Art Sonje Center presents Seoul Weather Station by MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho from 30 August to 20 November 2022. Seoul Weather Station is an exhibition that uses artistic imagination and interdisciplinary cooperation as part of a multifaceted approach to the rapid environmental changes that have come about through global weather phenomena and natural disasters. In the process, it examines the social role played by art.

Historically, humankind has viewed nature simply as something to be conquered. But the environmental crises that have become visible these days—climate destruction, ravaged biodiversity, pollution, and so forth—send the clear message that the old perspective no longer is valid. This exhibition was conceived as a temporary “weather station” that observes issues related to our climate environment from new and varied angles, while forecasting alternative possibilities for the future.

To Build a Fire (2022), a new work by MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho that is featured in this exhibition, is an audience-immersive installation presented from a non-human perspective. With a climate story that unfolds in an unknowable time and space, the artists blur all sorts of boundaries: reality and nonreality, actuality and virtuality, documentation and fiction, human and nonhuman, nature and human, and robots and human beings. Their aim is to shake us out of our entrenched perceptions and attitudes. With a SPOT robot serving as a guide, the viewer experiences an unknown virtual world within this intricately designed multimedia installation.

Also included in the exhibition are the Mobile Agora: Seoul Weather Station (2022), a participatory platform for discourse production and creative collaboration, which shares the artists’ critical examination of issues related to carbon dioxide. The flatformincludes the results of the artists’ various partnerships in their efforts to devise different design solutions usable even under extreme climate conditions and in a post-apocalyptic world, along with a talk program that will be running throughout the exhibition with experts taking part from different fields.

About the artist

Working as a duo since 2009, MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho have been exploring the role of art in a rapidly changing world and crises faced by mankind such as political and economic contradictions, historical conflict, and climate change. Their best-known project is News from Nowhere (2012-), an interdisciplinary and participatory platform that aims to reflect on contemporary society and propose visions for the future by collaborating with experts from diverse fields, including design, science, philosophy, economics, and politics. Notable exhibitions include Kassel dOCUMNETA 13 (2012), Korean Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2015), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2015), Tate Liverpool, UK (2018-2019), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Seoul (2021-2022), and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2022).