I first met Seyeon, the founder of 벗.(but), about three years ago. We crossed paths when I was working with the Oil Tank Culture Park¹, where she was a curator, and through several collaborations, I learned that she was studying anthropology. I remember looking at her research materials and writing² on Haenyeo³ and thinking it would be nice to have easy access to this kind of work. Or maybe I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

By the end of last year, before 벗.(but) even had a name, Seyeon reached out asking if I would help build a platform for open submissions. It didn’t seem like something that would make money so rather than participating as a designer, I joined as one of the 벗.(but) thinking it might be a way to connect with writers and curators working in the same era. By then, I had entered my forties, while Seyeon and another founder, Hyeyoon, were in their thirties. I had a simple thought: it would be nice to have someone in their twenties, too. Changin came to mind—someone who thinks of programming as a form of writing—and over pizza, he became another 벗.(but) One of us is in the US, one in Ilsan, two somewhere in Yeonsin-nae; we met on Zoom whenever we could, always opening with the sheepish admission that we'd been too busy to get much done. And yet, somehow, we made it to our first publication.

The way 벗.(but) works—accepting submissions from an unspecified 'but' and publishing them with minimal restrictions as long as there are no serious issues—made me think that its identity lies less in a particular topic or discourse, and more in the shape of a record, something that collects writing. I was drawn to the vividness of pieces written from the perspective of people present at a scene, wherever they happen to be. I have my doubts about how much power this kind of writing can have amid the endless stream of AI-generated images and information, but flipping through the contributions from other 벗.(but)⁴'s while working, I found myself easily absorbed in a story about a missionary village deep in an Indonesian forest I'd never been to.

If a civilization were to become ruins and pass into memory, what kinds of texts would survive? In the opening of Uncharted, Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel⁵ note that among all human records, receipts have survived the longest and in the greatest numbers. The countless documentary artifacts produced as byproducts of economic activity speak to the fundamental function of the written word as record. And it feels natural to read what these records signify as tokens of mutual understanding—or trust—between parties with a shared stake.

The most basic language models underlying AI are grounded in statistics. The words that go into a sentence have an infinite number of possible combinations, but when you think of it as a puzzle of what comes before or after a given word, the possibilities narrow sharply, and through the statistics of word combinations, sentences are formed that fit context and situation. The more high-quality data there is, the more reliable AI becomes, and by now, it feels entirely normal to depend on it. And yet, looking at those sentences, I can't quite get a sense of where they came from.

Personally, I try to regard artificial intelligence as a kind of entity, but I cannot shake the feeling that something is missing. I'm not speaking from any particular expertise; it's just a feeling. It's kind, capable of offering sharp advice when needed, and generous in its consolation. Perhaps it is this effortless shifting of stance that feels inhuman. The strangeness feels less like something that's not human, and more like something that isn't animal, not quite biological. Like speaking into the air rather than meeting someone's eyes. I imagine this sensation will gradually fade as AI makes its way into individual objects around us.

Returning to the question of trust, setting aside minor errors or hallucinations, the trust we place in AI seems to come from the sheer accumulation of data and time, rather than from its language itself. If its words and sentences were tied to some form of materiality and subject, perhaps it would feel more alive.

Conversely, I find myself thinking about the trust that comes from the clear voice of a single figure. Recently, I have encountered more frequently the words and actions of a U.S. president who has been re-elected through confident speeches that strongly reflect and represent the needs of a certain public. Some commentators and intellectuals interpret hidden meanings in his words, offering moments of insight, only for those interpretations to feel hollow the next day. As he speaks on behalf of vast geopolitical interests and complex entanglements, his speech seems less like the language of an individual and more like something larger—a vast, impersonal utterance drifting away. There is clearly a speaker, yet where the words originate becomes increasingly blurred. There is even a sense of uneasy awe. In a way, he appears almost god-like.

The feeling of standing on the ground with my own two feet brings, in itself, a sense of existence. In January of this year, I was struck by the measured speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. At the beginning of his address, he referred to “the power of the powerless”⁶ and spoke of honesty as the starting point of that power⁷. Speaking about Canada’s current economic and political situation, he clearly articulated the position and role of a middle power. Unlike the previous case, his words seemed to carry a clear sense of coordinates. Perhaps the trust we feel arises from the fact that the scope and subject of his words are distinctly visible.

Amid the overwhelming flood of images and information, the reason the contributions from “buts” felt easy to read may have been that it was clear from where those texts were written. It is not simply the content or form of writing, but the weight of a text—grounded in the experience and situation of the one who speaks—that carries authenticity. Voices that emerge from the field tend to be heard with clarity. When it is clear where I stand as I speak, language regains a body. I hope that but.but.but can become a place where such language resides.

April 14, 2026 Ingee Chung