Eunsun Choi

Eunsun Choi is a multidisciplinary and conceptual artist based in Seattle, New York and Seoul.

She is a graduate of the Hunter College MFA program. She is currrently pursuing her Ph.D at the University of Washington, Seattle in the DXARTS. 


Project

Touch Grass
Cukoo
God Bless You
Voice of God
Bad Luck Washer
I Feel An Earthquake Everyday
I Pray To Be Unhappy Everyday
Champagne Shaking Device
Air Freshener
Happy Ending Massage

//Jeju Island Artist Collective//

About

Contact Info


Cuckoo ( 2021 ~ )

Ceramic, Wood, Arduino nano, Dfplayer, MicroSD, Servo motor, Wire

As TV home shopping became available in South Korea in the mid-nineties, one result was a craze for cuckoo clocks. My family still has the two we bought from that time period.

A lot of these clocks, however, were defective and never worked properly.

Even as a young child I  could see that the clocks were not working after using them for only a month or so. Even though the clocks often broke down, they remained a very popular luxury item for home decor in Korea.

After the IMF in 1997, the Korean economy changed from state-led development to people-led development. One reason for this change was the definite gap between the rich and poor. People who had invested in properties and real estate in the 70’and 80’s had been getting richer and richer and this economic disparity was clearly visible by the nineties.

As people wanted to show off their wealth through the things they could buy, many who were not wealthy seized on the cuckoo clock, which sold for around $100.

My mother seemed completely happy and satisfied with her cuckoo clocks but they provoked anxiety and discomfort in me. I was terrified by the birds that came jumping out at me and surprising me every hour. Also, the sound was so creepy!

I really didn’t care about the value of the clocks to my mother. They scared me. If they were broken I felt at ease. But soon my mother would replace them with new ones and the anxiety in my house would be repeated.

In this project, I employ the cuckoo clock to represent the economic disparity in Korean society and will highlight the discomfort and anxiety they caused by installing one hundred cuckoo clocks.