all images:
All The Lights We Cannot See, Yanggakdo International Hotel, Pyongyang
April 9–12, 2016

courtesy the artists and Random Institute, Zürich

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From April 9 to April 12 2016, Random Institute from Zürich presented on the 23rd floor of the Yanggakdo International Hotel, in the heart of the North Korea’s Capital Pyongyang, a group exhibition curated by ANNA HUGO and SANDINO SCHEIDEGGER.

In a country where carrying notebooks or taking everyday pictures can cause you severe troubles, the idea to bring artworks and to make an exhibition in your hotel room is probably the most adventurous idea you can have.

In the highly controlled North Korean environment, the hotel room hosted during four days, a series of artworks conceived by nine international artists. The exhibition was organised around the theme of silence. The works had all the faculty to hide themselves in the space as well as a scale that made their transport into the secretiveness of North Korea possible.

Entitled All The Lights We Cannot See, the presentation had little if not zero offline and online interaction with viewers during the time of the exhibition, because of the strict communication rules of the country. Back in Zürich, the traces of the show begins now to appear in the form of a usual photographic documentation as well as a mention on each of the nine artist’s CVs.

More than silence, the main character in the exhibition seems to be the idea of circulation: a literal one with the simple fact of travelling to North Korea. And an immaterial one such as the circulation of knowledge and ideas that took the form of an exhibition in Pyongyang during a couple of days. Finally this project including its distribution of information is like a technological cipher for the illusion that everything is accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Please note that a manipulated and reproduced issue of the state-owned Pyongyang Times serves as the official exhibition catalogue. The special edition will be launched on June 15, 2016 at the I Never Read Art Book Fair in Basel.

All The Lights We Cannot See with SIMON MULLAN (UK/Germany), THOMAS MAILAENDER (France), ALFREDO ACETO (Switzerland), CLIFFORD E. BRUCKMANN (Switzerland), RAGNHEIDUR KARDOTTIR (Iceland), JUAN BETANCURTH (Colombia), FLORENCE JUNG (Switzerland), ACHRAF TOULOUB (France), and ALISON KUO (US) was held at April 9 to 12, 2016 on the 23rd floor of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. It was conceived of by Random Institute.

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