[Daum Kim] Critical Essay / KIM Sung woo

 Routes Guided via Constructed Interfaces

KIM Sung woo 

 
Daum Kim's work is the constructed domain based on interfaces. An interface refers to a physical and virtual medium designed to enable interaction and communication between objects or between objects and humans at the boundaries between dissimilar sorts. In other words, the concept of the connection environment seems appropriate to explain his work. This is because the artist's work captures the pattern of life or the state of society created on top of diverse social networks in the form of art by constructing an interface that crosses boundaries or intersects separated relationships. He observes a variety of structures and systems from the physical space that he encounters around him to the online environment and their operation principles and adds another narrative to them. It crosses the private and public domains and evokes social, cultural, political, and historical contexts at the macroscopic level based on memories or experiences at the microscopic level. Daum Kim's interface, which is extremely private and expands into a universal context at the same time, establishes some sort of events or a situations in the gap of space and becomes visible as a place.
 
The sense of penetrating the interface presented by the artist is generally linear and is not an easily readable narrative. He sometimes deviates from explicit narrative threads through ambiguous intent or fragmented text and draws the audience to an inconclusive destination. He also induces a certain tension through a series of sliding images that abscond from the smooth progression of the video. In addition, the sound, which generates a unique sense of presence, is in discord with the situation or image that the audience encounters. Moreover, it even aggressively demands emotional intervention from its spectators. Utilizing reproduced and constructed spaces at the macroscopic level in this manner, the flip side of formally imaged phenomena, and our interest in the realm of life that we live in, Daum Kim's work encourages us to adapt and experience through abstract senses of daily life that are often scattered rather than through clear narratives.

Liminal, 

multi-channel video and sound installation 

(monitor, media player, fluorescent light, speakers, woofer), 

dimensions variable (video duration: 14min 51sec), 

2022

Specific spaces and contexts are important backgrounds for his work because he focuses on the environment created based on networks where individuals and societies and micros and macros come in contact. In other words, in order to depict a specific environment consisting of a network of relationships, it requires a specific body of densely intertwined individuals and societies and micros and macros that constitute it, such as a space or a situation as a phenomenon. Furthermore, Kim renews the concept of a place by granting a sort of narrative on top of a space and a system that operate under such particular rules and conditions. According to Yi-Fu Tuan, space and place are similar words but have different meanings. A space has more abstract characteristics than a place. A place begins as an unspecified space, but the space turns into a place with identity when meanings and values are applied. In this aspect, Kim treats everyday space as potentialities that he can apply interfaces that he constructs. He transforms them into a place where narratives and senses that have acquired reality come to life and creates a sense of emotion. As such, he extracts narratives floating in some kind of space or environment and adds new sensory elements, like images and sounds, and turns them into events so that we can newly experience the time and space here, where we are standing now.
 
The artist summons the exhibition (venue) as the interface in his early work Mutually Mediated (2013). Precisely, some sort of virtual space reconstructed using computer graphics covered in dry and cold skin without any human body heat coincides with the narrative commencing the exhibition and presumes the environment as an exhibition hall. First of all, the viewpoint in the video penetrates and enters the digital display and swims in the space at a slow speed. Also, narratives that recite the hierarchy of communication and creative possibilities inherent in the form of viewing are added. Then, a character encountered on social media is incorporated as a part of the narrative to discuss the possibility/impossibility of communication. The clamorous conversation noise of people that can be heard intermittently and the lethargic background sounds push you to be immersed deeper in the imaginary situation guided by the narrative in the expressionless digital space. Ultimately, narratives that end in the inability to fully understand each other's intentions are embroidered on the transparent background of infinite and vastly open graphic tools, creating interesting paradoxes in themselves. An exhibition hall filled with floating words and writing, in other words, the artist acknowledges the intentions that cannot be fully matched under the horizon of the senses and the exteriors of words and writings presented by the exhibition experience. At the same time, because adequate communication is impossible, he leads to a narrative of division and expansion in the sense of making it possible.

Walking Lullaby, 

powder coat on bent steel, 5 channel speakers, artificial fur, 

200x130x140(h)cm, 

2021

 

The artist discusses the possibility/impossibility of each individual's full access and communication across virtual space, physical environment, and exhibition venues. Then, he continues to explore the boundaries of psychological alienation and isolation experienced by individuals on a more social level. To this end, the artist introduces the concept of ‘maengji’, which means landlocked property in Korean and can be literally translated into ‘blind land’. Landlocked property/blind land refers to land without a passage from the perspective of real estate and refers to a space surrounded by other lots that cannot be accessed by physical routes like roads. The artist extends this blind land through the concept of interfaces and explores the boundaries that arise within contemporary social and cultural contexts. First of all, in his work Blind Land (2016), which is named the same as the concept he utilized, the artist features three speakers who live in places with similar yet different historical and social backgrounds, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They are those who bring others into their space, leave a specific space, or further face the space left behind. Through the narration, those who share their feelings about the space evoke the emotion of psychological density and depth inherent in the physical space that crosses the occupation and ownership of space and the psychological conflict that occurs there, the boundary between private and public spaces, and the narrative of memory. Furthermore, the three characters in the story have sentiments of personal experiences that filled up those spaces, relationships with others, and loss and memories. The story induces an emotional emptiness implied by a letter that does not reach its recipient and is not replied to, which ends by asking “How is it there?”However, sometimes the artist is determined to be the destination for connection himself as if he is actively trying to overcome the psychological boundaries that he faces and the emptiness that stems from them. For instance, in 24/7 Ambient Radio – Music To Space Out (2020), he eagerly attempts to penetrate other people's time and space utilizing an online platform. For the project, Daum Kim temporarily created a live radio station on YouTube and shared music from his computer in real-time. The establishment of the online network allows the audience to access through digital displays in two-dimensional planes from their respective time and place, beyond the boundaries of physical contact. Moreover, the continuously played sound spreads from the artist's space to the space of others, promoting a sense of commonality. The interface is no longer a gap that cannot be filled but extends to the sentiment of solidarity stemming from hospitality.
 
On the other hand, the construction of the artist's interface encompasses the macroscopic context and is also visualized in a way that generates emotion. For example, in Three Suns (2018), which is based on a specific place, Daum Kim deals with today's conflict over the historical meaning of Gwangju against the backdrop of the architectural structure and purpose of the Asia Plaza, the wide open space in front of the Asia Culture Center (ACC) in Gwangju. Unlike the public building style that can generally be seen, the structure of the ACC is dug down from the ground level and the Asia Plaza located in the middle has the character of an open public area like a yard. The artist focuses on the nature of the space, thus its openness. He understands it as a structure that cannot easily accumulate common memories or experiences because of the constantly intersecting movements of people entering the area and also due to the views colliding from various heights. Furthermore, he introduces the Asia Plaza as a place without location-specific properties and provides an experience that overwhelms space through his luminous sound video work splitting from two colors, red and blue to white and black. The endlessly bifurcating video limited to the two-color axes recalls a dichotomous way of thinking and logic and he makes you sense the history of past conflicts, today's repeated divisions, and the signs of events that have been forgotten once again or have not yet occurred beforehand.

Blind land, 

4 channel video, 8 channel sound, 

dimensions variable (video duration: 9min.)

 

As such, based on his interest in the interface of relationships, Daum Kim's work raises questions about the conventional relationship style on top of the designed and reproduced spaces at the macro level, and he guides us to some kind of narratives that is embedded deep inside under the epidermis. This begins with the exploration of the psychological blocking experienced by individuals under today's social and cultural backdrops, questions about the space that derives from them, and the creation of places to overcome them. The artist's work built on top of the sense of absence and loss produced by the superficial relationship in today's society encompasses one side of the aspects and reality of the relationship between individuals and extends to the construction of an interface for a pathway to imagining the possibility of a new contact. Thus, his work creates a sort of a place in an everyday space by intersecting micros and macros and penetrating the sense of absence and generation. The interface of the connection created by Daum Kim brings space to life as a place by imagining events that occur when individuals meet each other while evoking another reality through the nonlinear crossing of the past and present. Furthermore, it leads to a kind of future where imagination and reality are blended. This can also be said to be an access route through which multiple meanings can occur, breaking away from existing narratives, meanings, or images. Through this path, we can dream of escaping from the space and system of reality, break down the boundaries between ourselves and others to enable new connections, reverse the existing context, and face aspects of the relationship we have formed in a new way.

KIM Sung woo (curator)

KIM Sung woo is a curator and writer. He is interested in curatorial methodologies to produce/ pose questions based on time and space, and is considering how to achieve subjectivities of individuals in the form of exhibition. KIM directed the curatorial project/ exhibition and management of Amado Art Space, not-for-profit alternative space in Seoul (2015-2019). He was also appointed as a curatorial advisor for the Busan Biennale 2020, SongEun Art Space (2019), and was a curator for the 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018). He currently established a non-profit curatorial space ‘Primary Practice’, and at a same time, active as a member of curatorial collective ‘WESS’.