Conversation between Storefront Window Artist Jungil Hong and Astrologer & Diviner Chris Reppucci
Jungil Hong (b. Seoul, Korea) is a Providence-based artist and founder of the textile and art studio Namu Future. Hong received her BFA in Ceramics and her MFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Art and Design. Hong’s work has been exhibited at Oddkin, RI; RISD Museum, RI; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, MA; MASS MoCA, MA; New Image Art, LA; Space 1026, PA; and the Cheongju Craft Museum, Korea, among others.
Below is a convo between Jung and Astrologer & Diviner Chris Reppucci
Chris Reppucci: The words appearing on the window are bold, suggestive, and familiar; are you drawing from particular formats of media or communication?
Jungil Hong: It started with a billboard in Los Angeles. “Is something wrong? Call Pam Phoang.” An ad for a lawyer - simple, direct - and yet it landed like a riddle. A small portal. An invitation disguised as a service. It stayed with me. Like the “I BUY JUNK” signs, or “Call God” - words that hang in public space, familiar and strange. Short messages that seem mundane but linger in your mind, inviting you to find your own meaning. They don’t explain themselves. They just wait - like prompts for a thought you haven’t had yet. That was the tone I wanted to bring into the window - language that offers a shift in perception.
A reminder.
On the glass, it begins: “Forget something?” Maybe someone passing by has - their phone, their lunch, their keys. But the question is meant to linger. What else have you forgotten? A part of yourself? A dream? A joy?
Then: “Call to remember” An instruction, but also an invitation.To reflect. To come back to yourself.
And then: “IRL MAGIC”, The phone number - a stroke of luck that it was available, but also a declaration. That real life holds the possibility of wonder. That maybe, magic is already here.
The mirrors carry this further in: “What you seek is seeking you”, “Extreme joy”, z“Can you see you?” Each phrase is borrowed: from a poet, a friend, a conversation - offered here as a kind of collective spell. A small chorus of reminders.
The entire window is built around one gesture: To remember to honor yourself. Even when it’s hard. Especially then.
And I was thinking about SpongeBob. How no matter what chaos unfolds, he still wakes up and says, “It’s going to be the best day ever.” That’s not a joke, that’s a practice - of resilience, of beginning again. A kind of joy that knows the world is broken - and still chooses to meet the day.
CR: The evocation of forgetting and remembering coupled with the directive to make a call utilizing ‘phonewords’ including IRL and MAGIC suggest connecting with time out of time, out of chronology, or probing alternate layers of existence for clues to lost threads; Do you feel reality exists only in the present or does it extend into the past? Is reality only what is now happening or has happened or are other potentials equally as real?
JH: The past is real, past lives too- spiritual, ancestral, emotional. The past is architecture, it builds us. Shapes how we move, how we respond, how we return. Time is beautiful and wicked. It loops, folds, distorts, and offers glimpses.
I love the idea you bring up, clues to lost threads. It’s not something I usually think about consciously, but in this project, that image feels true, like something barely visible, waiting to be grasped. And if you can grasp that thread, it doesn’t drag you in panic. It pulls you slowly, like rising toward the surface of water. Not rushed, more like an expedition through current and seaweed, listening to breath, close in your ear. You want to shift away from the chill it brings, but even more, you want to stay there. In that thin space between. That moment just before breaking through, that’s the threshold I’m interested in, the one that only lasts a breath.
Also, Wrinkle in Time comes to mind - ribbons folding, timelines bending, different points brushing against each other.
The call line in this project is like a soft cheat code. You make a choice - shield or ring - but then you get to wonder: What would have happened if I chose the other? What would it feel like to follow that other thread? Could that one shift have changed the whole path? Did you alter reality?
So – does reality only exist in the present? No. The past is part of reality. It’s the compass that brought you here, but reality also depends on how you see it. How you carry it. You can shape reality by how you remember.
Are other potentials equally real? Always. But that’s also dangerous, is it a space between regret or wonder? In the moment something happens, and you shift just slightly - a different turn, a different yes - did you alter reality?
How do we allow the mind to weave those possibilities and let the heart support what the mind alone can’t resolve? Some people have this skill, they were given it, or learned it.
And maybe reality – or healing – is about learning how to identify those tools and collect them. From the people who came before, from the ones walking alongside us, from the present field of journey, and from the quiet echoes we’re still learning how to listen to.
And the places in the call line – the Parade, the Pond, the Temple, the Farm – they aren’t just stories, they’re mapped to the physical window.
The mirrors are the ponds - surfaces of reflection, layered and changing.
The glass is the temple - a thin, clear veil that both protects and reveals.
The labor of building the piece - the weaving, the making - is the farm.
And the Parade is the outward gaze - the looking, the listening.
The sound element was something I imagined but didn’t fully realize. I wanted to mix the ambient noise from the square with the sound of whales - to let the parade drift into something more oceanic, more collective. It didn’t happen, but it’s still there. The desire, the resonance, the rhythm - it’s embedded in the work. Each part of the window holds a piece of a place. A ring, a shield, a mirror, a memory. You can enter it from any side. It’s not a system, it’s a field.
CR: The function of the piece is essentially oracular, and stimulates the caller to input their own feedback, then there are also mirrors present in the display; what are you hoping is experienced by who engages with the work?
JH: When I’m in the presence of an old mirror,I feel like I’ve found a treasure. There’s something wise in it, a still witness that’s held so many faces, so many moments. Worry, joy, aging, return. The mirror doesn’t remember the names, but it collects something else - the lines, the light, the changing surface of time. It’s about experiencing the mirrors that are placed to offer that same quiet presence - not to judge or instruct, but to hold. They offer a moment. A reflection. Not just of your face, but of your rhythm, your energy, your now.
A mirror is a circle.
A one.
A cycle.
It reflects what’s there, but also what you’re searching for.
What do you see?
What can you see?
What are you hoping to see?
Whatever you bring, the mirror holds it for you. Even if you walk away.
Sometimes words only land when they come from the right direction. Or at the right time. That’s part of the oracle - offering messages, not answers. A space where you can leave something for your past self, or receive something you didn’t know you needed to hear.
It’s useful to simulate the past. To re-narrate it. To hold your young self - and that young self is always there, because you’ll always have been younger the day before. It’s about pointing toward something people know but forget. That’s the function of a mirror. Maybe that’s the function of oracular space?
CR: The hands seem to be floating over some wavelength and someone looking in at the mirrors would see themself; where is the body in the procedure of this work’s formula and what is the process playing out energetically or subtly?
JH: On the left side of the window, there’s a silver rectangle with two golden hands and a soft wave line beneath them. It looks like a face, the hands as eyes, the line as a smile, a little moment of cute, maybe even a slight lol. The hands float - but they carry a quiet charge, hands give hands receive. They transmit energy, hold memory, respond to intention, they’re tools, but they’re also messengers. These hands are covered in gold leaf and they reflect, so when someone stands before them, their own image appears inside the palms. It’s like the hand is gently pressing against your forehead, grounding you, acknowledging you. Maybe even reading something quietly, without needing to say it out loud. Healing moves through that - not with performance, but through exchange: attention, presence, reflection.
Where is the body? Maybe the body is the motherboard - the unseen operator. The place where signal is received and translated, the processor of all this unseen contact. And this phrase keeps coming to mind: hair grows that which is dead, a paradox, something that’s no longer alive - still growing, still expressing, still reaching outward. The body, too, holds onto more than we realize, maybe what we think is done or gone, still transmits something, still reflects, still holds light.
CR: Can you speak to the connections between “extreme joy”, seeing oneself, seeking, remembering/forgetting, magic and whatever is or is not “in real life”?
JH: “Extreme joy” was a divine suggestion.It landed like truth. Not loud joy,not performative - but the kind that bubbles up unexpectedly, even in the midst of forgetting. Even in the middle of hardship. It’s not about erasing what’s hard - it’s about remembering that joy can still coexist. Seeing oneself is part of that. Not just in the mirror,but in the moment of recognition - Oh. There I am. Still here.
The act of seeking is tied to remembering. And remembering always brushes against forgetting. They exist together - a cycle, a pulse. IRL MAGIC is the name of the number, but it’s also the philosophy behind the whole project. Magic in real life. Not escape, but attention. Not illusion, but a shift in how you see.
That’s the loop:
To seek.
To remember.
To feel yourself reflected.
To laugh a little.
And to let joy, even extreme joy, be part of what’s real.
CR: The eyes appearing on the mirrors echo the roundness of the mirrors themselves, is there intention here and what is happening with sight or seeing of such forms?
JH: I can’t speak with authority on the magnitude of the eye as a symbol, it’s ancient, and it means many things across many places. But for me, it points to the mind’s eye, that space where we can imagine something before it happens. See it. Shape it. Step into the story before it happens.
I say that to my kid sometimes, to imagine in his mind’s eye what it would feel like to move well, to play his best. To enter the field with the story already alive inside him.
The eye on the mirror is gold leaf. Like the hands, it reflects, but here, it’s layered - gold on top of the mirror means double reflection. You see yourself, and you see the symbol, they overlap. The eye appears right on the forehead, where the third eye would be. It becomes a moment of alignment: You are seeing, and you are seen. Maybe that’s what this is about.
CR: When people call the number they are invited into a narrative of which they have to make decisions at particular junctures, what might you be thinking about decisiveness and fate and what we do with the lives we live?
JH: When someone calls the number, they’re offered a choice - ring or shield. Both are offerings, both are symbols, both are protectors. They start out as objects, almost like jewels, but they’re also shapes, ideas, energies. Both are circles, they echo the mirrors, they mirror each other, they suggest something unbroken, something ongoing.
I remember when we were talking while I was building the piece, you shared the phrase through divination - “round extremes”. And how suddenly it all clicked- the ring, the shield, the mirrors- all already present. All already round. All orbiting one another in some kind of quiet system.
Some other phrases were:
POSITIVE MESSAGE: VOICES OF JOY
SYMBOL: ROUND EXTREMES
OTHER ELEMENTS: DIAL SOUNDS LIVE, EXTREMES OF JOY GO ZOO
Those words didn’t come in as instructions, they came in as recognition. They collided with what was already laid out: the shapes, the sound, the desire to mix the everyday with something vast- like the sounds from the square merging with the songs of whales. So when someone chooses, ring or shield it’s not about determining fate. It’s about stepping into a form, a loop, a resonance. Each path is a soft extreme. A rhythm already in motion, the choice doesn’t narrow anything.
It opens. It lets you move with intention, but not control. It lets you be part of the pattern, even if just for a moment.
I wonder, am I remembering our conversation correctly? Or creating my own mythology? Was it known before the words “DIAL SOUNDS LIVE” surfaced that there was a call line?
CR: Color seems to be playing a specific role, is there a prismatic lexicon of significance, such as in the use of gold?
JH: The colors come from the lineage of neon lights and hand-painted psychic windows - that particular feeling of walking past a storefront that might hold something strange, or true, or both.
I wasn’t building a color code, but I was drawing from that atmosphere. That emotional signal. Gold appears throughout the piece - in the hands, in the eye, in the words on the mirrors. It’s not just symbolic, it’s material. It reflects and responds. It catches the light and gives something back. You see yourself in the gold, in the hand, in the eye, in the phrase. It becomes a carrier of meaning, message and memory. The palette isn’t meant to be decoded.It’s meant to be felt. Like neon through a window at night, something known before it’s understood.
CR: Graphic, texture, material, juxtaposition and collaboration all seem to play a part in your work as a visual artist, designer and maker, but this installation calls into play both causal/a-causal effects, temporal re-arrangements, oracularity, referentialism, and remote clairaudient elements; are you compelled to weave any of these explorations into future work?
JH: I’ve always been curious about process - not just how something is made, but how to make it myself. I wanted to try everything. As a kid, I’d get scolded by my mother for not focusing on one thing, but I couldn’t help it, I wanted to know how everything worked. Looking back, I think that instinct is part of what led me to making art and it’s also part of what led me to collaboration.
In college, I had a professor in the sculpture department who suggested that I should try making everything. I probably took that too literally, but it stayed with me. So I started doing just that, making every part of the work, even the rope, if I needed rope. There’s a tension in that, between art and craft, between labor and time. I used to thrive in that space, it’s how I measured value- through time, through making. But eventually, time changed and I started to question it. Doubt crept in, about function, concept, aesthetics, hierarchy. All the questions people bring to what art is or isn’t. Not because I doubted the process, but because I started to notice what else was possible. That I didn’t always have to carry it all. That making could also be a space of exchange, not just endurance. That letting others in didn’t mean stepping back, it meant opening forward because I can’t try to be all the things I admire, and I don’t need to be.
A friend visited the window and pointed out the audio part of the window reminded him of a past project where recordings from a loom were translated into binary code, then woven as pattern, then transformed again by musicians. That project felt like true collaboration. I didn’t know how to make music, but I knew how I wanted it to feel. And my friends, who are brilliant, helped bring that to life. This kind of unfolding, the unexpected transformation of a thread - feels metaphysical to me. Causal and a-causal. Sometimes it feels like the work is echoing something I’ve forgotten- like it already knows, before I do. It’s a kind of alignment without intention. The form knows, the pattern arrives and when I recognize it, I realize it’s always been there.
There’s a beauty in synchronicity. It’s always present - quiet, patient, moving alongside everything else. But most of the time, it passes unnoticed like a dream that evaporates before you name it. But when you do catch it, when you feel the echo, you realize it was there all along, all around you. You just hadn’t turned toward it yet, things don’t always arrive in a line, sometimes they come through rhythm, or timing, or quiet listening. Sometimes what’s woven wasn’t planned, but it fits perfectly.
The call center is a collaboration in its own way. At the end of each journey, callers are invited to leave a message, for their past self, or for the Voices of Joy archive. They can give permission to have it transcribed and I had hoped to one day collect them- maybe for a book, maybe something meta, maybe both. So far, the messages are few and far between and as to be expected, some are raw, some are crude, but even that feels true. You open a space, you don’t control what comes in. It’s part of the risk, and the beauty, of asking.
Words have always held the highest value for me. I don’t always know how to write, not in a way that matches what’s in my head. The moment I try to explain it, it shifts, but when I hear language that sings in rhythm, in visual architecture, I’m in awe. That’s where I feel the pull to collaborate next. With writers, with sound, with spirit. Maybe collaboration is how I still get to try everything, just not all by myself.
And I want to pause here - because Crssy, your question is one I keep returning to. You’re naming something that I’ve felt in glimpses, but haven’t always had the language for- that space where things arrive through rhythm, not reason. Where time folds, where symbols echo before they make sense. I didn’t set out to work with oracularity or remote perception, but reading your words, I realize those elements might already be present. Not as something I’ve fully formed, but as something I’ve been brushing up against, listening toward. It resonates with me, deeply. And maybe what this work is doing is helping me begin to see the architecture of that resonance. Not just in the outcome, but in the process itself. I’m still learning how to tune to that field. But your question, and the way you asked it, feels like a small tuning fork. A reminder that there’s more to hear.
It feels like you are trying to heal me through this interview.
CR: Did you remember something of note in the process of conceiving, installing or participating in this work?
JH: I remembered that I’m abundantly rich in community, in friendship. Everyone I know holds a kind of magic. They are gifted in ways I can’t even name and so generous with me. I feel emotional when I think about it. The way people show up, walk beside me, offer their attention and presence, without needing anything back. It’s not just that they’re a gift to me, they’re a gift to the world. Just by being who they are. I don’t mean that to sound sentimental. I mean it plainly, and with love. This project reminded me of that, it reminded me what I’m walking with.
*************************
Chris Reppucci is an astrologer, diviner, metaphysicist, and ritual specialist working with bioenergetic anatomy, directionality, wayfinding, celestial coherence, inhabited spaces and narrative patterns. These practices often intersect with visual art and sound making and are prone to taking the form of happenings. He specializes in the study of pre-horoscopic and holistic forms of astrology, most notably researching the archaic 28 division of the zodiac commonly referred to as the lunar mansions. All of his writings and most of his efforts in life strive for synergistic symbiosis and more than human collaboration.
