Sterling, C. 2026. The Last Object. In: Jooyeon Lee (ed.) Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition. Seoul: MMCA, 18-36
The below text – an invited contribution for an exhibition catalogue at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul – is written from a not-too-distant future where new museological practices of care and repair have emerged to focus on the planet as a whole rather than discrete objects. The text offers a short story from this future. It’s structure and form evokes the notion of “sak-da” at the heart of the exhibition. Sak-da carries many meanings: to become rotten, to be digested, to ferment and develop flavour. To this end, the text (de)composes a speculative account of future museological praxis from multiple fragments of critical and creative thinking that have been important to my own research on museum ecologies over the past few years. All the sources are cited, but not in the usual fashion….
With acknowledgment and apologies to Caitlin DeSilvey and Martin Grünfeld, Fernando Domínguez Rubio, Steve Lyons, Bill Brown, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Kathryn Yusoff, and many others.
(English follows Korean)
Many thanks to Jooyeon Lee for the invitation to contribute. View the website of the exhibition.
Exhibition description
An outstanding work of art is often referred to as a “timeless masterpiece.” Here, the term timeless (不朽) carries a literal sense of “not decaying.” If a great work of art is something that does not change, or must not change, then why do artists deliberately create works that inevitably change and disappear?
Sak-da: The Poetics of Decomposition introduces works that acknowledge a fate of eventual decay, works that intentionally leave nothing behind, and works that perform their own decomposition, brought together under the practice of “Sak-da.” This approach arises from a desire to examine the changing nature of artworks amid contemporary critiques of anthropocentrism and the backlash against advanced capitalism and technocracy, and from a faint hope that wisdom for navigating the current crisis might emerge from such change.
The native Korean verb “Sak-da” encompasses meanings such as “to become rotten,” “to lose vitality,” as well as “to be digested” and “to ferment and develop flavor.” This multiplicity of meanings offers a productive way to interpret the transformations of contemporary works. Beyond the negative connotations of decay, “Sak-da” evokes both the descent and ascent of energy, as well as qualitative enhancement achieved in collaboration with nonhuman beings. What occurs when an “artwork” decays as evidence of human creation? If plants grow, wind blows, and invisible life stirs in the place where the piece falls apart, can it still be called an “artwork”? And if so, whose work is it?
Museums, as repositories of timeless masterpieces, have long devoted themselves to preserving the value of great works unchanged. The practice of Sak-da asks whether museums are prepared to embrace works that choose to decay in order to co-live with diverse beings beyond humans. In these uncertain times, can we acknowledge that the moment may call not for better conservation, but for better ways to decompose?
Colin Sterling 