A senseless transhumanism has become so ingrained in contemporary art that it no longer bothers to articulate it. At the centre of Jeong’s installation is an exploded human-and-machine skeleton. Were this assembly less pristine, one could have looked for traces of a pager that led to this apparent disaster. Nearby, neatly arranged tools point to some geeky joy in DIY body modification. Rows of widgets share table space with 3D-printed vertebrae. A CCTV room next door beams in images from the artist’s studio, where these skeletons are said to have found “life” in their exo-existence.
This tech-optimism might have entertained gallery-goers twenty years ago when technologists didn’t dare call themselves artists. After Björk’s robot love and Boston Dynamics, however, there is nothing novel, graceful, or left to discover in Jeong’s unstated proposal. To wonder if we are machines, or if machines could be human is as fruitless as considering this work as accomplished sculpture.
