When Spiders Spin Dusk—Carnival of Shipwreck
Curatorial statement and exhibition provocations by Luisa Ji for When Spiders Spin Dusk at Carnival of Shipwreck, October 22-27, 2024, Toronto Canada
We urgently need to reimagine our relationships with the world around us and with each other. We have inherited a culture that relies increasingly on abstractions that urge us to categorize, measure, and optimize for our own needs. We cling to broken promises of modernity, to linear narratives of past, present, and future that offer some sense of rescue and faith that tomorrow will somehow be better than today. Our pursuit of efficiency no longer seems to be yielding a better life. Moving forward no longer makes sense. We are left wondering what we might do next.
In a shipwreck off the coast of Greece, researchers recovered the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient analog computer that modelled the universe with Earth at its center. This sophisticated technology, with its intricate gears representing the observable heavens, is now a relic of a worldview that no longer holds true. In a sense, a world in which the Earth sits at the center ended. Today, we find ourselves living alongside technologies that ostensibly offer a better life yet feel confronted by the existential dread that a “better life” may prove illusory. Carnival of Shipwreck provides a backdrop for a world where no lifeboats are available and no rescue is coming.
When Spiders Spin Dusk, co-curated by Junghyun Kim and UKAI Projects, features works by Canadian artists Erika-Jean Lincoln, François Quevillon, Maurice Jones, and Korean artists Unmake Lab, Sunjoo Lee, and Sunjeong Hwang. Their practices navigate tangles of organic, mechanical, and artificial intelligences, shedding light on how we are deeply intertwined with both technology and the landscapes we inhabit. The works probe the shifting contours of an environment marred by our estrangement.
In September 2024, these artists came together at Ferme Lanthorn, a regenerative farm near Wakefield, Quebec, where the rhythms of the landscape shaped their process of exchange and experimentation. The farm, specializing in willow cultivation, became a site of connection that underpinned this exhibition. Through field studies, workshops, and encounters with the living systems specific to the site, the artists grounded their work in the cycles of the farm and collective exploration, deepening their interdisciplinary connections to the landscape.
How might artistic inquiries help us make sense of intelligences and perspectives that diverge from our own? How might the arts provide grounds for telling stories at the end of the world? This research project and exhibition trace a path that reflects the intertwined realities of ecology, technology, and culture. Through video works and interactive installations, the artworks on display reflect on how technologies born of efficiency and scale can be transformed to embody other values and alternate ways of understanding the world undergoing massive changes that are difficult to comprehend.
The title, When The Spiders Spin Dusk, draws connections from Egyptian, Roman, and Greek mythology as metaphors for how stories travel across time and places and become vessels for artists to inhabit. Neith, created the spider to help her weave the world into being at dawn and destroy the world at dusk. Carefully worded, "ttang-geomi" is both spider and dusk in Korean. This project concerns telling stories at the end of the world.
When Spiders Spin Dusk at Carnival of Shipwreck offers no simple answers, but instead presents an eclectic array of perspectives from Canadian and South Korean artists that invite reflection and dialogue. This exhibition is an exploration of what lies beyond linear logic. It is an invitation to each of us to reconsider our place within a dynamic web of relationships.
We invite you to look closely, to question, and perhaps, to reimagine your own story amid this intricate tangle of worlds—some about to end, some beginning at dusk.
Credits
Program Planning and Delivery:
Junghyun Kim and UKAI Projects
Carnival of Shipwreck festival program:
Participating Artists:
Unmake Lab, Sunjoo Lee, Sunjeong Hwang, Erika Jean Lincoln, François Quévillon, Maurice Jones
In collaboration with: Ferme Lanthorn (Wakefield, QC) for on-site studies between September 11–17, 2024 and Canadian Museum of Nature for research exchange
Special Thanks to:
Paul Hamilton, the Canadian Museum of Nature
Funding: Arts Council Korea
Notes:
The project's conceptual development and curatorial perspective are rooted in artistic exchange and an experimental approach to diverging understandings of intelligence. The project deepens the understanding of nature and non-nature through translation: in words, vernacular knowledge, imagery, sound, sensory perception, digital-non-digital, and critical spatial practice. The title, When The Spiders Spin Dusk, draws connections from Egyptian, Roman, and Greek mythology as metaphors for how stories travel across time and places and become vessels for artists to inhabit.
Neith created the spider to help her weave the world into being at dawn and destroy the world at dusk. Athena turned Arachne into a spider to weave for eternity. Ovid's rendition serves as a vessel to bring injustices to light. Carefully worded, "ttang-geomi" is both spider and dusk in Korean.
