Tomorrow

2020 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
34:06 minutes

Tomorrow by Jung Yoonsuk is a two-channel video installation, observing the two different sites of factories, one in the mannequin reform factory in Seoul, Korea, and the other in a sex doll factory in Shenzhen, China. The artist’s research began in 2016 when he encountered articles, and some dystopian images, about a “retired sex doll”, a spooky, deformed dummy with big breasts, that stood in an agricultural field backdrop of a high-rise apartment complex in Chengdu, China. Jung’s work explores the factory scene, the (mostly female) workers and their labor, the doll’s artificiality, and human-like eccentricities. If mannequins are for fashion, desire, and consumption, today’s sex dolls are primarily a reflection of the feminine, and exaggerated sexuality aimed at male sexual desire and fantasy. In the film, the camera stares at each material property, and human proximity of the dolls; such as hollow plastic mannequins and heavy, rubber latex dolls weighing about 50 kg. This factory production entails labor that measures and responds to all resemblances, sexual fantasies, and preferences. While observing the labor intensity of the worker handling the weight of the adult-sized dolls, or the worker’s ability to create human-like eyelashes (the key to consumer satisfaction or complaints), the worker’s body intersects and overlaps with the artificial body. Jung’s film exposes the labor dedicated to such indulgent desires, while also providing insight into how the human (or female) substitute industry reflects the dystopian state of human companionship and how this industry traverses the breadth of human sexual desires under capitalism.

As one of the notable Korean artists of his generation working across contemporary visual art and documentary cinema, Jung Yoonsuk has created internationally recognized documentary films like Lash (2022), Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno (2017), Non-Fiction Diary (2013), and Hometown of Stars (2010). Non-fiction Diary examines the 1990s murders committed by the Jijona gang, and Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno chronicles the lives and activities of the eponymous punk rock band. Both films reflect the socio-political incidents of Korean society with sharp and insightful understanding, delving into the hidden side of specific social events to address the complex relationship between the individual and the state, and relate a paradox found in the ambivalence of human existence.

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