward the upper in resonance with Kimberly’s calling. By this moment, images on the lower screen disappear at once, while those on the upper shift to a floating presence together with Kimberly.

Will Kimberly succeed in absorbing others in herself? This is not the first time Kimberly tried to contact the other. In the exhibition Grid Island held at Seoul Museum of Art in 2022, Kimberly & Friends clearly suggested a model of community. Among others, DAO3 is a solidary model that emerged in the era of Web 3.0, a community supporting and managing a network dispersed from centralized control and driving its destiny together. Without following the opinion of a special subject who has power, the members of the community manage the organization according to an autonomous decision-making system. They share the communicational process of decision making and costs for maintenance, and share transparently the resulting profit or stake according to the level of each contribution to the organization or scope of activity. Foremost, they prepare a condition under which (crypto)currency can be reasonably exchanged within the new network in an attempt to stabilize the prices according to the newly agreed principles, rather than blindly following the logic of demand and supply in the previous model of capitalism. At times, they try to apply for fundings for the shared goal of preparing a stable ground for artistic production, virtual/real redistribution of land, etc. Like the artist, friends of Eunsol are actually creative professionals, mobilizing ‘friends’ characters, who occupy space in the parallel world like Kimberly, and conceiving the ‘DAO’ together. Their objective lies in expanding the world of artistic practice through building and maintaining a creator-centered space, for which they engage with securing fundings through minting and sales of NFTs of their creative work.

Of course, Web 3.0’s outlook is not always optimistic. Capitalist logic can always interfere here and the organization of a structure that lies outside of the neoliberalist sphere might be in fact a pure illusion, no matter how far it could be tested in the virtual world. That said, Eunsol establishes an art for futility and uselessness, namely the anti-exchange-value. The metaphor of art in disguise of mysticism and magic in Midnight Sun Daze crystallizes Kimberly’s strategy as such. Images of magic circles or occult elements appearing in the scenes are a direct metaphor of art. The ominous figures considered to be ‘demons’ or ‘witches’ as well are allegories of an anarchistic vision of Web 3.0. Kimberly and her friends’ morals are only guided by possibilities of non-exclusively owned distribution and uncensored circulation, without privileging any customs/subjects/territories.

Lastly, I wish to discuss a narrative apparatus that led Kimberly to a ceaseless journey in Midnight Sun Daze. Presented as a metaphoric background of the online world that never turns off, white nights are a seasonal phenomenon observed in high latitudes. On the other hand, among other natural phenomena visible in similarly high-latitude regions there is ‘aurora.’ While white nights occur during summer, aurora is hardly seen. Thus, Kimberly’s journey ‘chasing aurora during the white nights’ doesn’t promise any success and is destined to be troublesome. Despite everything, Kimberly the cephalopod proceeds into the white night in search of aurora, shoulder to shoulder with her friends. Is it a coincidence that aurora and aura share the same etymological root? Aurora turns away from the exchange value on this side of reality, while defending a new artistic value on the other. From beyond the transparent screen, it emits an iridescent light, in a sporadic rhythm.

1. “Introduction,” Eunsol Lee: Kimberly Extract, SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2021.
2. Junho Choi, “Paralyzed Patient’s Brain Transplanted to a Brain-Dead Body,” Joongang Ilbo, February 7, 2018, https://www.joongang.co.kr/article/22351702#home (last accessed on October 10, 2022).
3. “TrendD: DAO: A Future Organisation in the Era of Web 3.0,” Joongang Ilbo, March 3, 2022 https://www.joongang.co.kr/article/25052556#home (last accessed on October 10, 2022).

Hur Hojeong

Hur Hojeong is a curator and writer. Hur studied literature and art theory. Her practice concerns art historic narrative and curatorial. She co-curated Animality Loop (Gong-won, 2019) and curated CAST (d/p, 2021) and The Taming of the Shrew (Museumhead, 2022)