MGKWalls, Florence Jung

Florence Jung writes scenarios of situations that shift from fiction to reality, much in the same way that rumors can become facts in the digital age. Her works – none of which are documented through images – examine our relationship to uncertainty as well as how assumptions and anxieties shape our perception.

Together with the Berlin-based developer team interkit, the artist is designing an interactive app for smartphones, which will be presented to the public for the first time in September 2022. The works “Jung84” and “Jung85” are this venture’s first visible spin-off, with which Jung introduces the genderless character Sam.

For the outside LED wall, Jung presents a series of chat texts. Sam seems to be observing passers-by while also teasing them, on occasion chasing or even attempting to seduce them, sometimes to the point of provocation. Inside the museum, on the wall of the foyer, unmoderated ratings and reviews referring to Sam are displayed. As is often the case on the internet, the actual authors of these appraisals remain unknown. Yet, as one of those comments says, “You’re not just yourself, you’re everything people say about you”. Sam takes this logic to its core by posing as an anonymous online friend who (meta)examines the emotional mechanisms that bind us to our digital tools.
 
Through this project, Jung critically reflects on how technologies construct spaces that are neither real nor fictional but emotional, and how invasive and complex these artifices of intimacy may become. In an era when everyone is a writer on their own device, Jung’s work also represents an experimental approach to literature that continues the artist’s incisive exploration of contemporary angst and its effects on our collective psyche.

MGKWalls by Florence Jung marks the beginning of the fourth project within the research project “Offene Welten” (Open Worlds) led by the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, the Museum Marta Herford, the Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover and IMAGINE THE CITY Hamburg. “Offene Welten” is being supported over four years (2020–2024) by the Digital Fund in the Digital Culture program of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Together with artists, curators and users, these four institutions for contemporary art are developing digital parcours and artistic stagings in public urban spaces that intertwine physical and virtual experiences.