Illogical Love
KO · EN

[Illogical Love] experiments with the possibility of solidarity between multiple species and objects. Drawing from underwater datacenters which multiple agents such as humans, seawater, marine animals, metal, and data are knotted together, we aim to understand green technology as a symbiosis between humans and non-humans, not a human centered practice.

Can we blur the duality of natural and unnatural and human and non-human through illogical love?

“Combating climate change is always controversial and inevitably political. However within all the debates and politics, there is always love; a love that is so irrational that it points to every human being, animal, and object in this world. Love is radical.”

Sooah Kwak & Chanu Lee, Founders of Illogical Love
5m

Sustainable Underwater Data

With humanity’s data usage constantly increasing, ways of sustainable leverage of data are being actively investigated. Among them, Microsoft’s ‘Project Natick’ undergone to understand the feasibility of locally powered and recyclable underwater datacenters, showed sustainable underwater datacenters to be practical.

figure 1. Project Natick. © Microsoft
figure 1. Project Natick. © Microsoft

The strange juxtaposition of a huge metal cylinder placed on the seabed looks somewhat intrusive, while also giving a sense of a futuristic utopia. With this paradoxical feeling as our starting point, we suggest that instead of evaluating the project within the dichotomy of good and bad or success and failure, we understand it as a contingent practice of living together where the divide between natural/unnatural, and living/non-living are queered.

15m

Project 01.We are living in a Knotted World

figure 1. Riso posters campaign
figure 1. Riso posters campaign
figure 2. Riso poster
figure 2. Riso poster
figure 3. Riso poster
figure 3. Riso poster
We are living in a knotted world
Illogical love is a responsibility
Humans are not an island
Blur the boundaries, queer the agencies
figure 4. Protesting
figure 4. Protesting

Humans are not isolated in the ecosystem. We are not an island, floating in the sea alone. We live in a knotted world. To regain the lost connections, we suggest practicing illogical love as a responsibility.

25m

Project 02.Calling and Responding

figure 1. Purchasing dried seaweed at a local market
figure 2. Soaking the seaweed in water
figure 3. Hanging the seaweed on a clothesline
figure 4. Hanging the seaweed on a clothesline
figure 5. Generating music
figure 6. Playing the music back at the market

When we talk to seaweed, does the seaweed respond? If it does, how can we hear and interpret this response? We do not consider seaweed as voiceless just because we cannot hear their voices. Instead of talking in their behalf and taking their voices, we try to stand in solidarity and make stories together. We are not trying to become seaweed, but are trying to become together with seaweed.

35m

Project 03.Neither a Utopia nor a Dystopia

A future in which the definition of natural and unnatural is newly established is neither a utopia nor a dystopia. By acknowledging that no world is completely perfect or hopeless, we can find clues to navigate the existential problems that we are currently facing in the climate crisis. With a soft sense of imagination, we can overcome the climate crisis and newly establish the ‘natural’.

This artwork is commissioned by The Greenverse 2021본 작품은 그린버스 2021의 커미션으로 제작되었습니다.
SOOAH KWAK & CHANU LEE곽수아 & 이찬우