Empty Garden: A Liminoid Journey to Nowhere in Somewhere (2020) by media artist and scholar Dr. Jinjoon Lee reimagines the doctoral thesis as an experiential and spatial artwork in the form of a ten-metre hanji scroll. Drawing from East Asian garden philosophy, Joseon landscape painting traditions, and the concept of ui-won (意園) — the imaginary garden cultivated in the mind. The work proposes the garden not as a representation of nature, but as a philosophical and perceptual space that invites wandering, uncertainty, and transformation.
Rather than following a linear academic structure, the scroll unfolds through shifting perspectives, combining letters, poems, photographs, footnotes, autobiographical narratives, and philosophical reflections into a single immersive surface. The reader must physically move through the work, enacting what Lee describes as a “liminoid” experience: a temporary threshold between the known and the unknown.
Developed through embodied and autoethnographic research during the post-digital and AI era, the project was shaped in part by Lee’s recovery from a severe leg injury sustained during his doctoral studies. This experience transformed his understanding of movement, temporality, and mark-making, leading to a slower and process-oriented artistic approach centred on gesture, trace, impermanence, and memory.
The thesis also establishes the conceptual foundation for Lee’s ongoing practice of “data gardening,” which explores the cultivation and transformation of data through spatial, ecological, and philosophical frameworks. Through engagement with artists including Lois Weinberger, Haegue Yang, and Tomoko Takahashi, the work argues that contemporary art can produce the same liminoid condition historically found within East Asian gardens.
Dr. Jinjoon Lee FRSA is an Associate Professor at the KAIST Graduate School of Culture Technology in South Korea, a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College, University of Oxford, a Visiting Researcher at Tokyo University of the Arts, and an Affiliate Professor at New York University.
