Organisms as Manifolds 

 Hong Geun-young's work shows a marriage of organisms and machines. Like hybrid organisms, her organisms look uncanny. Her organisms, however, are not to demonstrate bizarreness but to connote an emotional response to contemporary society leading individuals to extreme situations. The emotion Hong is attentive in this show is anger. She exploits a variety of mechanical props to express the emotional intensity of rage. In her work tiny things are harmonized with organisms; they are fused in a modified state. In Hong's work organisms are objectified, and things appear with their own life force. Her works and drawings of cyborgs and monsters have in common visible or invisible horns. Paying attention to '뿔났다' (get angry or get mad / '뿔' here refers to a horn in Korean), she represents a specific emotional state with horns protruded from the body. Being mad is a state of tension in which one feels disagreeable. 

 

 Stimulations creating tension can become a catalyst for senselessly recurring daily routines. They can also create action reversing a situation. In the series Soothe Your Anger the subject appears inseparable from a machine. As Felix Guattari stated in L'inconscient machinique, the subject engages in all physical arrangements. In contrast, some mechanisms engage in subjective arrangements. Soothe Your Anger features a figure with the frowning face and a flashing light lamp on her head. While it is ambiguous if she is angry or complacent, this red lamp obviously indicates her emotional state. Faces with diverse facial expressions are portrayed on the back of her head. They are drawings scratched after being rendered with crayons, with thin lines depicting the flow of emotions. Each face represents a character inherent in a person, and the scratching expresses hysteric icons. 

 

 In Soothe Your Anger 2 a girl with red hair looks like a poisonous mushroom and appears extremely nervous. A humidifier puffing out steam is set on her head, hinting at a state on the verge of explosion. Her pale complexion and expressionless face implies her tough emotional state. The waves depicted on her body are symbolic of her turbulent mental state. Her red head depicted with facial expressions imply an individual's complex character.

 

 In Horn Power the figure's head can be turned, as a motor is built in its neck. Its green body levitates, its purple head, legs, and arms move freely, and the hair looks like horns. Anger here is not a cause leading an individual to depression but the spring of lively action. One who gets angry needs to vent it. In Song Horns Sing, a psychedelic light lamp used in a noraebang (karaoke) is set on a figure's head and rotates, representing a figure playing with joy in a state of elevated emotion. Faces with diverse expressions are depicted on its twisted body. 

 

 Her small series Let's Protect Horns shows horns are stimulators modifying form. One of the series - hb-56 - has the green face with the red legs. A collision of strange colors hints at compressed energy within. Another work - fgg-044 - is a figurine with one body, many faces, and legs and arms in different direction. Paste-gems are embedded in the eyes of the figurine represented with four color fields. The eyes are closer to mechanical codes than to the human gaze. One body and many faces symbolize many egos within an individual. 

 

 nrp-j2 with the green face and protruded mouth in purple attire looks like a cartoon character. The body, each leg and arms are in abnormal position, and stakes like horns are in its eyes. The horns are metaphors for eyes. Another work in the Let's Protect Horns series is without a body. The face and the limbs ensure more direct emotional expression than the body. In bms-102, arms and legs come out from a bald head in purple. In zk-17, places for horns are marks for new generation. In tjgr-888 arms and legs spreading in many directions from a blue face are set in abnormal positions. 

 

 Finger-pointing is a monster composed of fingers of different size. A long elephant nose, short arms, spreading legs, and horns on a forehead are all expressed with finger shapes. It looks more natural than any other combination with merged things as fingers in different sizes. It was developed into a new species beyond a hybrid. In the self portrait Miss Hong, colorful hair typical of youngsters contrasts with big tears on the cheeks. This work suggests her self consciousness undergoing freedom, alienation, joy and despair. 

 

 Hong's pencil, pen, acrylic, and crayon drawings portray half-man and half-animal monsters in human-like poses and facial expressions with diversely modified horns. They are not only for her sculptures. The horns result from wounds caused by others, and also hurt others. They are a metaphor for emotional conflict among humans. In Hong's work horns proliferate from face and body, transforming into another being. As an emotional crystal, horns spread toward unpredictable places and directions: there is an endless stream here. In this process, the subject is not standardized to attain systematic gain. Diverse singularities occur here, deviating from human-centered perspectives. 

 

 Hong's work does not presuppose universal form in unrestricted arrangements of organs and things. As in L'inconscient machinique, it belongs to a singular constellation beyond a world of representation influenced by social power. This logical language has a system of arrangements drawn from many directions and a system of rules interpretable in many ways. Her work undermines harmonious marriage as it comes from different beings and things, and is made of the same element in different sizes. As with Immanuel Kant's aesthetic philosophy, distinguishing the beautiful and the sublime, her work in counter-aesthetics deviates from teleological form and limit. The world of inexplicable beings and events where natural order and unity remain in ruin gives rise to a paradoxical pleasure of the sublime. Hong's work is mechanical in that it works through an assembly of diverse categories and parts. When this mechanical trait is fused with the heterogeneous, it destroys comprehensive structure.

 

Variously spreading horns connote diversity not confined to the face. The face here is different from 'capitalistic faciality' defined in L'inconscient machinique. According to this book's author all are predicted and calculated in this 'capitalistic faciality'. As diverse eyes disappear, one pivotal eye appears instead. There is a rhizomic line of flight in Hong's work. The horns in her work are the motive force for new arrangements in that they connote imaginary lines of differentiation. A rhizomic way is creative in that it brings about manifolds. In A Thousand Plateaus Gilles Deleuz and Felix Guattari contrast the way of trees always presupposing something genealogic with the way of rhizomes. For them, a rhizome decentralizes language, and rhizome-shaped manifolds have not subject and object. These manifolds only have rule, size, and dimension. Things arranged are those with increased dimensions within these manifolds.

 

Hong's Finger-pointing is an example of such manifold. According to A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuz and Guattari, the concept of unity gives rise to only when the signifier grasps power within a manifold, or a process of subjectificatiion echoing to this takes place. This manifold is defined by exterior, abstract lines, lines of flight, or lines for deterritorialization. Manifolds are reality and do not presuppose any unity. They never return to comprehensibility and subjectivity. Hong's works as manifolds depart from the body as organic comprehensibility forming the archetypal order of neo-humanism. They are 'bodies without organs'. The bodies ceaselessly deconstruct organisms and leave marks of intensity by imputing many subjects to themselves. ■ Lee Sun-young