Aimy's Melancholy
TZUSOO
2021
How are you interacting with the emerging virtual beings?
"We are all chimeras", I sleep with Donna Haraway on my right hand and virtual beings on my left hand every night.

SOMA Art Space, Berlin, Germany, 2022
Aimy's Melancholy is a video installation and essay about the exclusively virtual life of Aimy, a K-pop singer and a popular avatar who wants to reform its existence and take the first steps towards its practice as an activist. Inspired by Donna Haraway and her Cyborg Manifesto, Aimy questions its digital existence and embarks on an adventure that aims to seek freedom.
Starting from here, the answer to the question "what does it mean to have a virtual life?" determines the orientation of a political movement and an ideology that focuses on the destinies of lives lived by machines.
”The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. (...)
Who cyborgs will be is a radical question; the answers are a matter of survival. (...) Cyborg unities are mon-strous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could
hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling.”
Text Adrian Bojenoiu
The Cyborg Manifesto
2021
Video with Sound
00:10:41
Text (EN) / Donna J. Haraway(1985), A Cyborg Manifesto, Socialist Review
Text (KR) / 도나 J. 해러웨이(1985), 사이보그 선언, 해러웨이 선언문, 황희선 옮김, 책세상, 2019
Voice / TZUSOO
Sound / Artur Sommerfeld


Through Aimy Moon, who is both a virtual influencer and a virtual activist, The Cyborg Manifesto(2021) by TZUSOO discusses a text published in 1985 by Donna J. Haraway. In an interview, the artist says that Haraway's text is more meaningful than ever to our generation living in an era where virtual/digital images flood our lives. In this work, the words of the text are uttered through a fictional character that is not human, giving life and persuasiveness again to the past text of the Cyborg Manifesto. Aimy, a virtual figure, born by the artist, is actively working as an artificial intelligence composer on metaverse platforms and social media while working as a virtual activist in the exhibition space. After returning home from working in the pop music scene, Aimy takes off its disturbing wig and uncomfortable clothes. It is time for it to float, dividing and multiplying in the digital world where it exists more freely than anyone else.
Aimy, a fictional human born from an entertainment company and an artist, refers to itself as the illegitimate offspring, even though it is clear who gave birth to it. It declares that it is breaking the link between its birth-givers and itself while paradoxically borrowing a human hand to gain and maintain vitality. As Aimy’s declaration implies, cyborgs are creatures of the post-gender world that escape the gender binary imagination. As the artist mentions, Aimy, who “is neither woman, nor man, nor human, nor machine, nor a specific race, can tell its story freely”. It does not exist as a virtual human created for humans with poor imagination, but it shows the possibility of queer reproduction in the digital world. Aimy throws off all the disturbances of reality, existing in the realm of infinite possibilities where one can become anything as if born as a completely new being, rather than evolving/reproducing better genetic traits from those of its biological parents. Here Aimy declares to become a cyborg rather than a goddess!
Text by Gyusik Lee


Kunst Museum Stuttgart, Germany, 2022
The Review
2021
Video with Sound, 00:05:40
Voice | TZUSOO
Sound | Artur Sommerfeld

The Review (2021) is a video in which activist 'Amiy' reviews their own video as a virtual influencer. Through The Review, the artist skeptically questions the images of virtual influencers who are one-dimensionally consumed in the context of capitalism. As the artist mentions, Aimy, who “is neither woman, nor man, nor human, nor machine, nor a specific race, can tell its story freely”. It does not exist as a virtual human created for humans with poor imagination, but it shows the possibility of queer reproduction in the digital world.

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Space So, Seoul, South Korea, 2022

SOMA Art Space, Berlin, Germany, 2022
The Eden
Video, 00:02:28
Music / Aimy Moon (AI)

The Tinder
2021
Video with Sound, 00:05:40
Voice | TZUSOO
Sound | Artur Sommerfeld
Aimy, a virtual figure, born by TZUSOO, is actively working as an artificial intelligence composer on metaverse platforms and social media while working as a virtual activist in the exhibition space. After returning home from working in the pop music scene, Aimy takes off its disturbing wig and uncomfortable clothes. It is time for it to float, dividing and multiplying in the digital world where it exists more freely than anyone else.
The Review (2021), shown in this exhibition, is a work in which activist 'Amiy' reviews their own video as a virtual influencer. Through 'the Review', the artist skeptically questions the images of virtual influencers who are one-dimensionally consumed in the context of capitalism. As the artist mentions, Aimy, who “is neither woman, nor man, nor human, nor machine, nor a specific race, can tell its story freely”. It does not exist as a virtual human created for humans with poor imagination, but it shows the possibility of queer reproduction in the digital world.


GMOMA, Gyung-gi Modern Art Museum, South Korea, 2022
Aimy's Betrayal
2 framed prints, 841x 594 mm


Madonna–Whore complex, first identified by Sigmund Freud under the rubric of psychic impotence, is said to develop in human history which percieves women as either saintly Madonnas or debased prostitutes.
Aimy's Betrayal(2021) critiques how the psychological complex has been constantly repeated in the digital world as well.


Project supported by: AFCN, Teatrul Național Marin Sorescu
Parteners: Revista ARTA, TVR,
***
Cultural project co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
A. I. Cuza street, Nr. 11, inside the “Marin Sorescu” National Theater, Craiova