“‘Where are you from?’ is the question that I am constantly being asked over the five years since I’ve moved to France. The reason is simple. I am a person who was born in South Korea, arrived in France, and became a South Korean who is living in France. Sometimes I feel that I’ve fallen from the sky, like E.T., and became a curious exhibit to the people in the country where I live. Naturally, this reminds me of my status as an alien resident (which can be temporary or long term.) Alien, what a word to official describe me! This has led me to examine the physical distance as well as the psychological distance between South Korea and France.

Skyping with my parents is a vital act since I’ve moved to France. We call each other in scheduled hours because of the severe time difference. Mostly, it is 16h in France and 24h in Korea. My parents yawn often when we Skype and as yawning is contagious, I can’t stop yawning myself even on the sunniest of days. This kind of synergy - involuntary, but beautiful - creates a moment suspended in spacetime, a non-local and atemporal event that exists only for itself and in relation to itself, and which neither 16h France nor 23h Korea can claim. Thanks to this moment I feel that meeting my parents erases the vast difference between us. Ben then the internet’s speed or a momentary technical error reminds me of our distance again, and when our conversation ends with the click of a mouse, it generates in me a distance far greater than the existing one. I feel completely offline; indeed, like an alien.

Fortunately, with technology, we have easy access to these kinds of instant encounters. But at the same time, we also see the limits. Immediately, we have to see all the gaps which create a longing. But when I write the word ‘gap’ I don’t mean just a ‘fault’. On the contrary, I appreciate how these errors turn our experience into something comic and absurd, offering a bittersweet gift: hilarity percolating nostalgia. And I suppose that this signals a beautiful moment in human interconnectivity. Even though we consider the digital encounter as an alternative way and sort of a plan B, lacking compared to a physical meeting outside of virtual space, still we can see these brave, persistent, and finally persevering efforts to overcome the distance between us like the struggle of the ultimate alien: Raise your finger (to click, to touch the screen, to dial, to type, to point to the stars, to annihilate all distance), say and repeat, ‘E.T. phone home!’

But I know full well that these are not my actual parents, but their image, a simulation. My parents are no longer physical objects (the ONLY shared notion of a physical object is the actual obstacle/gate between realms: the screen!) but digital images. We don’t touch each other, but instead, our respective simulations tread each other’s sensoria. I am a digital ghost to the physical them; they are digital ghosts to the physical me. But in the end, it is our humanity which persists. The contagious yawn, the shared memory, the sudden joke, the word at the tip of the tongue, the fight out of the blue: moments so grounded to our whimsical, unpredictable, human nature that manage to transcend above all these intermingled realities at play and make even the longest of distances bearable.” - Sinae Lee