Terrene is a body of work that consists of collaged images on fragments of hand-cut and tanned photosensitive film. The collaged images represent differing but related forms of worlding or world-making: industrial, exterior, “hard” spaces of construction captured on a smartphone, and internal, domestic, “soft” spaces of Kang’s grandmother’s garden, made with a lo-fi handheld scanning wand, intended for scanning documents on the go. Distinctions between “hard” and “soft” quickly fade and the oppositions aren’t so clear.

This lightbox image is excerpted from the series. Queering the handheld scanner by subverting its original purpose and mobilizing it as a technology of image production, Kang explores ways of touching, mediating, and engaging with the more-than-human worlds in her grandmother’s garden in the sunroom of her apartment in Seoul. The wand “reads” the living body of the plant as Kang passes it across the surface of the leaves—the movement of the artist’s hand both enables the creation of the image, and becomes etched in it. The wand stops producing an image when the object becomes illegible, but in the process generates distortions and glitches that trace the artist’s presence. Kang’s handheld scanner touches the plant and the plant touches back, producing distortions and abstractions.