• Issue
  • Nov 01, 2023

Editor’s Letter: Objectified Relations

KIM BEOM, Untitled (Intimate Suffering #5), 2008, acrylic on canvas, 491 × 348.5 cm. Photography by Lee Euirock and Choi Yohan. Courtesy the artist and Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. 

We often think of objects as lacking agency. Yet, the power they can have over humans is understood when we reference works of art—our attachments to them, what they represent, and the values we confer on them. With the rise of artificial intelligence and technology that animates ordinary objects like never before, our relationship to things has begun to change.