a lunar probe, 2021

Dieser Datensatz ist ein Beobachtungsprotokoll bis zum 28. September 2022 von Apollo 234y78e626h82j90, der am 13. Oktober 1992 gestartet wurde. 7 Jahre nach dem Start wurden häufig Beobachtungsprotokolle empfangen, aber 15 Jahre später wurden sie immer seltener, und seit 20 Jahren wurden fast keine Daten mehr übermittelt. 27 Jahre nach dem Start ist Apollo 234y78e626h82j90 von der Umlaufbahn abgewichen und entfernt sich weiter vom Startplatz, aber es wird angenommen, dass seine Aktivitäten weitergehen, da die Batterie noch vorhanden ist.

*

2. 12. 2020: The so-called perfect human reason believes itself to be connected to the world, to the truth. So it wants to enlighten or exploit those who don't.

What is coloniality? Born and raised in a formerly colonized country, I feel disconnected from the world. This is simply for physical reasons, but more than that, it comes from a strange belief that there is a "world" above my reality. This is what I call coloniality, the belief that even in our world, I will have no part in it, that the people who run it are separate. I don't have a world. More precisely, I am not connected to the world.

I started with the word coloniality, but this belief can be expanded to other minorities. The "world" that I felt was above my reality was sometimes Seoul, sometimes heterosexual patriarchy, sometimes Europe, sometimes America. I have a belief that I will never understand them. I am here and yet I am always the other. Even as I participate, I feel I can't participate.

There is no clear-cut definition of who is the minority. Hierarchies are always shifting, and all human beings become minorities or privileged at different times and places. So how do I account for myself beyond this minority and coloniality? How do I take ownership of the privileges and standards that I have unwittingly given to others?

I try to resolve it as a denial of human perfection, specifically the perfection of human reason. Let's acknowledge that we are flawed, foolish, and ugly, and let that be the premise of everything. It's not about looking down on others, it's about recognizing our own lowly status. To recognize that, in fact, we cannot truly grasp anything, cannot truly understand anyone else, and are not connected to any world. The world we talk about already existed before we appeared, and our place was never given to us.

We can then attempt to be the other, ourselves. The other we call ignorant, the other we find abhorrent. We can try to be an unknown alien, a creature of some sort that smells ugly and has saliva. To see all of our "natural" human qualities as foreign. Salivating, harming and consuming living, breathing things, producing garbage, having uneven skin and body hair, being hard but unpleasantly bouncy, being soft but surrounded by all sorts of wrinkles. In fact, it's not about being the other, it's about recognizing that we are already the other. It is to recognize that we are always in the world with such skin and saliva, and that we can never be perfect, that we humans can never understand ourselves.

15. 1. 2021: I am still in front of the mirror.

6. 10. 2021: I make fragile human beings. Too often, we forget that we are vulnerable. We are not neutral, we are not perfect or whole, we are constantly changing, we are insecure. What I create in my art is a representation of our humanity: helpless, powerless, fragile, or already damaged. I once wrote that this is what we are missing, but it is not something we can let go of. The image of us that art and philosophy promised us is so weak, so worthless.

19. 10. 2021: We are weak and always changing. To resist this fragility, we make promises, but promises can always be broken. The individual of yesterday may be a different individual tomorrow, and the anxiety that grips us is based on our ever-changing relationships with others.