Visual artist Hae Young Ji

Hae Young Ji, courtesy of the artist

IN A NUTSHELL

Name: Hae Young Ji
Number of people involved: 1
Website: haeyoungji.com
Important links: @haeyoungji
Course of ZHdK studies: Master Fine Arts
Graduation: 2020
Z-Kubator connection: What’s Next_Compass participant 2021/22

February 2024

Many areas of society are preoccupied with the question of what the future will, can, and should bring. Artists have a particular approach to this question, imagining alternative futures and offering speculative narratives and making new possibilities and potentials tangible to their audiences.

Also Hae Young Ji is dealing with these questions. Primarily focused on video production in her artistic practice, she immerses herself in the creation of speculative narratives. Central to that is the crafting of fictional stories that serve as both reflections and distortions of the world around her, while also projecting potential futures. Prior to embarking on fine art studies, Hae Young Ji pursued a diverse range of academic fields. From computer engineering in Seoul, South Korea, and degrees in product design in Milan and Seoul, followed by working as UX design consultant, Hae Young ultimately turned her focus to fine art at ZHdK in 2017.

Hae Young Ji, Wind is Cosmic Breath (video), 2024, screenshot © Courtesy of the artist.

WHAT ROLE DO FUTURE AND SPECULATION PLAY IN YOUR WORK?
Basically, I’m a person who lives in the future. I think more about the future than the present, which makes me feel like I still have control and subjectivity over my life and like I’m independent and autonomous. I’m from South Korea, and in cultures like that, I feel that your future is already determined by your background or your money. And people feel that there’s no more chance in the society to get richer, to succeed without background or money because of the extreme stratification or low growth of the economy. This feeling of a predetermined future can lead to anxiety and a loss of control. In my work, I often speculate about future scenarios, drawing from my background in technology and design. By writing future scenarios, I regain a sense of agency and subjectivity, allowing me to explore alternative narratives and possibilities.

YOUR WORK SEEMS TO BLUR THE LINES BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION. HOW DOES FICTION PLAY A ROLE IN YOUR ARTISTIC PRACTICE?
Fiction serves as a powerful tool for me to disrupt linear time and explore alternative realities. I find storytelling easy, accessible and captivating, capable of conveying complex emotions and ideas across time. We live a limited time, but fictions and stories survive beyond time and death. From ancient times to the present, fictions have provided many emotions or knowledge or information, as well as many lessons or myths or stories. Through fiction, I create narratives that challenge conventional notions of past, present, and future, and disrupt typically linear concepts of time. Stories invite audiences to immerse themselves in speculative worlds and hopefully lead them to doubting the one that we live in right now. Fiction also allows me to distance myself from direct self-expression, and creates a space for a broader audience to engage with and interpret my work in their own way.

YOUR RECENT WORK – «THE WIND IS COSMIC BREATH» – EXEMPLIFIES THIS APPROACH. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE INSPIRATION AND THEMES BEHIND THIS PIECE?
«The Wind Is Cosmic Breath» is a fictional narrative video set in 200 years from now. It imagines a future where only non-human beings from traditional Korean tales, which are more than 1000 years old, survive in a world devoid of humans due to a virus outbreak. Those entities disrupt the linear timeline and the narrative around them serves as a reflection on themes of xenophobia and discrimination, inspired by my own experiences as a foreigner during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is my story, but through further research and fictionalizing it, I explore the underlying societal issues more. The sense of distance that’s being created helps people who feel heterogeneous in the majority group to immerse themselves in this story.

YOU ALSO MENTIONED THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SHAPING YOUR ARTISTIC PRACTICE. COULD YOU EXPAND ON THAT?
Technology is really closely related to the issues that I deal with in my practice like hate, xenophobia, and all of them are related to technology. Platforms like YouTube and social media algorithms influence human consciousness and the spread of ideas, including hatred and prejudice and affect the labor and social hierarchy. Also, emerging technologies like augmented reality prompt me to speculate about future societal changes. For example, when Apple Vision Pro came out, I researched it and I like to imagine what changes the technology will bring in the future, like when everybody wears the device all the time on the street. Then maybe people will be disconnected from others and their surroundings and will be able to satisfy many of their senses just by themselves. By doing so, I incorporate these themes into my artwork, prompting viewers to consider the impact of technology on our collective future.

COLLECTIVE FUTURE IS A GOOD KEYWORD. HOW DO YOU VIEW THE POTENTIAL OF ART TO INFLUENCE SOCIETY AND A COLLECTIVE UNDERSTANDING OF OUR TIME?
While art may not directly change society like politics or engineering can, it has the power to shape human consciousness and perspectives. I can call it a hypothesis. One of my favorite writers, Haruki Murakami, once said exactly how I feel about this. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like: in order to create work, artists accumulate observations, thoughts, and hypotheses about the world. And in the end it’s created as artwork in the form of stories, fiction and videos. I try to do it in the most interesting way so that people want to see it. They take it in, but they reorganize or reconstruct it in their own way.

By sharing my observations and hypotheses through art,I hope to inspire individuals to make better choices for a brighter future. Art serves as a reservoir of ideas that can linger in people’s minds, subtly influencing their actions and contributing to positive societal change, that’s how I see the impact of art on society.