活动预告｜無色無味——李恩喜艺术家讲座

We are honored to invite South Korean artist Eunhee Lee, winner of 2023 Han Nefkens Foundation-Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Grant for an artist talk and screening of her latest work on the afternoon of November 23. This event marks the premier of  her commissioned work Colorless, Odorless (2024), which she made with the support of the grant. In this new video, the artist focuses on pollution in society, which is difficult to detect with the naked eye, and its impact on ordinary people. She analyzes the complexity of the identifiable relationship between humans and machines in a poetic expression. Through this event, we can see the work first hand, as well as learn about her artistic practice and her thinking behind, as well as her process of video-making.

On the same day, we will also present an online tour of the exhibition improvisation on our WeChat video channel. Please stay tuned.

半导体和显示器组件等电子产品的关键元件是在“洁净室”中生产的，洁净室是控制灰尘等环境条件的空间。然而，在这些干净、消毒过的空间中，工人经常接触到对其健康有严重危害的化学物质。与即时灾难不同，化学物质累积引起的疾病往往不为人知，而是在几代人的时间里慢慢发展。

那酸甜交织的气味是什么？“洁净”是否意味着它只最大限度地提高生产稳定性，而远离身体安全？讽刺的是，只有身体的记忆和穿过洁净室的物质的淡淡气味，才能证明这些尖端技术场所的无形毒性和危险性。

The key elements of electronics, such as semiconductors and display components, are produced in “clean rooms,” which are spaces where environmental conditions, including dust, are controlled. However, workers in these clean and sanitized spaces are often exposed to chemicals that are seriously hazardous to their health. Unlike immediate catastrophes, diseases caused by the accumulation of chemicals often go unnoticed and develop slowly over generations.

What was that sour-yet-sweet odor? Does "clean" mean that it only maximizes production stability while being far from body safety? Ironically, it is only the memories of the bodies and the faint smells of the substances passing through the clean rooms that prove the invisible toxicity and dangers of these cutting-edge technology sites.

《無色無味》跟踪半导体生物危害受害者的工作记录和档案材料，追踪摄像机无法捕捉到的物质的气味和行为。为此，我们听到了面临脆弱性的亚洲女性和移民工人的声音。过去的见证叠加在当前的症状上，灾难在其他机构和地方重演。随着跨国公司将制造工厂转移到发展中国家，以降低劳动力成本以及安全标准和监管响应的成本，工业灾难也在全球范围内转移。

也许未来不是一个抽象的数字，而是与具体机构和物质交织在一起的东西。随着高科技行业在日益外包的工作场所中引领风险和剥削的全球化，《無色無味》试图描绘出受害者、活动家和工会面对这些风险和剥削时的团结局面。    

 ——制片人Shinjae Kim

Colorless Odorless follows the work records and archival materials of victims of semiconductor biohazards to trace the smells and actions of substances that cameras cannot capture. To this end, the voices of Asian women and migrant workers, who are exposed to vulnerability, are heard. Testimonies of the past are overlaid on current symptoms, and the disaster repeats itself in other bodies and places. As multinational corporations move manufacturing plants to developing countries to lower not only labor costs but also the costs of safety standards and regulatory responses, industrial disasters are also globally transferred.

Perhaps the future is not an abstract number, but something intertwined with specific bodies and matter. As high-tech industries lead the way in the globalization of risk and exploitation in increasingly outsourced workplaces, Colorless Odorless attempts to map out the terrain of solidarity among victims, activists, and workers' unions in the face of these risks and exploitation.

Written by Shinjae Kim, producer

《机器不死》从物质维度探讨了数字对象与机器之间的关系。数据通常体现在表面闪闪发光的先进数字设备中，但机器的硬件一旦失去了原本的功能，就会变成“垃圾”，最终被丢弃。该作品追踪了处理电子垃圾和回收价值链过程中的这类残余物，其中曾经属于电子设备的矿物和金属被重新吸收到再生产周期中。

Machines don't die（2022） approaches the relation between digital objects and machines in the material dimension. Data is often embodied in advanced digital devices with glistening surface, yet the hardware of the machines becomes 'junk' as soon as its functionality fades and eventually gets thrown away. The work traces such material remnants in the processes of handling the electronic waste and recycling value chain, in which the mineral and metal that once belonged to electronic devices are re-absorbed into the reproduction cycle. Such processes of deterioration of digital objects are parallel to the history of resource extraction, and ultimately, geologic time.

艺术家官网

Artist Website

www.eunheelee.info

延伸阅读

Further Readings

Lee Eunhee | 2022 MMCA Residency Goyang Korean Artists' Interviews

[Media Art Now] Lee Eun-hee renders palpable the mechanics of stress