Begin Again

Korean Cultural Centre UK x Germany, 2022

23 NOVEMBER 2022 - 4 FEBRUARY 2023; KOREAN CULTURAL CENTRE, LONDON, UK

2 JULY - 12 AUGUST 2022; KOREANISCHES KULTURZENTRUM, BERLIN, DE

Where does one turn for respite in times of unrest? What radiates permanence and clear perspective when uncertainty abounds? How can we imagine a more positive future beyond the realities of the current global experience? Which innovations, be they sonic, visual, sculptural or experiential, allow us to shift our positions, alter our vantage points and question our assumptions?

Prescient and popular science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969): “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next,” suggesting it is precisely the lack of anything definitive which propels us forward, searching for answers and widening the scope of new possibilities. The very process of questioning through the haze and fog of destabilisation, then, has the potential to shift perspectives and lead to growth.

A philosophy of existence embracing transformation similarly exists in the world-building of Octavia E. Butler, another oracular voice in speculative fiction, who penned in her classic Parable of the Sower (1993): “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.” What results is a re-visioning and repurposing that would have been impossible had there been only stasis.

In the literary traditions created by both LeGuin and Butler, epic journeys are undertaken requiring learning and adapting to previously unthinkable situations along the paths to freedom and self-knowledge. As present-day circumstances dare and compel us into seeing the world not as we previously knew it, what might we see through different eyes?

- Alessio Antoniolli & Zoé Whitley

With works by: Iden Sungyoung Kim, Kyungmin Sophia Son, Nina Nowak, Sooun Kim, Yambe Tam, and Ya-Wen Fu

Learn more about “Begin Again” at KCCUK