SEP 6, 2026
Dear Song,
How are you?
Flavin’s work has always given me a childlike sense of joy. Stepping into Dia Bridgehampton must have been an immersive experience.
I am happy to hear that you are continuing this journey through time and space toward the Etruscans.
- George Dennis, “Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria” (1848)
- Wilhelm Dorow, “Voyage archéologique dans l'ancienne Étrurie” (1829)
Unlike historical texts, which are “sick with truth and science” (as I sometimes like to say), travel books take the artist’s liberty—the freedom to say whatever they please without having to answer to History.
Speaking of literature, I’m sharing a passage from “Feminism Interrupted” by Lola Olufemi:
“Our responses are varied and aren’t limited to the sphere of ‘the political’. We do a disservice to the power of art and artistic creation when we assume that it is less important than political intervention, likewise we do ourselves a disservice when we assume that art alone can liberate us. […] But when we imply that the sole purpose of art is helping rediscover a shared ‘humanity’ or a way of feeling that is not dependent on time, location and all of the other markers that organise our lives, we blunt the knife that might help us tear these markers down. Art is best utilised as a weapon, a writing back, or approaches that seek to deaden the resistant potential of artistic practice are merely another mechanism through which the status quo is reproduced” (p. 84 – 85).
I found this description to align closely with my own vision of creating and understanding art, and it offers a valuable lens through which to view many of the choices I have made along my artistic and academic paths. It cannot—and should not—be a universal vision, just as nothing ever should be. Yet, it is certainly a perspective that resonates with what drives and motivates me, and what keeps me in a state of constant transformation.
Thank you so much for the books you recommended. I think they will be very helpful to me, and I’m really looking forward to reading them.
Maybe I’m simply someone who loves uncovering secrets. That’s probably why I find my research on the Etruscans so fascinating. There are still so many things about them that we don’t fully know or understand, and I find that uncertainty incredibly exciting. I love discovering small traces, unexpected connections, and forgotten stories, and then following those clues to see where they might lead.
Perhaps what fascinates me most is the space between what we know and what we don’t know. That space leaves room for questions, possibilities, and imagination.
And I think you’re right about the freedom of being an artist. I don’t necessarily have to solve every mystery or prove every possibility as a historian would. I can look at the traces that remain, think about what might have existed between them, and allow myself to imagine.
So I’m going to let my imagination run free. I want to travel through these fragments of history without being afraid of where they might take me. Sometimes a connection may be historical, sometimes intuitive, and sometimes it may exist only through the imagination. But perhaps that is exactly where something new can begin.
The more I research the Etruscans, the more curious I become. It feels a little like following a trail whose destination I don’t yet know — and I think that is exactly what makes it so enjoyable for me.
Please keep sending me anything that comes to mind. I always enjoy hearing your thoughts and discovering where they take me.
Big hugs,
Song
Sep 9/ 2026
Dear, Rob
I was supposed to move yesterday, but the moving company suddenly canceled on me that morning, so everything has been pushed back a couple of days. There is always something unexpected happening. :)
Lately, talking with you has made me go back and think about my work from the very beginning. And recently, a very old image suddenly came back to me.
More than ten years ago, when I was living alone in New York with almost nothing but a small desk and a bed, I was thinking a lot about writing, communication, and the structures through which human beings communicate. I drew a circular structure with no clear beginning or end, continuously looping back into itself, almost like a Möbius strip. But there was one empty space within it. I deliberately left that space open, although at the time I couldn’t fully explain why.
Thinking about it again led me much further back in my work.
My experiments with codes and communication began with Confront, a project that included guerrilla performances in Busan and Tokyo. In Barcode Human, I placed barcodes on the human body and explored the idea of a person being converted into information—identified, classified, and ultimately managed through a code. I was interested in what happens when a human being becomes something that can be read as data.
Then, in 2010, I continued these experiments with QR Code, presented in the exhibition Love Letter. At the time, communication was rapidly shifting from analog to digital systems. I created postcards containing QR codes and had people request them through Twitter. The postcard, one of the oldest and most physical forms of personal communication, was connected to a new digital system of communication.
These were not separate experiments for me. I was continuously investigating the relationship between human beings, signs, information, and communication: how we create codes to communicate, how information is translated through them, and how those systems can eventually turn around and identify or define us.
It was through these experiments that Song E Code was born.
Conventional codes are designed to be decoded correctly. A barcode, a QR code, or the binary system of a computer depends on precision. A sign has to correspond to specific information, and ambiguity, error, and misunderstanding are things the system tries to eliminate.
My experiment led me to another possibility: What if a code did not have to arrive at one fixed meaning?
Song E Code begins with only two elementary signs, ● and ○—presence and absence. But meaning is not determined by either sign alone. It emerges through distance, sequence, repetition, asymmetry, and the relationships between them. A reading can change according to those relationships. Even the possibility of different interpretations or misunderstanding remains within the language.
This is why Song E Code is directly connected to my earlier experiments with barcodes, QR codes, and communication. It grew out of those experiments rather than appearing as a separate idea.
And now, at the 2026 Venice Biennale, I am presenting Song E Code as a language. Looking back from this point has made the long trajectory of these works much clearer to me.
It also brought me back to that circular structure I drew so many years ago and, especially, to that one empty space.
I’m not saying that the empty space was Song E Code. Song E Code did not yet exist. But I can now see something in that work that I couldn’t articulate at the time. Even within a structure that appeared complete, connected, and endlessly circulating, I had left one place unresolved—a space that could not be completely determined or decoded.
Talking with you has made me return to these works and see connections that I had not put into words before. I’m still thinking through all of this, but I wanted to share it with you.
I’ll write to you again once I’ve moved.
Song E