KRONE COURONNE is happy to present a video work by Seoul-based collective YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (YHCHI), consisting of South Korean artist Young-Hae Chang and North American artist Marc Voge. YHCHI is a pioneering net art project, established at the onset of the internet era, which allowed artists to exhibit their work without the endorsement of an institution. Then, as now, net art transcended geographical and cultural boundaries, while also challenging prejudice and aesthetic conformity within the art world.

The work of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES took the early internet as a productive medium for a more expansive practice and explores a wide range of social and political issues, from the excess and futility of the art world to the dangers of climate change. Through an emblematic fast-paced text-based language, their signature flash-animation form hasn’t varied much since their formation in 1999. In a practice parallel to concrete poetry, the text-driven narratives are flashed sentence by sentence over a coloured backdrop, oftentimes set to self-composed jazz soundtracks, harnessing the jazz aesthetic. Drawing comparisons to propaganda and advertising strategies, YHCHI ventures into an ethical limn between representation and oppression, truth and fiction in the digital era.

The video work MISS DMZ, translated and adapted for the presentation in KRONE COURONNE, tells a story of doors and tunnels, martinis and casino chips, addressing the political reality of the DMZ – the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, established in 1953 after the Korean war.