Jiwon Song

A long time has passed. At some moment in the distant past, humankind on Earth took its first step toward terraforming Mars, and eventually made the impossible possible. Standing before the traces of that time, the people of a far future on Mars began to imagine. In front of a miracle of the past that could neither be explained nor calculated, and could never be witnessed again, they gave birth to countless myths of creation, stories of salvation, beliefs, misunderstandings, and acts of imagination. Just as their ancestors on Earth once did, they expressed these stories in many forms.

Here, on the red soil, stands a spacecraft that now appears almost like an antique relic. Once a vessel of science and technology, it has lost its original function and become a monument, drifting closer to poetic speculation than to science. Georg Weyerer’s SALVATION MACHINE MARS EDITION, created from an abundance of waste, stands as a poetic technological ruin, a testament to the early settlers’ efforts to overcome the harsh conditions of Mars. In that unfamiliar land, the enduring human drive for challenge and hope finds a small, flickering light in The pet plant there 1,2 and When the Flower Blooms of Eunji Song.

In the realm that humanity could never fully understand, Lisa Klinger’s Sensation focuses on the thrill and pleasure that exist between exploration and discovery, while Junson Park’s Untitled leaves the symbolic moment of the planet, where record drifts into myth. And the unseen is metaphorically terraformed in Minjoon Kim’s Untitled through the depiction of the human ear that cannot be closed

Yiyuan Zhang ’s Our legacy packs and labels the unnamed human technological fruits, while Alexandra Müller’s Untitled reveals the traces of corrosion on confiscated, unidentified resources, forming a field of power that invites critical reflection on the act of terraforming itself.

As humanity moves beyond the frame of Earth, Jiwon Song’s power of 10 paradoxically draws our attention back to the smallest of beings—microorganisms—prompting us to reconsider life on a planetary scale. Jan Herdlicka’s Zentralgestirne (…des letzten Menschen) weaves together alternative demonstration of human existence that is no longer centered on humanity itself.

These reflections do not gather around a single center but remain loosely and delicately connected. Just as what is seen turns out not to be real, beneath the seemingly realistic image of a realized grand vision lie hidden, fragmentary stories waiting to be awakened. This lack of sanctity begins to crack the myth of terraforming itself.

In the end, every breath we take, every sight we see, every step we make, and every sensation that touches our skin reminds us that we are still here, on Earth, within our reality. Yet even so, we are not completely pulled back to Earth. Humans are born storytellers. Our unconscious fills incomprehensible voids with stories, and through imagination, our consciousness reaches beyond the boundaries of the real.

And so, everything begins with an if. If we choose to go to Red Eden…