The exhibition masterfully bridges historical ingenuity with contemporary digital anxiety, offering a profound meditation on the fluid boundaries of human identity. It serves as a vital intellectual compass for navigating our increasingly symbiotic relationship with technology.
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Deep Dive
예술감독이 직접 안내하는 뉴욕 뉴 뮤지엄! 전 세계 미술계가 주목한 이유? | 라플위클리 딥다이브 ep.07 - 뉴욕 뉴 뮤지엄 #궤도 #마시밀리아노지오니 [LIFEPLUS]
Added:I can show you or you want to do it yourself? You do it. So, you push the switch and then let go. Oh. Oh.
So, this is a machine that refuses to work. It's a useless machine. You turn it on and it turns itself off.
Isn't it beautiful?
>> Work. No. Work. No.
I have one at home.
>> Oh, ET.
>> This is the real ET. This is the robot for ET >> tomorrow.
>> Oh, you meet ET tomorrow.
>> Ste.
>> Oh, fantastic. In New York.
>> Yeah.
>> Tell him to come and see it.
>> Yeah, sure.
>> Yeah. Then we have the anti.
You might remember the movie 2001 Space Odyssey. And the inspiration for that movie came from these photographs. So, you know, I like to make shows in which there isn't only art. I think we live in a world that is very much colonized by images. We we go through millions of images in our phone. And I want people to come to the museum and discover not only artworks, but also images that have an intensity that I think it's worth engaging with and preserving. I mean, look at this baby, but it looks like a robot. It seems like he has wires or batteries inside.
Hundai.
Hyundai.
Deep dive.
Yeah.
I see.
Town Princess Dochech.
Oh, Do you minimalism.
wouldn't Let's grow and toy. elevator.
Elevator elevator.
video game animation.
Yeah.
there.
Oh, hello.
Hi. Hi, welcome.
>> I'm very honored to see you.
>> Masimiano, welcome. How are you?
>> Fine. Could you introduce yourself?
>> Yes, I'm Masimiano Johnny. I'm the artistic director of the new museum.
Distant friend of Korea as I created the Guanjubian in 2010 and I love it there and I try to go back as far as often as I can.
>> I love Gulby. Oh yeah.
This is the start of the exhibition New Humans which inaugurates the expanded building of the new museum. As you have heard we just doubled our size by inaugurating a wonderful new building by Ram Kulas and Shy Shigamatu. Ram Koulas also has a wonderful building in Soul at Leum. This is actually his first museum in New York City with the office of metropolitan architecture. To open this museum, we created an exhibition called New Humans that look at how the definition of the human changes under the pressure of new technologies. So it's a big interdisciplinary show that looks at contemporary art, architecture, design, literature. The exam is the way in which uh our understanding of the human changes because technology changes. New Humans is a big exhibition that looks at how the definition of the human changes under the pressure of new technologies.
>> Absolutely. Thank you.
Yes, this is the work of Tishan Shu who is a Chinese American artist and uh he's based in New York and all his career is about um understanding how the perception of bodies changes uh because of our use of computers and screens. So you could imagine this is a body. It's maybe a cell phone screen. uh it's life uh in the digital age where our skin uh become almost an extension of the cell phone. No, >> it's not that the cell phone is an extension of us. It's us becoming an extension of of our technologies.
>> What's the protruding object?
>> Well, as you know, maybe it's an exoskeleton. Maybe it's the computer becoming alive and and entering the space in which we live.
Fascinating. Wow.
It is a work of a living contemporary artist Tamara Henderson and it's a pregnant robot. So is a robot having a baby. This room is all about babies. I thought we start a show called New Humans and we begin from the new human from the child. And so you have this robot, a mother robot, and then you have these beautiful drawings by oneu who also depicts moment in which aliens are actually giving birth to a new species.
A peculiarity of this show is that it combines contemporary work with historical works. So you you have a younger artist together with Salvador Dali or Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. So the show keeps going back and forth between the present and the future and the past.
Well, there is also a whole fantasy that runs throughout the 20th century from the futurist in 1909 until today. Many artists and scientists, they've been trying to imagine what would happen if life could be made artificially. That is really the theme of this show after all.
It's an exhibition about the dream of giving life. And that dream is obviously bigger even than new technologies today.
It's a perennial question that runs through the history of humanity.
for him his he doesn't know much about art but these are somewhat familiar.
>> Yes. And that's also why I thought of this exhibition as a combination of the present and the past because maybe contemporary art can be sometimes a bit confusing to people who are not knowledgeable about it or it can be intimidating. But by bringing in an artist like Salvador Dali that everybody knows or Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, I think you can approach the exhibition more comfortably, you know, this looks like art and this looks like important contemporary art. But there is a a point of entry to then discover all these other works. So here with Salvador Dali, you have this beautiful painting from 1943 and it's called the birth of the new man. The new man is one of the central topics of the exhibition because it's a myth that runs throughout the 20th century. 20th century is the time in which people dream of new men and new women. And with those ideas come very exciting but also very frightening concepts of what the future holds for humanity.
That's a very good question. I don't even know if it's art or not, but this is what this exhibition stand for and also what the new museum stand for. We believe in an expanded notion of art. We believe in the museum as a place where not only artists are presented but also unusual ideas and and where a multiplicity of uh visual information can be displayed. So this is technically not art. This is scientific photography from the 1960s. These are some among the first endoscopic uh images of pregnancies. They became very famous in 1965 when they were published in Life magazine. So this was the cover of life magazine in 1965 quite beautifully. It's at the same time in which the image of the earth from space is uh becoming common knowledge. So this image kind of combines the most intimate space of the body with the cosmic idea of earth. They became very popular. They even went on to influence Stanley Kubri the famous uh director. You might remember the movie 2001 Space Odyssey. He ends with this cosmic child that floats in space. And the inspiration for that movie came from these photographs. So, you know, I like to make shows in which there isn't only art. I think we live in a world that is uh very much colonized by images. We we go through millions of images in our phone. And I want people to come to the museum and discover not only artworks, but also images that have an intensity that I think it's worth engaging with and preserving. I mean, look at this.
It's a baby, but it looks like a robot, right? He has little It seems like he has wires or batteries inside.
and I think these are actually among the the most favorite works in this first room because it's also you know this is where we all come from and so everybody has a an idea or a fantasy or a relationship. You know, at one point we were all looking like that kind of fish in there and I think people emotionally connect with that.
Yes. In an exhibition that looks at how the definition of the human is transformed by the encounter with technology, we needed to have Alan Turing because he's really the the one of the founders and predecessors of artificial intelligence and machine learning. As you know, he developed a test to understand the difference between a machine and a human. And today, as you all know, when you go on your computer, it's often your computer asking you to prove you're not a robot.
No, I think that's a a very peculiar condition in which we live in. It's not the human asking the machine whether the machine is a human, but it's a machine asking us to demonstrate we're not robots. So Alan Touring appears in the exhibition as a kind of father figure or as a sphinx that still keeps asking us questions that teach us to interact with machines. As you might know Alan Turing had a tragic life. He committed suicide.
He was gay and at the time being homosexual in the United Kingdom was illegal. So he had to undergo hormone treatment. And so this piece overlaps images of Alan Touring, papers that he wrote about machine learning, letters to his sister in which he talks about his life and the tragic turn that his life was taken. It's a kind of autobiography in images that speaks about the desire of the human to program machines and the tragedy of a state that is trying to program an individual to be different from who they are.
Yeah. And you know, I love the title here. It says, "How do I make myself a body?" Which is a question that runs throughout the the whole exhibition. How do we have to reinvent our bodies the moment they interact with machines differently?
>> Would you be able to share your research period and how the show initially was perceived and considered?
>> To tell you the truth, I don't know how long the show took because on one hand it had a very long gestation. It's an exhibition I've been thinking about for many years and I've been accumulating materials and ideas. Then we did it all together with Tei and and many of my colleagues. The actual time to put it together was around two years and a half, but the thinking process was uh up to 10 years or more that I've been thinking about. There are artworks in this exhibition that I've seen in 1995 and that I've been thinking about putting in a show ever since.
Well, this is a room that we called prosthetic gods and that's an expression that Sigman Freud used to describe humans. He says humans with technology turn themselves into prosthetic gods and he also said technology expands us but traps us. So this room looks particularly at this idea of the prosthetic as an amplification of our body but also something we become dependent on. uh think again of our cell phones and our cameras. You know, they make us bigger, they make us connected, but they also trap us in a world that is self-contained and self-replicating. And so in this room, we brought together different examples of artists engaging with the idea of prosthetics extension.
We have Cafe. We have Ans Belmer with his fantasy dolls. Brenio Medo who is a contemporary artist. Jacob Epstein who is a British futurist from the 1910s.
So it's also as the entire exhibition it keeps going back and forth between today and the past. This work is very recent a couple of years old and this work is 107 years old. So I think by looking also in that long perspective, the exhibition tries to teach us that many of the fears and hopes that we project on technology today have been around for a long time.
And so my I find reassurance in that because I think if we survive that change 100 years ago, hopefully we'll survive this changes today.
It's a kind of hologram is actually a fan that is spinning very very quickly.
He has tiny lights on the blades of the fan and those lights can be programmed to create an image. Uh you might have actually seen it. I'm sure people use it in soul. It's a typically used for uh advertisements in shops and so on. H but the artist whose name is Cyprien Gayard used this technology to animate a painting by Maxern. So this is also a very special paint piece because it's a young contemporary artist who's using technology to revisit the past and reanimate the past in new in new ways.
Is it because of the air ventilation necessary in this room? No.
>> No. You know, you can imagine it. You can uh you can understand it as a film or as a movie. You know, in a movie the strip moves vertically and the light remains in your eyes.
>> Here the film is going concentrically.
So I think that makes it very special and it's also about how history repeats itself and that's why I also surrounded it with all these works from the 1920s and 1930s >> if you come here. So this gallery we call it the dream machines gallery.
>> Oh >> in a way it's like the the machine room for the entire exhibition. It contains more than 40 artworks and they're all fantasy machines. They're torture machines, sexual machines, poems that that write themselves, useless machines, hypnotic. And one of my favorites is this one, which is a machine invented by Marvin Minsky. Marvin Minsky was a pioneer of communication theory >> and machine learning. He invented this machine. I can show you or you want to do it yourself.
>> You do it. So you push the switch >> and then let go. Go. Oh. Oh.
So this is a machine that refuses to work. It's a useless machine. You turn it on and it turns itself off. You turn it on and it turns itself off.
>> Isn't it beautiful?
>> Useless.
>> It is very useless.
>> The only It's a machine on strike. You say work and he says no work. No work.
No.
>> It's very addictive. So >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have one at home and and Marvin Minsky kept it on his desk.
So when guests came, he he would tell them to to use it.
>> Yeah. This is a beautiful room that focuses actually on works made between 1959 and 1965 more or less. So it's after the second world war. It brings together artists who are making work that represent humans that represent people but represent them almost as brutal creatures half human and half animal. Uh this floor of the exhibition, the third floor of the museum still looks at technology, but more specifically looks at how because of certain brutal events in the history of humanity, many artists started confronting the human with the animal to understand if and how we are different from them. So you know here you have Germa and she makes a figure that resembles a praying mantis, right?
There you have Francis Bacon or Jakometi. These are humans, but they are humans that resemble a monkey or that almost look like Larae or cellular creatures. That's a very specific moment in the history of art right after the Second World War. Many artists are confronting the human with the animal to understand if we are different from animals and in which ways. And so this is a kind of overview of that moment in time, a kind of time capsules of that moment in time.
No, this is we have fish in the other gallery, but this is Edardo Potsi. He was a British artist. Here you have a kind of biomorphic form. So something that resemble life, something that maybe resemble an animal, but as you can see, it's been taken over by mechanics. No, if you look closely, to me, it looks like a head more than than a fish, right? But it's a head that now has all this machinery inside. It's like a mechanical monster resides in the center of of this room. These are, if you're interested, these are chicken bones.
These are various bones. Not only But you see this is a body made with animal bones.
>> Oh, >> chicken.
>> Yeah. Not only chicken, different animals. Yeah.
>> It's impossible to recognize.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
He eats a lot of chicken. Yeah. In the soup with ginsang and rice.
>> My favorite.
>> Fried chicken.
>> Fried chicken.
>> Fried chicken. No.
>> Should we go this way?
>> Yes.
>> Yes. Well, first of all, here it's also a good moment to see the expansion of the new museum because here we are standing in the building designed by Kuo Sima and there you're looking into the building designed by Shikamat and Ramulas. So, it's a beautiful dialogue between two architectures and then you have that piece by Tao Leuis who is maybe a divinity, maybe a Buddha, maybe a a mythical creature. It's very much beloved, you know, everybody takes photos in front of it. And all this floor, as I said, looks at the distinction between the human and the animal. And in many indigenous cultures, and how Lewis is interested in First Nation in Canada, in many indigenous cultures, the difference between the human and the animal is much more blurred than in western centric anthropocentric understanding of the world. So many indigenous cultures rethink the relationship between the individual and the animal and actually find inspiration in a more um ecological view of the universe because if the animal is like you then you'll treat the animal and yourself better. So that's also what many artists on this floor deal with.
>> Yeah. But that's the beauty of art. It's a It's really more of a way to amplify your own thoughts and experiences. There is no wrong or right answer.
>> This is actually an object I'm very proud to have in the exhibition. I saw it the first time in 1995 and I've been thinking of ways in which I could put it in exhibition ever since. So, I'm very proud we finally got it. It comes from the Natural History Museum in London. So it's also very special to have it among us. This is not art. This is actually a scientific model that was developed by a scientist in Canada named Penfield.
>> He made this model to represent the proportion that certain organs occupy in our brain. So our brain assigns to certain functions and certain organs a larger part of its cortex to perform their functions. And so this shows you how much space of your brain is dedicated to the sense of touch, to the sense of taste. And so it makes what the scientists call a homunculus, a kind of creature that is a little monstrous. The beauty is that the homunculus was a fantastical creature invented in the renaissance and it was a a fantastic creatures that the alchemists were trying to create. The idea was that if you could make the homunculus, the homunculus would help you to do anything. So it was like a factoum. In my mind, the homunculus is the predecessor of the robot because he can fix anything. And and of course, it's just a fantasy. It's not is not real.
We using smartphones everybody. So he feel like the thumb should be even bigger than >> but they should look into this robot or >> Well, this is a very special creature is our friend in here.
Is this part of the old building or the new building?
>> And is this also used as part of the exhibition?
>> Yeah.
Yes, it's uh this is we are in the so-called hall of robots which brings together artworks but also objects of popular culture. There are different interpretations of robots, different fantasies. Namjun Pike as you know was a pioneer of technological art and video art and he made this beautiful robot out of radios actually know includes monitors but it's made of old radios and it's put in dialogue with other robots from across time we also have another great Korean artist Lee Bool up here >> you know Korea has been for a long time a place where the future has been invented it's not by accident that all our phones and screens come from there And so it's particularly fitting that many of the new media artists were making art in Korea or about Korea itself.
You see bucklite they they were already being made in the 1930s and and also that figure over there that is called the glass man that's also made of plastic in the 30s. So very early on.
You can also show them this if you have time. Look, come closer with the cameras. Or you want to do it? Put your foot on this.
>> Go for it.
>> And press it.
>> Oh.
Oh. Oh.
Very good.
I'm >> surprised. It looks very rusty, but it's still >> Yeah, it still works. This is from the 60s.
>> It works better than many other things.
And these are pingpong balls.
>> And the skull is real. It's a real skull. Do you want to look at ET or >> Oh, okay.
>> Oh, ET.
>> ET. This is the real ET.
>> This is the robot for ET.
>> Tomorrow.
>> Oh, you meet ET tomorrow.
>> Ste.
>> Oh, fantastic. In New York.
>> Yeah.
>> Tell him to come and see it.
>> Yeah, sure.
>> Yeah. He likes art. He should come and see it.
Believe it or not, this is a very complicated loan. Not because of its value, but because it belongs to a couple for whom this is one of their most treasured possession. They are not traditional art collectors, but they love movies and they acquired this at an auction. There is no copyright issue because it's it's an existing robot and it was made as you know by Carlo Rambaldi. He was the special effects artist that made ET. We joke this is naked ET.
>> Oh, naked ET.
>> Naked ET. No skin. So you see the bones but it's saying phoning home. And so it took a lot of negotiations but we are so proud of have it here. And to answer your question, why it's in an art exhibition again because this show is based on an idea of expanded art. And I think it's more looking at culture, not just at art. And so it we couldn't do this exhibition about robots and technology without ET that is such a fragile object onto which we projected so many feelings and affections. And then we have the >> anti-et which is uh But you'd be surprised how many artists love this. All artists, young and old, they credit Giger, who is the artist who made Alien. They always credit him as a big influence, as somebody that they learned about early on. So, of course, it's very threatening and uh and scary, but it's such a popular artist that so many people love it and and can relate with it.
He made it so that also people in the movie could imagine it and make it. And and it's also made of polyurethane which is a very complicated material. It looks like bronze and it looks uh majestic but it's done with a simple uh relatively cheap material called polyurean that it's very hard to to sculpt so beautifully.
Yeah, this comes actually from Germany from the hygiene museum which was a scientific museum created in the 1920s in and this sculpture was made in 1930s.
It was called the glass man but it was made in plastic >> so that it could be replicated so that it could be sent to various museums as an educational tool and yes so it's typically would be shown in a scientific museum but I think here it also becomes an emblem of certain ideas around progress and how also some of those ideas generated other terrible notions of superiority and inferiority. So it's here also to remind us that technology and uh power are often intimately connected and maybe the job of artists and the job of viewers is to understand how to unravel that connection.
And plastic is also incarnated particularly in the 1950s such an idea of the future. You remember I don't know if you remember but in the movie the graduate >> the father says to Dustin Hoffman the future is in plastics or the future is plastics and I always love this idea that we projected such fantasies on plastic but also plastic is oil by being oil it's also connected to the past the oil is Jurassic so the plastic is very evocative because he incarnates old ideas of the future from particular the 1950s this moment of growth in Korea or in America or in Europe but it's also intimately related to the past because it's something you make with oil and oil is made of dinosaurs and so it's very fascinating it's cheap but also so charged with uh with emotions and I think that's why also an interesting almost deep connection with it because it's it's something that speaks to us about different ideas of poss Possible futures.
What? What is this? What is this?
>> This is a You tell me. This is a Maybe it's a UFO.
>> Jellyfish.
>> Jellyfish. I like dry jellyfish. Korean dry jellyfish. No, it's Or maybe it's a UFO. Maybe it's coming to take us.
>> Yeah.
>> H Maybe it's an alien. Oh.
>> Oh, look. Look. It's very nice to go underneath it. Also, I like when I can go under.
>> It's like, >> but it's a it's an artwork by a Korean artist, Anika. It's a selfdriving eyebe. So, it's not remote control. It's flying by itself following those um >> boxes. Those are laser pointers. some kind of sensor.
>> Yeah. They tell it where to go or not to go.
>> Yeah. It's a drone. It's a surveillance.
It's a toy. It's a It's a robot.
Yes. The the work is titled in love with the world >> and Anika speaks about it as a future in which we will have also effective relationships with machines. So she thinks of it as very optimistic, very playful. I find it a little creepy. I find it speaks of a future in which technology will look cute but will control you from above and which is actually not such a distant future is already a reality climax for him. This feels like a climax.
>> Yes, absolutely. This is the grand finale.
Thank you so much. Great meeting you.
Meet you maybe in soul.
>> Yeah.
>> Stay in orbit.
>> Yeah.
I don't even know.
Speech. Speech. Speech.
Much I don't want to be Nice to meet you.
>> Hi. Nice to meet you. Hi.
>> Hi. I'm uh Jake Fster. I'm the project architect of this project working for OM. The project which we actually started in 2017. It's been 10 years in the making and we're really excited it's now finally open.
>> There's a lot of elements and complicated but it's now crowded and it's very creative and gives a lot of freedom and liberation to certain aspects.
>> Yeah. Well, we we wanted to create in a way a kind of diver diversity of spaces that could act and kind of pair with the existing building so that they complement each other. You have like the lower levels we introduce this new gallery, atrium, stair that acts as a new circulation for the two buildings, but then you also have like in the upper levels that we're in now. This is the kind of brain for the building, the thinking space >> where you have the kind of more creative endeavors like new ink >> and event space and education and an artist studio. And we wanted to create something which felt much more collaborative. So spaces which felt more interconnected with each other. So you have moments of like uh gathering spaces like this but then also you can see >> terrace spaces. So there's a lot of natural light and connection back to the city.
I think having that buffer space is also important. Having space to breathe. For example, the lower levels with the galleries. We really wanted to create a space which could allow for a connection between I guess the city and then also the gallery spaces themselves that can allow for you to kind of circulate around the galleries but also have a space for you to be able to maybe pause and reflect upon the city itself as well.
I think as you said there's a because the building has a lot of different almost elements it's difficult to say what a favorite space is but I enjoy the I think uh kind of interconnectedness of these upper levels as well where you have moments of inside and outside that sort of meet almost accidentally sometimes as well.
Yeah. So this space that you're in at the moment we call the kind of forum space. It connects an educational event space on this upper level with then the kind of incubator and newix spaces on the lower levels. And it's intended really to allow for almost a collaboration between those two spaces.
It's an informal gathering space that can be used for meetings to product launches to discussions etc. And it also has a skylight which allows for a kind of view straight down Prince Street. So we wanted this space as you can see with the glass to feel kind of very open, very transparent and in a way very accessible for people to use.
That's right. You know, on this upper level, the the existing building sets back. So, we've created a series of light bridges with glass either side to connect the two buildings. So, and and in this moment, you also have a moment to uh it's almost like you're exiting the building >> and you have a view of the exterior to the city. You can see straight down uh Prince Street from here because of the way that the building is on the end of Prince Street.
>> Nice place.
>> Hidden place.
>> Oh yeah, the hidden terrace.
>> Should we go?
>> Yeah. Yeah, we can go through.
>> Wow.
Wow.
Well, this space was has always been a very important space for the ex for the existing building and you can see it has views to downtown >> and we wanted to make sure with the new building that we didn't block the light or use of the space which is why this the new building slopes backwards >> to allow for this space to still exist.
But from here you also then have a moment to to look at the terraces and kind of wave to each other and and have a kind of engagement between the users of this space and and and the people here as well.
>> Yes. I mean they they can also talk from terrace to terrace but also from here to It's really exciting to be able to share this with a kind of Korean audience and I hope that you're kind of able to uh kind of enjoy and see.
>> Thank you for your help.
>> Yeah, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you.
Look at communication. All the time.
AI put it in.
Think animation.
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