​Idea Museum: Aerocene Seoul

The Leeum Museum of Art, operated by the Samsung Foundation of Culture (Chairman: Hwang-sik Kim), is hosting Aerocene Seoul, a three-month-long public project that connects Aerocene communities in and around Seoul from June 25 to September 29 as part of its public programme “Idea Museum.”

Aerocene is an era-in-the-making, a community, a non-profit foundation. As a movement for eco-social justice, adrift on air, floating free from fossil fuels, lithium or hydrogen, Aerocene moves us towards an ethical re-alliance with the Earth and its cosmic web(s) of life. Rooted in slower activism and weather-dependent interdependency, Aerocene stands as a platform for climate justice, an eco-social energy transition, human and more-than-human rights, and alternative modes of knowing and sensing. Our work connects beyond disciplines and borders, taking shape through application into art, technology, justice and education. Initiated by artist Tomás Saraceno and developed through a community-based approach, Aerocene is active in 152 cities across 36 countries and six continents.

Aerocene Seoul has joined the international Aerocene community’s movement, striving for an era where everyone can live and breathe freely. To share Aerocene’s visions and messages, the Leeum Museum of Art presents the Aerocene Seoul, a series of events featuring community activities such as Museo Aero Solar, Aerocene Backpack Workshop, and discursive programmes.

Museo Aero Solar: For Aerocene Seoul, stories of eco-social and political imaginaries have been woven together, joining Museo Aero Solar from Argentina, Thailand, and South Korea to form a vast canvas that carries messages of hope and resistance from around the world. Notes and drawings supporting the fight for democracy and free public education have been carried from the Museo built by students at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Escuela Puerta Abierta, Argentina. From the Chiang Rai Biennale in Thailand ideas towards more just political structures have been shared.

In collaboration with various communities in Yongsan-gu, messages of care and change reflecting environmental concerns have been depicted via the more than 5,000 plastic bags collected in Seoul this past summer. Through more than 40 workshops, participants engaged in assembling these diverse stories into a patchwork that moves towards resilient possible futures. The result is a newly constructed, transnational Museo Aero Solar, a 1200-square-meter giant living sculpture installed in the center of the M2. Visitors can walk inside and experience various narratives, functioning as a museum (Museo) within a museum. This process showcases the transformation of plastic bags, typically regarded as waste, into a medium of solidarity that amplifies the voices of the community concerning environmental issues.

Aerocene Backpack: Collaborating with prominent regional museums in Seoul, Gwangju, Gyeonggi, Daegu, Daejeon, Busan, Suwon, and Jeju, several Aerocene Backpack Workshops invited participants to come together around this poetic tool for imagining a new era without fossil fuels and new ways of decarbonizing the atmosphere. Providing a message of simplicity, community members were also invited to write messages towards change and hope on the sculpture.

The Aerocene Backpack is a portable flight kit enclosing an aerosolar sculpture that floats only with the heat of the sun, without the use of helium, hydrogen, solar panels, batteries or burners, free from fossil fuels. Fully open-source, its users are invited to appropriate and improve its functionalities of mechanical, digital, and electronic technologies, strengthening a DIT (Do-It-Together) ethos fostered by the Aerocene Community. The Backpack has been borrowed around the world for hundreds of flights.

Fairclouds Drawing Workshop: Fairclouds is an ongoing initiative by the Aerocene Foundation in collaboration with Serpentine Arts Technologies and RadicalxChange. Centered around an intergenerational artwork and a reparative economic model for its collective stewardship, the platform instantiates a means for participating stewards to pledge a financial and ethical commitment to the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in Jujuy, Argentina. Throughout Aerocene Seoul, visitors are invited to draw what they see in various cloudscapes and contribute their imagination via fairclouds.life, joining the project’s growing community ahead of its upcoming launch. The workshop is open to all visitors without prior reservation at the M2, 2nd floor of the Leeum Museum of Art.

Korean edition of Aerocene Newspaper I and II:  Aerocene Newspapers I and II advocate themes of sustainability, climate justice, art and science, and activism. The first Aerocene Newspaper was published as part of COP21 in 2015, and introduces the concept of the Aerocene project, which aims for a movement for eco-social justice, adrift on air, floating free from fossil fuels, lithium or hydrogen. The second issue of the Aerocene Newspaper emerges from a long-standing collaboration between the communities of the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc Basin with Aerocene and many other diverse and living collectives over several gatherings that took place in 2017, 2020 and 2023. Although these publications are available as PDFs on the Aerocene website, its Korean edition has been specially published for this project to disseminate the vision of the Aerocene community further. Visitors can pick up a copy from the M2, 2nd floor.

Aerocene Forum: On September 2 at 1pm, the Aerocene Forum will be held in the Leeum Museum of Art auditorium. Beginning with a presentation of the community efforts of Aerocene Seoul, the forum will continue with discussions on climate justice, an eco-social energy transition, human and more-than-human rights, and alternative modes of knowing and sensing with Juan Pablo Olsson Argumedo, an environmental sociologist and major proponent of the DeudaxClima / Debt for Climate movement in Latin America; Verónica Chávez, activist and member of the Kolla Aboriginal Community Santuario Tres Pozos in Salinas Grandes, Jujuy; Flavia Lamas, president of the Kolla Aboriginal Community Santuario Tres Pozos in Salinas Grandes, Jujuy; Matt Prewitt, President of RadicalxChange, a movement for 21st-century political economies; and artist Tomás Saraceno. The forum was followed by a screening of Maximiliano Laina and Tomás Saraceno’s film Fly with Pacha, Into the Aerocene (2017-2023), offering a journey around the sun with Pachamama, documenting the ongoing collaboration between Aerocene and the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in Jujuy, Argentina.

Visitors to the Leeum Museum of Art’s M2, 2nd floor, can experience the gigantic floating sculpture, Museo Aero Solar, made from reused plastic bags until September 29. Aerocene Seoul invites us to consider new ways of being on and with the air.    

Visit aerocene.org to join the movement for eco-social justice.

Idea Museum: Aerocene Seoul is curated by Helen Jungyeon Ku (Head of Research and Public Programs, Leeum Museum of Art), with the assistance of Minjoo Lee, Hyunji Cho, Yeonah Lee, Jiwon Grace Kim, and Taerim Kim, in collaboration with the Aerocene foundation.

The CHANEL Culture Fund supports the Leeum Museum of Art's first public programme, Idea Museum, a multi-year initiative exploring the intersection of environment, art, philosophy and technology. ‘IDEA’, which stands for Inclusivity, Diversity, Equality and Access.

Press inquiries: Miso Han (Communication Team, miso.han@samsung.com)