National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 'Project Hashtag 2023' Final Selection of 2 Teams

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) announced on the 8th that it has selected 'Rice Brewing Sisters Club' (Rice Brewing Sisters Club, Yoo Soyoon and Son Hyemin) and 'lab B' (lab B, Kang Minjung, Ahn Gayoung, and Choi Hyeryeon) as artists for 'Project Hashtag 2023.'

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) 'Project Hashtag 2023'. [Photo by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art]

Project Hashtag is a public contest aimed at discovering creators who will lead the next generation of visual arts and supporting interdisciplinary collaboration. This year, 102 teams applied for Project Hashtag.

Kay Watson, Senior Art and Technology Curator at the Serpentine Gallery in the UK and a judge, explained, "The two teams selected this year have excellently expressed how technology can contribute to society within the context of art."

Rice Brewing Sisters Club is conducting a marine microorganism and seaweed-based new material research project titled 'Rice Brewing Sisters Production: Holobiont Galaxy.' The project addresses the possibility of 'symbiosis' among various human and non-human entities such as humans, the marine environment, seaweed, marine microorganisms, and a seaweed-based new material called 'bioplastic,' referred to as 'holobiont.'

Having lived in Busan for the past two years, they plan to present an exhibition within the museum that forms a symbiotic relationship using the seaweed they collected and the newly created bioplastic.

lab B focuses on the widespread human alienation in production and consumption sites of the automated society since the 2020s, centered on artificial intelligence. They raise issues about the phenomenon where humans perform low-wage labor that even machines do not do, aiming to visualize contemporary phenomena and foster discourse through the museum space as a medium.

During the project period, they will cultivate corn themselves in a community garden, harvest it, and transform the corn into gangnaengi (a traditional Korean corn snack), which will ultimately be presented to visitors at the museum showcase.

Visitors can perform missions given online and offline through an app, acting as agents of labor disguised as play, and earn points. The points earned can be exchanged for gangnaengi on-site.

Through this, the museum transforms into a space that questions the current state of contemporary human labor and exchange value through 'labor' disguised as 'play,' conducting relational work.

Each team will receive a creative support fund of 30 million KRW and residency benefits at Changdong Residency from May to December. In November, new forms of collaborative outcomes will be exhibited at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul. Opportunities for overseas expansion will also be provided.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.