EJ SON and OpenSpace Bae Talk about Thinking Bears, Robots and Technology

This interview between artist EJ SON, NCM and the gallery team from Openspace Bae took place in March 2026.

In it, they discuss EJ SON’s artwork Thinking Bear, as well as collaboration, robots and future technologies. Thinking Bear (formerly known as 재주없는곰 | Trickless Bear) was commissioned by NCM for FRIEND in 2025 and co-presented with Openspace Bae in Busan, South Korea.

Interview

NCM: Hello! Director Kim Jung-hoon and Curator Yoo Kyung-hye, you both operated OpenSpace Bae 2.0 from 2022 to 2025. During that period, how did you run the space in Busan?

Kim Jung-hoon and Yoo Kyung-hye: OpenSpace Bae was founded in 2006. We have been working there since 2019 and co-directed the generational transition period known as OpenSpace Bae 2.0 from 2022 to 2025. The space is located in Donggwang-dong’s old printing alley in Busan and operates out of a renovated house that combines exhibition and residency spaces. During the 2.0 period, rather than relying on the inertia of being an “alternative space,” we chose to allow each artist’s methodology to shape how the space functioned. Instead of simply presenting finished works, we experimented with different operational structures so that the processes of residing, making, collaborating, and conversing could become visible within the exhibition itself.

Instead of simply presenting finished works, we experimented with different operational structures so that the processes of residing, making, collaborating, and conversing could become visible within the exhibition itself.

NCM: EJ, what is your connection to OpenSpace Bae and the National Communication Museum?

EJ SON: I first showed at OpenSpace Bae in the group exhibition Between the Lines, curated by Nanette Orly in 2024. I had such a wonderful time working with them. We almost clicked immediately. Beyond being some of the most genuine and devoted people I have encountered, their belief and attitude toward art restored my faith in it, despite all of its failures and paradoxes. They felt similarly about the collaboration and we naturally began discussing a solo exhibition for the following year, which became Piece of Cake.

Around the same time, NCM had approached me about presenting Dancing Teddy. After showing that work more than a dozen times, I began to feel fatigued repeating it and felt it was time to move forward. NCM’s Senior Curator, Jemimah Widdicombe, was incredibly patient throughout this process while I moved between different ideas. She listened carefully and considered how the museum could support the development of a new work.

After many conversations, the project eventually became Thinking Bear. Even the title changed many times along the way, from Jjoogoori Bear to Trickless Bear before finally settling on Thinking Bear.

NCM: How was the solo exhibition Piece of Cake prepared at Openspace Bae and what processes shaped its completion?

JH & KH: Rather than bringing in completed works, the exhibition treated EJ’s time in Busan itself as part of the work. During the residency, EJ used the conditions of the rooms, such as windows, light, curtains, and greenery, as a sensory foundation. Objects, phrases, proverbs, and emotions encountered in daily life were collected impulsively and rearranged to form scenes throughout the space.

One important element was embracing the uncertainty of collaboration. For example, the curtain work involved wandering through Jin Market to find fabric and trusting a maker EJ had just met. Miscommunications resulted in unexpected separations between the inner and outer layers of the curtains. Interestingly, this accident ultimately clarified the exhibition’s central idea of Piece of Cake, something that appears simple or attainable but remains just out of reach.

Another important aspect was keeping the process open. The space next to the main gallery, titled Hello, Artist, was transformed into The Living Room (2025), constructed as the artist’s room. The door remained open while EJ continued working and speaking with neighbours who passed by. Even the opening event, structured as a party, talk, and potluck, extended this idea of encounter as part of the exhibition.

We see this openness as a distinctive aspect of EJ’s practice. Their temporary time in Busan left traces that gradually seeped into the surrounding environment.

NCM: Walk me through the process of developing your work. How did Dancing Teddy, an artwork that explored intimacy, entertainment, and surveillance, become 재주없는곰 or Trickless Bear (and finally Thinking Bear)? How has your relationship with this creation changed over time?

EJ SON: Dancing Teddy had already been shown many times and at some point I started asking myself who the teddy was dancing for and how long it would continue dancing. In many ways it began to reflect a kind of burnout that many people experience when they are constantly performing.

Dancing Teddy had already been shown many times and at some point I started asking myself who the teddy was dancing for and how long it would continue dancing. In many ways it began to reflect a kind of burnout that many people experience when they are constantly performing.

I have always been interested in body language and poses as non verbal ways of reading emotional states. So I decided to reconfigure the Dancing Teddy that remained at OpenSpace Bae from the previous exhibition. Instead of dancing, the bear would bend forward and hold its knees, appearing as if it were deep in contemplation.

Before travelling to Busan I visited NCM Studio to workshop the mechanical aspect of the sculpture. I wanted the teddy’s back to slowly rise and fall like breathing. Initially I imagined using an inflatable object such as a balloon or yoga ball inside the sculpture. But despite our assumptions about technological advancement, the mechanical systems available were not capable of producing a smooth and reliable movement that way. Instead we installed a motor connected to a Raspberry Pi inside the sculpture, allowing us to control the rhythm of the breathing movement.

Working on this project made me realise that the teddy might actually become a lifelong project. The figure evolves as I evolve. The teddy breathes and moves as long as I breathe and move.

NCM: Kim Jung-hoon and Yoo Kyung-hye, were there any particularly memorable or unexpected audience reactions?

JH & KH: One thing that immediately comes to mind is the teddy sculpture installed on the first floor of OpenSpace Bae. The gallery is located in what used to be a very active printing alley in the 1990s. As printing technologies became more accessible and distribution methods improved, the need for printing businesses to cluster there gradually disappeared and the neighbourhood aged considerably.

Encountering a teddy that appeared charming and playful within that environment felt particularly unexpected. At the same time, that sense of familiarity lowered the threshold for people approaching contemporary art, which can sometimes feel distant or difficult.

People passing by would notice the teddy through the window, become curious and step inside without hesitation. Many naturally touched the sculpture and interacted with it directly.

Another memorable aspect was the structure of the building itself. From the first floor visitors climb a steep staircase to the fourth floor, where three rooms with very different characters unfold sequentially. It is quite an unusual layout.

EJ interpreted each room differently, composing the exhibition almost like a sequence of unknown worlds where visitors could not anticipate what they would encounter next. It was striking how the many facets of the artist’s practice unfolded freely from room to room.

NCM: Thinking Bear was shown in both South Korea and Australia. Why is cross cultural collaboration important to you?

JH & KH: This collaboration was not always easy. There are certain habits and conventions involved in making exhibitions and these habits often become so natural that we stop questioning them.

Working with EJ required us to reconsider many of those assumptions. What felt important was not simply comparing differences between Korea and Australia. Rather, the collaboration created new relationships and those relationships gradually transformed both the work and the people involved.

Through meeting one another, our previously fixed perspectives began to shift. We found ourselves influencing and entangling with one another in unexpected ways. Another interesting aspect was how Thinking Bear travelled between two very different contexts. As it moved between Korea and Australia, the work was interpreted differently depending on the audience and environment. Through this movement, the work accumulated new contexts and new meanings.

NCM: What role can art play in shaping the future of technology? How does technological change influence art?

JH & KH: When technology speaks about the future it often emphasises efficiency and convenience. In that process certain sensations and experiences are neglected. Art has the ability to reveal these forgotten elements again. Rather than offering resolutions, art can expose cracks within established systems and prompt us to reconsider what we have accepted as normal.

At the same time, technological change inevitably reshapes artistic production. What once seemed unknown gradually becomes accessible and the conditions of expression continue to shift.

EJ’s teddy works, for example, reveal an environment in which even emotions and fatigue can be programmed and performed as if they were routines. Technology therefore provides both new tools for art and new questions about how we understand emotion, relationships and freedom.

Technology therefore provides both new tools for art and new questions about how we understand emotion, relationships and freedom.

NCM: EJ, many describe your work as unexpected, humorous and provocative. Why do you think that is?

EJ SON: I know I really like a work when it triggers a sort of ticklish sensation in the body or a chuckle. It being 6ft tall, one might suspect it to be a person in it, viewers are cautious at first, as one might be around living statues or street performers. Only to hear the mechanical whirl of its inside to get their bearing back again.

Humour is an incredibly effective tool in disarming people, often catching the viewers off guard, gaining an entry point in which the subject/object can be experienced without much resistance. It is also a coping mechanism and a powerful agency in itself.

I am glad people describe it that way, because those are qualities I naturally gravitate toward. I enjoy disturbing familiarity. Often this happens by disassembling and reconstructing objects, or by playing with scale, quantity, and context. Similar to building machines or robots, it is rarely necessary to make everything from scratch. Using what already exists is more interesting. It saves time and resources, but most importantly the identification of already existing materials are fascinating.

To be honest, I am always in pursuit of stimulation, I often find myself stirring things to disrupt inertia. Of course this impulse can easily become antisocial in everyday life, so making art becomes a more productive outlet for it. Through the work I can entertain myself while also inviting others into that disturbance.

NCM: What about robotics? What is unique about working with art or machines that have social and physical presence?

EJ Son: Technology often feels incredibly advanced, especially in discussions around AI. Yet the robots we encounter in everyday life are still strangely endearing in their limitations. Their attempts to mimic human movement or emotion are often clumsy and those small failures make them feel oddly human.

The technology I use in my work is actually far more rudimentary than it might appear. The motors that make Dancing Teddy swing its hips, for example, are repurposed from car window wipers, operating through a simple pendulum-like mechanism. I enjoy this low-tech quality. It reveals the mechanics behind the illusion.

The technology I use in my work is actually far more rudimentary than it might appear. The motors that make Dancing Teddy swing its hips, for example, are repurposed from car window wipers, operating through a simple pendulum-like mechanism. I enjoy this low-tech quality. It reveals the mechanics behind the illusion.

I am drawn to robotics because it is inherently science-fictional. Our fantasies about machines often reveal more about ourselves than about the technology itself. There is always a person behind the machine, shaping it to human needs and desires. What we ask machines to do or to be inevitably reflects something about us. In many ways, technologies seem to revolve around three recurring human impulses: to save, to kill and to reproduce.

I am also fascinated by how machines increasingly occupy emotional roles in society. For example, companion dolls designed for the elderly or for lonely individuals are now being replaced by robotic versions. The fact that we outsource care, intimacy, and attention to machines says a lot about how we organise relationships and emotional labour today.

Once movement enters a sculpture, something fundamental changes. A static sculpture simply occupies space, but a moving sculpture begins to behave. It exists not only in space but also in time. Because of this, viewers often respond to it almost as if it were alive. They might wait for it to move, feel sympathy toward it, or even feel slightly uneasy around it. In that moment, the sculpture stops being just an object and begins to function more like a presence within the room.

Robotics allows me to explore this ambiguous space between object and subject. The machine is clearly not alive, yet its movements can trigger very real emotional responses. A small gesture such as breathing, nodding, or swaying can make viewers project feelings onto the object.

Robotics allows me to explore this ambiguous space between object and subject. The machine is clearly not alive, yet its movements can trigger very real emotional responses. A small gesture such as breathing, nodding, or swaying can make viewers project feelings onto the object.

This becomes particularly interesting with something like a teddy bear. A teddy already carries strong associations of comfort and companionship. When that familiar object suddenly begins to move or breathe, it transforms into a strange technological body. At that point the work becomes less about the machine itself and more about the relationship that forms between the viewer and the object.

OpenSpace Bae is a long established artist run space in Busan, South Korea, founded in 2006. Located in a house built during the period when refugees from the Korean War settled in the area, and situated within the city’s historic printing alley, it supports experimental contemporary art through exhibitions, residencies, and collaborative critical dialogue. The space is known for prioritising artistic process, exchange, and conversation, fostering both national and international connections within Busan’s independent art scene.