Techno-capitalism has us hurtling towards a digitally native society and yet, still, there is something deeply unsettling about human/non-human interaction. Choreographer and performance artist Geumhyung Jeong uses her body and animatronic figures built from DIY parts to emphasise the uncanny relationships that have developed between people and machines. Her work occupies an in-between space – a comfort with technology that is uncomfortable, a sensitivity towards objects that is non-consensual, a beautiful and horrifying revelation of techno-social opposition and similitude. Jeong intentionally maintains an amateur, toy-like, experimental quality to her engineered beings. They are clunky but responsive, alluring but humble. Their playfulness is foregrounded in the curious amalgamation of prosthetic parts. The “toys” on view here – presented alongside videos documenting Jeong’s own interactions with her machines – are DIY robots created by the artist following her self-taught learning in programming electronic circuits and mechanisms, a process she has compared to sewing stitch-by-stitch. While they initially appear sturdy and functional, these robots reveal their fragile instability when they begin to move. Imbuing her “toys” with a clumsiness that evokes the desire to pamper and care for them from the human observer, Jeong creates encounters between human and machine that test our capacity for empathy when non-human entities seem to need our help.
Isabella Achenbach
