Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing presents Weather Station, by MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho. Since 2009, MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho have collectively explored the role of art amidst human challenges and the rapidly changing world. The exhibition focuses on redefining the relationship between humans, non-humans, and nature in the era of artificial intelligence. The artists take an alternative perspective and approach to climate change, embracing the notion of coexistence.

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 contra- dictions, 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 dOCUMENTA 13, German (2012), School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA (2013), the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Italy (2015), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Swiss (2015), Tate Liverpool, UK (2018–2019), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul,  Korea (2021– 2022), Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea (2022), and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2022).

The title of To Build a Fire (2022-24) comes from a short story of the same name published in 1902 by Jack London. While London’s story used a man’s desperate battle to survive in the cold to examine human survival in the face of nature, MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho’s work portrays the Earth’s changing face as it traces the endless trajectory of time from a nonhuman perspective. 

The narrative centers on two axes: one documents the Earth’s climate and its sudden transformation before the dinosaurs went extinct, and the other is based on an original story that looks at the planet from the perspective of a once-mighty rock weathered into a tiny pebble over the millennia. Interweaving realistic records with imaginative fiction, the story is recreated and shared within the exhibition space through an artificial intelligence program. The viewer is guided by a Spot robot through the experience of an unknown world, which is virtually realized in an elaborately designed multimedia installation work. 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 and draw us into a new realm of discourse.

Mobile Agora (2022-24) is a participation-oriented platform for discourse production and creative collaboration. Based on their collaborations since 2012 with experts in fields such as design, science, and philosophy, MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho have conceived various design solutions that can be used even in extreme climate conditions and a post-apocalyptic world. 

The industrial design studio BKID took part in the artists’ previous work News from Nowhere: Freedom Village (2021), for which they presented Super Lung & Super Mask (2021).  An artificial organ simulating the respiratory system of a bird—which has a lower breathing capacity than human beings—it was developed by imagining extreme forms of disease control technology. The Tokyo-based design engineering group Takram collaborated with the artists to develop Shenu: Hydrolemic System (2010–12), an artificial organ designed to supply moisture in a future when water is scarce. The Rotterdam-based architects’ group MVRDV has also participated in News from Nowhere with I-City/We- City (2011–12), a self-sufficient city model in which societies are formed by the repeated joining and separation of floating bubble cities, which serve independent functions and roles in an environment where dry land has disappeared due to rising sea levels.

A calendar created using carbon measurements captured from the atmosphere, inspired by the perspective among environmental experts that even in the contemporary era, the future and past can be calculated based on the relative amount of carbon.

A drawing that symbolizes the actions and return of a finite being seeking to know the irresolvable secrets of birth and extinction.

A drawing reflecting the artists’ attempt to discover the meaning of time contained within a world of consciousness that transcends time and space. To create it, a Spot robot was used with a “Smart Carbon Monitoring Processing Unit” developed in collaboration with carbon expert Jeong Sujong, Hyundai Motor Group’s Robotics LAB and BKID.

A cartoon drawing composed of scenes from the previous work, Freedom Village (2021), where the Super Lung & Super Mask (2021)—developed in collaboration with BKID—appears.

Produced in collaboration with Takram in 2011–2012, this drawing is a reconstruction of a moisture supply device for future human beings.

A drawing of a reimagined future urban society, produced in 2011–2012 in collaboration with MVRDV.

News from Nowhere: ECLIPSE (2022-24) depicts human free will and struggle. This desperate vision, stemming from the desire to resolve the world’s inherent discord, strives for harmony and transcends reality and unreality. The protagonist—trapped within the immense grid structure with flickering dim lights—struggles to survive, relying only on a lifeboat in the vast, empty ocean. Through this, we witness human determination and will to break free from the constraints and boundaries that confine human existence, yearning for fundamental freedom. 

The setting of the protagonist—aboard on a lifeboat on the endless expanse of the sear, searching for other survivors—is entirely virtual. Created by unknown entities for unknown purposes, the protagonist believes in its own existence within this restrictive virtual environment that diminishes and disassembles humanity. Trapped in this tragic world, the protagonist continues its unconscious struggle for freedom, desperately hoping to break free from the confines of the world that bind it.