Kaja Clara Joo ︎
Ader
Edition: ︎
2025/26: Natural Rubber, Silk Strings, Stainless Steel, Brass Joints, Videoloops
Ader unfolds through the lens of techno-animism, where stolen artifacts, collective wounds in korean history and media form an entangled, sensate system.
Beginning with South Korea’s contemporary geopolitical urgency to secure rare earth minerals, the piece folds back into earlier moments of extraction and sacrifice, most notably during the 90s gold-collection campaign or the brass campaign during japanese colonialization. Like a magic spell being cast upon transformation tokens of family heritage dis- and re- appear in the form of copper wires in our devices, or gold ingots hidden in national underground bank safes.
The title references the German term “Aderleitung” (“Vein lines”), referring to underground or concealed electrical cables. It suggests an infrastructural lustfullness between bodies and the technological environments they inhabit. Like hidden threads and strands running behind urban spaces, an alternative network emerges. One that binds lecherous matter and media systems in close, almost erotic proximity.
What emerges resembles a feverous broadcasting transmission station in which past and present resonate through the same conductive substrate.
