STANDBY, THE LIGHT WAVERS

“Of course, no individual can ever be shopping, gaming, working, blogging, downloading, or texting 24/7. However, since no moment, place, or situation now exists in which one can not shop, consume, or exploit networked resources, there is a relentless incursion of the non-time of 24/7 into every aspect of social or personal life.” – Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep

SEAGER presents Standby, the light wavers, the first UK solo exhibition of London-based artist Yoojin Lee. The exhibition features recent and newly commissioned work, including sound, installation, sculpture and performance. The selected works explore themes of sleep, vulnerability and resilience in a 24/7 world that demands constant activation.

Popular scientific opinion contends that the leading causes of death and disease in developed nations – diseases that are crippling health-care systems – all have strong causal links to a lack of sleep. What is more, an increasing population is getting a decreasing amount of it. This is not down to personal failings, however. Social factors prevent us from getting the sleep we vitally need: swelling work hours, heightened stress, political instability, economic precarity, our bad diets, inadequate housing, to name a few. In turbulent times, we turn more heavily than ever before to our Silicon Valley-controlled screens, which are always waiting with intrusive technologies designed to keep us awake for longer. Sleeplessness not only affects our wellbeing, it hinders our capacity to make decisions about a future that we accelerate toward. We need to protect the time and space of sleep that is being taken from us – so we can fully rest, replenish, and maintain our ability to dream. Against this backdrop, artist Yoojin Lee asserts the sleeping, horizontal body as a site of quiet resistance in a culture that promotes a toxic ideal – sleep when you are dead.

The exhibition Standby, the light wavers encourages reflection on physical and mental states of being, specifically conditions of repose and suspense. It asks an important question. What does it mean to pause in a society driven by capitalist growth, speed and progress? The selected artworks waver between motifs of light / darkness, verticality / horizontality, activity / inactivity and resistance / vulnerability. The presentation includes I like to stay horizontal, (2018) an installation of photographic prints on pillowcases, strewn across the gallery floor, inviting viewers to lie down, do less and rest; Standby, (2015) a sculptural installation with sound that fills the space with noises of traffic and crickets, overlaid with the voice of the artist delivering a hypnotic, lulling recital; and Ostriches are diurnal but may be active on moonlit nights, (2018) a glitching LED ‘OPEN’ sign that flashes red and green, flickering and failing like a faltering pulse; and I like to stay horizontal: ATTN, (2022) a photograph of a scaffolded-building lying dormant, concealed from view with electric blue safety netting, overlaid with silver annotations in Lee’s hand, framed in aluminium. Additionally, a parallel program of artist-led workshops will further conversation and collective research into the sociability of sleep and inform a newly commissioned LED installation of evolving text displays, titled Nite Gestures 10-11-2022-10-12-2022, (2022).

Throughout the course of the exhibition and thereafter, Lee will continue to explore sleep in relation to questions of collectivity, plurality and respect. In the artist’s words: “A sleeping being is vulnerable; they rely on mutual trust and care. A sleeping, horizontal position lays a more permanent claim on the space – a body claiming its belonging to a place. As a woman of colour with lived experiences of migration, the journey of claiming space and building a place to belong has been a source of (un)learning but also exhausting.” In January and February 2023, Lee will undertake a research residency at Université de Montréal and McGill University, Montreal (‘The Sociability of Sleep’).