Anne Duk Hee Jordan Looks at Life in the Face of Climate Change
The Berlin-based Korean artist Anne Duk Hee Jordan is centering our global reality in “I will always weather you” (December 4, 2023–June 23, 2024) at The Bass. The show examines life on earth as the threat of climate change increases, bringing into view the questions, concerns, and firsthand experiences of global warming. For Jordan, it’s personal. This year, she embarked on her first trip back to South Korea after 43 years, witnessing the country’s drought-devastated forests and landscapes, more aware of our world’s changes and interconnectedness than ever.
At The Bass, Jordan’s multisensory, tech-forward exhibition is organized by the interconnected atmospheres and environments that shape our world and our population—land, water, and air. One work highlights two teapots representing the wind, moving from a gentle breeze to a tsunami, clattering loudly as the storm progresses. Another showcases ten food tins rattling and swirling around the floor, releasing streams of lasers to mimic uncontrollable desert tumbleweeds. Florida’s recent Hurricane Fiona is also a protagonist, seen flattened in a sculpture made up of reimagined meteorological images.
Whitewaller spoke with Jordan about how humanity and weather shape each other, and why her exhibition explores the forces of nature.
Anne Duk Hee Jordan, portrait by Ricard Estay
Anne Duk Hee Jordan Creates Tech-Forward Environments at The Bass
WHITEWALLER: “I will always weather you” features videos, installations, sound, and kinetic objects to create environments, engaging the visitor in dialogue with natural phenomena, technology, and art. What did you want this experience to evoke?
ANNE DUK HEE JORDAN: My work reflects our environment, where media and technology are part of our ecology. I am very interested in the techno sphere and the ecosphere. They go hand in hand. I also want to evoke how our understanding of climate change is directed by the media documentation of it. We feel like we are in a spiral going down. I want to point out our adaptation and correlation with the world moving from the first meteorite until the capitalocene we are in now.
The Show Features Elemental Themes
WW: The show is organized by land, water, and air atmospheres. Why?
ADHJ: It’s about the relationship they encounter together. They depend on and influence each other. They are natural forces that have existed on this planet long before humans came. It’s a natural consequence that we must adapt to those circumstances.
They dance in turbulences, creating ecosphere-like weather and letting the ocean circle around. Those natural forces have always been a matter of interdependence between life and migration. Now we understand it more than ever because humans are under threat. Temperatures are rising, ice is melting, our primary forest is destroyed, and biodiversity is disappearing. We all know the consequences. Theoretically, if we could concentrate our energy into a standard frequency, like energy or heart coherence, we could heal together.
In other installations, I was focused on the nonhuman aspect, showing the small things. Still, here, I show how human and natural forces dance together in troubled forces. They go hand in hand. Furthermore, I address ecological, sociology-political, and technological issues by the intertwining environments.
Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s Environmental Musings
WW: When you came back from Korea earlier this year, what did you realize about climate change?
ADHJ: Economics is not everything. If a country exploits its own soil and environment, planting towers and asphalt in the forests and building more houses instead of nourishing our nature, we cannot survive. We must acknowledge that we depend on others, like bacteria in our gut, or the plankton in the sea. Here in Berlin, it’s not much different. We have yet to be exposed to the heat but suffer from rainless days and turbulences like uncommon storms.
WW: What are you looking forward to doing while in Miami this December?
ADHJ: Going to a particular beach at night and seeing and experiencing the fluorescent algae. I have never been to Florida, so I don’t know what to expect, but I look forward to it.
Anne Duk Hee Jordan, “Robotic Waste Crab, 2023, installation view, “I must alter myself into a life-form which can exist on this planet,” HEK; photo by Franz Wamhof, courtesy of the artist.
