In this Screen Walk, Yehwan Song premiered a poem-based web performance about private and public space in contemporary internet culture.
Inspired by Inhun Choi's novel The Square, the artist employed the metaphor of "the square without a private chamber" to address how people are losing their private spaces, connections, handmade homepages, and intimate webrings, only to be filled with social media, giant search engines, and AI-based chat services over which they have no control or overview. Virtual voices emerging from the artist's performance created a harmony that sings of their longing for a private space. The performance acted as a song for an ideal internet where private chambers and the square balance and complete each other.
Yehwan Song is a Korean-born, New York-based web artist challenging conventional digital spaces through non-user-centric, unconventional internet projects. Focused on the often-overlooked discomfort of marginalised users, Yehwan critiques the homogeneity of the web, advocating for diversity and inclusivity. By blending digital and physical mediums—ranging from unique web interfaces to physical installations—Yehwan's work fosters new user-device interactions and dialogues on the socio-political influences shaping today's templated internet landscape, emphasising the importance of equitable online rights for users with diverse backgrounds.
Screen Walks is a series of live-streamed artist/researcher-led explorations of online spaces and artistic strategies designed to illuminate a thriving – often overlooked – digital cultural scene. A new online collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. Screen Walks is kindly supported by: Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.