Hyundai Blue Prize+

Theme

Value of Time

With civilization’s technological advancement throughout history, humanity has witnessed not only the reduction of time spent in transportation, but also the impact of internet and communications technologies which have enabled efficient learning and processing of information and tasks in our daily lives. The dramatic increase in efficiency across all areas has significantly curbed time spent on work, encouraging individuals to explore other valuable and personal pursuits in their lives.

There exist many different ideas about the value of time. We can reflect on the meaning of time from diverse perspectives on life: traditions and memories built upon the past; the dynamics of evolving time that create something new; the grand cycle of the four seasons and our lives.

Today, amid the pandemic, we face time in a completely unprecedented environment. Here, we aspire to look into the “value of time” with a contemporary perspective and enrich the dialogue on our way of life as it continues, moment by moment, to evolve.

Winner

Somi Sim

Exhibition Title : Do You Miss the Future?

It has become increasingly difficult to imagine the future. In 1977, when the Sex Pistols chanted “No future for you,” they manifested the rage of youth at a society without alternatives; punk music provided a united culture of resistance. The doom of late capitalism loomed over the culture, and the anticipation of utopia turned into a realistic despair. Since then, the bitter “no future” narrative has been played back again and again in music, films, novels, art, and digital pop culture. Today, the fragmented and unstable operation of time is an axis of contemporary culture, a thing of independent memetic existence.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has, since its outbreak in early 2020, heightened our anxieties around the temporal. The unprecedented society-wide crisis suspended and delayed our individual and collective senses of time, while amplifying our uncertainties about the future. The sudden outbreak of a virus, however, isn’t the only cause of the threat we feel, the fear of what is to come. The prospect of the future has long been precarious amid the worsening crises of global warming, increasing inequality, job instability, housing shortages, and resource depletion. Future studies scholars today predict that by 2050 the number of refugees from the climate crisis will have increased to 200 million and that our lives will have grown significantly more precarious. Nonetheless, these dystopian predictions are not entirely bleak; these realizations urge us to act, to face the issues at hand, and open spaces for possibility of alternative scenarios, for practices that shape the future.

This exhibition was designed to retrospect those futures lost in the wake of contemporary societies’ waning optimism and increasing anxiety. As novelist William Gibson writes, “Every future is someone else’ s past, every present is someone else’s future”: the futures we envision are prophetically tied to how we, and our communities, have experienced the past and perceive the present. The title of the exhibition, Do You Miss the Future?, is borrowed from that of a 2014 interview with Mark Fisher, wherein he shares his concerns over cultural regression and the loss of an idea of future time. Following this lead, the exhibition creates a space for the audience to reconstruct the operations of time, reflecting the prevailing anxieties of the present, the misalignment of space and time, and our repeated regressions to failed futures. Through the works of designers, architects, visual artists, and researchers, who collectively examine and reflect on the issues of cities, industries, labor, automation, technology, disasters, hyperobjects, and the near future, the exhibition confronts the operations of an uncertain time, introducing the possibility that we might design things differently.

Jury Review

Kyungsun Kymn
The composition and plan of artist based on urban and architectural interpretations are global and contextual.
Bora Hong
The composition of exhibition spaces, understanding exhibition themes, and sub-topics seem very stable.
Sungwon Kim
The curator’s position on design curating was communicated relatively clear, and it shows unique interpretation and critical view of dystopia and time (future) by connecting with the city, architecture and design. The composition of the participating designers, architects and artists is interesting. The structure of the exhibition seemed solid as well.
Nicolas Le Moigne
The concept is really clear and proposes an original and personal statement on the topic. The selection of artists and designers is promising and seems to be really aligned with the overall concept. The references are interesting, as well as the very industrial universe proposed, that will perfectly match with the architecture of the building.
Mateo Kries
It becomes clear that she has a very good network and is up-to-date with current design discourses. Some aspects of her concept seem a bit too complex and too special for a large audience, but with some further coaching, this could be slightly adapted. I like the idea to address the topic of time with a look at the idea of future in design.

Finalists

Somi Sim
Juli Yoon
Pooroni Rhee
Jiu Jang, Daniel Kapelian
Juri Cho

Juries

Nicolas Le Moigne
Mateo Kries
Kyungsun Kymn
SungWon Kim
Bora Hong

Symposium

The Symposium is part of the Hyundai Blue Prize Design program,
where renowned speakers from domestic and overseas and award shortlist communicate on various topics regarding design and curating.

ModeratorSang-kyu Kim

Prior to joining the Seoul National University of Science & Technology, Kim served as curator of the Hangaram Design Museum. He has curated several exhibitions on historical and contemporary design, including New Vision from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy(Seoul Arts Center, 2005), Reset: Korean New Wave Design (ARCO, Madrid, 2007), and Futures of the Past(Gwang-ju Design Biennale, 2017). He also contributed to &Fork(Phaidon, 2007) and Encyclopedia of East Asian Design(Bloomsbury, 2019).

Session 1 What is Design Curating?

Jooyoung Sohn

Session 1

What is Design Curating?

After graduating from the Department of Industrial Design at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Jooyoung Sohn gained practical experience in design projects in companies, and then performed design research and planning at the Korea Design Industry Research Center (KDRI). She was selected as a Chevening Scholar by the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and obtained a Master`s degree in Design History and a Ph.D. in Museum Studies from Kingston University in London. As a curator, she was awarded a Korea’s next generation design leader, selected by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Institute of Design Promotion.
Since 2012, she has been appointed as a senior curator of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and is currently working at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. She is interested in the convergence of design, art, industry, technology, and artificial intelligence by experimenting with the expandability of curation through various fields.

Session 2 Curator’s Response to the Complexity
of the World Today

Aric Chen

Session 2

Curator’s Response to the Complexity
of the World Today

Aric Chen is an independent curator and writer based in Shanghai, where he is Professor and founding Director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University. In addition, he currently serves as Curatorial Director for the Design Miami fairs in Basel and Miami Beach. From 2012-2019, Chen was the first Lead Curator for Design and Architecture, and later Curator-at-Large, at M+, the new museum for visual culture opening next year in Hong Kong`s West Kowloon Cultural District.
Prior to M+, Chen was Creative Director of Beijing Design Week. Over the years, he has organized dozens of projects and exhibitions internationally, in addition to serving on numerous juries, and has been a curatorial advisor to the London Design Biennial, Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial (New York), and Gwangju Design Biennale.

Session 3 Time x Design

Marina Otero Verzier

Session 3

Time x Design

Marina Otero Verzier is an architect based in Rotterdam. She is Head of the Social Design Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven, and Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI), the Dutch institute for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture. At HNI she leads initiatives such as “Automated Landscapes”, focusing on the emerging architectures of automated labour, and “BURN-OUT: Exhaustion on a planetary scale”, instigating forms of care for multispecies, collective bodies. Previously, she was the curator of “Work, Body, Leisure,” the Dutch Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale together with the After Belonging Agency, and the director of Global Network Programming at Studio-X- Columbia University GSAPP (New York).

Mentoring Review

Somi Sim
Even during this difficult timing of pandemic, it was a meaningful platform to check current status of design curating and its future. It was a good opportunity for international participants to share their thoughts and experiences. It covered a wide range of curating including research, education, urban culture and academic approaches, not just focusing on exhibition. Thus, overall experience was very inspirational. The symposium opened its door to explore a wide range of potential in design curating.
Juli Yoon
Design, curation, and time ? I’m glad to partake on such elegant lecture with three questions that are not easy to answer. The experiences shared during each session are all very important case studies when we talk about contemporary design curating. Now I’m looking forward to the Hyundai Blue Prize exhibition that will born from this beautiful senses and ideas exchanged at the symposium.
Pooroni Rhee
I was so focused that I couldn`t feel the passing of time. The theme, composition, flow, progress, and discussion of the lectures were very appropriate, and I was inspired by various examples and ideas that can broaden my scope of thinking about design exhibitions. I think sufficient time was given to the participants, enabling us to listen to the sharp and in-depth questions and discussions. Even though it was an untact meeting via video call, I experienced a smooth flow that made me not to feel any barriers with lecturers.
Jiu Jang, Daniel Kapelian
This first symposium was a good initiative and a good way for us to source inspiration and to learn more about what we do. It’s a challenging thing to design such a symposium format, to find the settings and the rhythm, to avoid the ‘’zoom fatigue" effect of these prolonged virtual exchanges. We hope this first session will lead to a series of new ones, testing different formats and gathering different moderators and speakers coming from multidisciplinary fields where design is involved today and then inviting different audiences to follow and interact.
Juri Cho
On/offline connection brought a lively and productive opportunity to interact with other shortlists and lecturers. In the context of the ever-changing visual culture today, this symposium helped me to gain insights into the concept of design within the visual field and how to actively engage into design curating. I wish there are more platforms to continue this discussion with more specific topics.