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DOOSAN Curator Workshop

Artist IncubatingDOOSAN Curator Workshop

Seminar X - Wonhwa Yoon

Oct.23.2021

A Manual for Cyclonopedia 

Eugene Hannah Park (DCW 2021) 

 

 

At the tenth seminar of the 2021 DOOSAN Curator Workshop, we examined the blending motions of reality and fiction around Cyclonopedia and discussed how we can understand this book at the present moment of 2021 with Wonhwa Yoon, a visual culture researcher.

 

Cyclonopedia is a compilation of blog posts made by the Middle Eastern philosopher Reza Negarestani in the mid-2000s. In the form of a pile of papers filled with footnotes, numbers, and diagrams from unknown sources, this book can be read as a parody of a theory book or a horror novel that uses uncertainty as a fuel to summon and amplify fiction. The book’s default image is porous, infested with rats, frantically evaporating, and constantly generating inaudible noises. Wonhwa Yoon introduced the book as an encyclopedia that is torn into shreds in a toilet whirlpool and explained the difficulty of introducing or reading it. The book can be read differently each time depending on the perspective or the purpose of the readership.

 

While translating the book, Yoon had constantly contemplated on how best to introduce it within the context of South Korea. The first approach is intersecting with the currently much-discussed geopolitical issues around petroleum that are frequently mentioned in the Anthropocene. If oil, not humans, were at the center of this world, then the earth would be restructured into pipelines and geological zones that produce petroleum. While the fact that it took non-humans as the main actor is similar to posthumanism, the sentiments around the hole differed. While many theorists of posthumanism including Donna Haraway consider the acts of blurring of the boundary between humans and non-humans and becoming non-human as positive endeavors, becoming non-human in this book is one of icky, unpleasant, and terrifying experiences. The hole becomes a fear of hybridity.

 

Another approach is to introduce the book as a horror novel. Books of this genre provide a sense of safe enjoyment of thrills, and Cyclonopedia, similar to Lovecraft's novels, summons ancient powerful forces and death. The power that drives the root of evil is also linked to the author's identity as a “Middle Easterner,” who cannot fully belong either inside or outside the Middle East, a region known as the axis of evil. In this context, this outsider is always closely associated with the devil.

 

As of 2021, fake news and conspiracy theories inundate our worlds, leading many to argue over what the real world actually looks like. In this context, we need to think about the role of fabulation. In this current state of what Yoon calls “chronic civil war,” the question of how the methods of distinguishing between facts and fictions used 10-20 years ago online still remain relevant. 

 

Lastly, we discussed whether the exhibition can display incompleteness by examining the stages between the book and the exhibition. Translating and editing a book differs from curating an exhibition, especially since a curator, an intermediary agent, works with a set of given materials, rendering a complete experiment rather difficult. The seminar was a space to share open questions such as whether the exhibition can perform fiction, if so, can the fiction perform only within the exhibition space, and what the curator’s positions and roles should be.


 

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