Reina Kwon

01_MOVE 78

"There’s nothing we can do about it. We must just go on living! (pause.) Uncle Vanya, We shall live through a long, long lines of days and never-ending evenings."— Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya

“Content WarningThis work contains themes of bereavement and references to self-harm. Viewer discretion is advised, as some may experience emotional or sensory distress.Move 78 is a four-channel video and sound installation that explores the question of humanity.“Live like a human being.” This was the phrase my father gave me when, as a child, I asked what our family motto was. Since then, I have spent a long time questioning what it truly means to live as a human, and what it is that makes me human.However, what I have encountered throughout my life are moments in which, no matter how hard I tried to live “like a human,” I could not. The deaths of loved ones I experienced at a young age spread slowly through me and the world around me like an epidemic. I came to despise my own humanity. It was because I loved others that I suffered when they were buried in the ground; because I had a heart that I felt grief; because I placed trust in others that I was wounded when it was betrayed. And so I cursed my own emotions and affections. For over a decade, I have tried to erase them, to treat them as something that should not exist.Yet, in the end, I realized that all the things that made me hate myself, everything that made me want to renounce my life as a human were precisely what made me live as one.Move 78 is a work that visualizes these attempts to reject humanity and abandon life, unfolding across six scenes written as a script and presented as a projection installation utilizing all four surrounding walls. The work traces a process of dehumanizing rituals borrowed from Korean shamanism and Catholicism, through which one attempts to shed human burdens such as pain, shame, and memory, and ultimately arrives at a paradoxical truth: acceptance.It speaks to the realization that the very flaws that make me despise myself are what make me human. Moreover, continuing to live, despite knowing that suffering will inevitably return, is the most profoundly human choice I could ever make. And that the only way to overcome the punishment of a life given by God is to carry it through to the end, no matter what unfolds along the way.We exist because others exist. The world is, ultimately, a collection of individuals. And so, I wish to plead with the audience and with the world itself. In this work, the audience is not a mere witness, but a transcendent presence to whom I offer my earnest prayers.Within a space surrounded by four channels of video and sound, the audience stands at the center as scenes, voices, and subtitles unfold across different walls, moving through the space to construct a ritualistic experience.The title is drawn from “Move 78,” the move in the 2016 match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo that led to humanity’s first and ultimately only victory against AI. Just as the machine was shaken by a single move that defied logical prediction, I came to believe that what can overcome the repetitive, absurd cycle of human life is the act of continuing forward without surrender despite knowing that suffering may strike again. This persistence, this uniquely human act, may itself be a move against God. For this reason, I chose the title Move 78.Please note: While this documentation represents the near-final stage of the project prepared for the final critique, the work remains in an iterative process. The final form in GradEX will include further enhancements in physical installation details.”