Exhibition Information

			Game for the Worshippers Who Have No Ears / Kim Kaweon

"The toughest thing to endure was people's eyes and mouths." Seo Doi expressed this before she said anything else. 'People's eyes and mouths' but not 'ears'. Perhaps what Seo Doi was actually afraid of was not everybody’s eyes or mouths, but 'the eyes and mouths that have no ears', or, in short, 'deaf eyes and mouths'. The eyes and mouths with dysfunctional ears cannot hear anything at all, and this paradoxically causes those eyes and mouths to form intricate bonds by imitating each other. Such blind and unquestioningly faithful groups are often likened to a "pseudo-religion".

In the exhibition <Dixit Dominus Domino Meo>, Seo Doi presents unfiltered images depicting her experiences with those who echo the 'worshippers of a pseudo-religion'. All the sentences and words displayed in the exhibition are the 'actual' remarks people threw at Seo Doi. To convey the 'existence' of these sentences, Seo Doi directly cut and used the printed materials which were included during her lawsuit without re-editing or processing them. This was a deliberate attempt to demonstrate that the forms the comments take when commonly posted online - including the partially obscured user IDs, the times when the users posted their comments, and the indications that certain comments were soon deleted by the users themselves - all depict an undeniable 'fact'. The exhibition thus begins by basing itself on the 'facts'.

The exhibition space filled with the statements that had actually been spoken no longer acts as an 'exhibition' but instead becomes a 'reality'. At the precise moment viewers step inside the exhibition space, they may initially become Seo Doi, before turning into a spectator, and then finally becoming someone who they may not wish to know. All those perspectives reflect reality. This is why this exhibition will not allow Seo Doi’s work of persistently talking about her experiences to become tied up with social issues such as 'sexual violence' or 'secondary victimization'. The moment the viewer tether this exhibition with social issues, Seo Doi’s work would face the great risk of turning into someone else's matter. However, what Seo Doi went through could happen to anyone. Experiencing malicious comments that quickly spread out of control, as Seo Doi puts it, is ‘like witnessing worshippers sharing a single belief’. As if watching the "Domino" game, in which a fall of one block causes the relentless collapse of all the other blocks.