Crystal Turbulence- Ayoung Kim Solo Exhibition
Crystal Turbulence- Ayoung Kim Solo Exhibition
2022.06.10~2022.09.04
10:00 - 17:00
The 2022 Kuandu Biennale-Time of the Art Society: How to Become Indi-genous?
Indi-genesis Time in Trans-vita Experiments: Two or Three Things about Ayoung Kim’s Faction
Ayoung Kim’s art practice has always involved her concern for resources and energy, reimagining the relationship between human lives and energies as geological and ecological essence: the bioenergy inherent in humans and other creatures; the lamination energy in minerals; and the surreal energy woven into social issues and futuristic narratives. Presented as “trans-vita sci-fi theatre”, the lives of humans, minerals, animals, plants, microorganisms, viruses, and even energies, are mutually supported, tautomerized, symbiosed, and even inter-resulted by the actions of particles, energy, and qualitative changes in Kim’s art projects. Grounded in the idea of intimate relationships between these various subjects, this is how Kim understands the world, setting the core of her narratives and the approach as a trans-territorial, trans-border, trans-gender, trans-cultural, and trans-species investigation of the fluidity and interchangeability of life itself. This relationship, like the generation and the resonance of sound, the accumulation and the consumption of energy, the separation and the hybridity of identities, the virus and the antibody, the coexistence and the mutation of species, and the charge and the decay of inorganic matter, is both agent and reagent in Kim’s work.

With In Search of Petra Genetrix and Porosity Valley, Kim calls attention to the life circle of fossil fuels, fictionalizing global history with a history of animism. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari attempted to recreate the notes of Professor Challenger from Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, in which prehistoric lives are no longer just figures caught between geological strata but rather “trans-vita” beings that shuttle through petrographical formations as notes composed of geology and biology. Similarly, the mineral life cycle in Kim’s work must be understood by the time of particle immigration, just as a generation of rock strata is recognized through the microorganism activity of a living environment. Mineral crystallization is never a process of solidification, but rather a turbulence-link surged out of the seed crystal which, in Deleuze’s (1981, 1985) sense, is “a period of time shorter than the shortest continuous period imaginable.”
The immigration of these particles, or microorganisms, is also parallel to the lives of refugees today. In the underwater world of the Surisol, an allegory for the alternative (the COVID) society, the connections and needs of people are no longer determined by social or industrial development but operate through another living cosmos like the turbulence under ocean currents: the globalized metaverse born with the virus. It is the movement of the particles—that is, the eukaryotes—that determines human connection, and people are therefore reduced from being developers and users of energies to being contributors. Here, human beings are resources, returned to their indi-genesis. Such a cosmos is a “deep time,” intertwined by the times of the strata and the times of the data, and the drops of the different scales into the water become the trans-vita marks in this temporality.

There are no ancient legends or historical beliefs in the Surisol, only the daily lives of the present turning into science fiction memories of the last life as if they were a myth. Constituting a sort of sci-fi pop aria using futuristic narratives imagined by science in the past has never been in Ayoung Kim’s vista. As a trans-vita cyborg experimenter, she strives to see through the lives heaped in different temporalities—the trans-vita-sphere. In light of the Russo-Ukrainian War that has revealed a post-pandemic post-globalization, Putin, the pre-pandemic dictator, is still arrogantly measuring people’s lives with fossil fuels. Putting that dwindling oligarchy in the context of the trans-vita-sphere of the Surisol, it becomes a mere dwarf of the political pop from the antique representational establishment. (Written by Chien Hung Huang)

Indi-genesis Time in Trans-vita Experiments: Two or Three Things about Ayoung Kim’s Faction
Ayoung Kim’s art practice has always involved her concern for resources and energy, reimagining the relationship between human lives and energies as geological and ecological essence: the bioenergy inherent in humans and other creatures; the lamination energy in minerals; and the surreal energy woven into social issues and futuristic narratives. Presented as “trans-vita sci-fi theatre”, the lives of humans, minerals, animals, plants, microorganisms, viruses, and even energies, are mutually supported, tautomerized, symbiosed, and even inter-resulted by the actions of particles, energy, and qualitative changes in Kim’s art projects. Grounded in the idea of intimate relationships between these various subjects, this is how Kim understands the world, setting the core of her narratives and the approach as a trans-territorial, trans-border, trans-gender, trans-cultural, and trans-species investigation of the fluidity and interchangeability of life itself. This relationship, like the generation and the resonance of sound, the accumulation and the consumption of energy, the separation and the hybridity of identities, the virus and the antibody, the coexistence and the mutation of species, and the charge and the decay of inorganic matter, is both agent and reagent in Kim’s work.

With In Search of Petra Genetrix and Porosity Valley, Kim calls attention to the life circle of fossil fuels, fictionalizing global history with a history of animism. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari attempted to recreate the notes of Professor Challenger from Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, in which prehistoric lives are no longer just figures caught between geological strata but rather “trans-vita” beings that shuttle through petrographical formations as notes composed of geology and biology. Similarly, the mineral life cycle in Kim’s work must be understood by the time of particle immigration, just as a generation of rock strata is recognized through the microorganism activity of a living environment. Mineral crystallization is never a process of solidification, but rather a turbulence-link surged out of the seed crystal which, in Deleuze’s (1981, 1985) sense, is “a period of time shorter than the shortest continuous period imaginable.”
The immigration of these particles, or microorganisms, is also parallel to the lives of refugees today. In the underwater world of the Surisol, an allegory for the alternative (the COVID) society, the connections and needs of people are no longer determined by social or industrial development but operate through another living cosmos like the turbulence under ocean currents: the globalized metaverse born with the virus. It is the movement of the particles—that is, the eukaryotes—that determines human connection, and people are therefore reduced from being developers and users of energies to being contributors. Here, human beings are resources, returned to their indi-genesis. Such a cosmos is a “deep time,” intertwined by the times of the strata and the times of the data, and the drops of the different scales into the water become the trans-vita marks in this temporality.

There are no ancient legends or historical beliefs in the Surisol, only the daily lives of the present turning into science fiction memories of the last life as if they were a myth. Constituting a sort of sci-fi pop aria using futuristic narratives imagined by science in the past has never been in Ayoung Kim’s vista. As a trans-vita cyborg experimenter, she strives to see through the lives heaped in different temporalities—the trans-vita-sphere. In light of the Russo-Ukrainian War that has revealed a post-pandemic post-globalization, Putin, the pre-pandemic dictator, is still arrogantly measuring people’s lives with fossil fuels. Putting that dwindling oligarchy in the context of the trans-vita-sphere of the Surisol, it becomes a mere dwarf of the political pop from the antique representational establishment. (Written by Chien Hung Huang)

About the Artist
Ayoung Kim adopts the devices of speculative storytelling, narrativity and rhetoric to evoke unfamiliar forms of reading, listening and thinking about the conditions of the world by focusing on unlikely encounters of ideas. Interested in the concepts of crossings, transmissions, transnationals, transpositions and reversibility, Kim seeks possible integrations, articulations and collisions of things between time, space, structure and syntax. The outcomes take the forms of video, VR, sonic fiction, image, diagram and text, and are presented as exhibitions, performances and publications.

Ayoung Kim has held many solo shows and events at various venues, including Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2018); Melbourne Festival, Melbourne, AU (2017); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2016). Her group shows, screenings and performances include Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2023, forthcoming); STRP Festival, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2022); Asian Art Biennial, Taichung, Taiwan (2021); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2021); IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht, Netherlands (2020); Busan Biennale, Busan, Korea (2020); Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin, Germany (2020); Korea Artist Prize, MMCA Seoul, Korea (2019); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea (2018); and Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2015).

Ayoung Kim's personal website: http://ayoungkim.com
About the Artist
Ayoung Kim adopts the devices of speculative storytelling, narrativity and rhetoric to evoke unfamiliar forms of reading, listening and thinking about the conditions of the world by focusing on unlikely encounters of ideas. Interested in the concepts of crossings, transmissions, transnationals, transpositions and reversibility, Kim seeks possible integrations, articulations and collisions of things between time, space, structure and syntax. The outcomes take the forms of video, VR, sonic fiction, image, diagram and text, and are presented as exhibitions, performances and publications.

Ayoung Kim has held many solo shows and events at various venues, including Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2018); Melbourne Festival, Melbourne, AU (2017); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2016). Her group shows, screenings and performances include Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2023, forthcoming); STRP Festival, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2022); Asian Art Biennial, Taichung, Taiwan (2021); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2021); IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht, Netherlands (2020); Busan Biennale, Busan, Korea (2020); Berlin International Film Festival, Berlin, Germany (2020); Korea Artist Prize, MMCA Seoul, Korea (2019); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea (2018); and Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2015).

Ayoung Kim's personal website: http://ayoungkim.com
About the Works
At the Surisol Underwater Lab
Single Channel video, Approx. 17 min, 2020

This speculative fiction is a simulation of the near future, around a decade after the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020. As a sort of 'creative sabotage of the future', the project delves into a possible world, reflecting and distorting the conditions of the current world.
In the wake of climate change and depletion of natural resources brought on by fossil fuels, eco-friendly bio-fuels have become society’s main energy source. The chief source of energy in the world is algae—macro-algae that are fermented to produce biofuel.
In the Korean city of Busan, a “biomass town” has been established over a long belt stretching from Gijang to the waters near the Oryukdo Islands. (Kelp from Busan has been renowned since the 19th century for its quality and yields.) Surisol Underwater Lab, which manages an integrated process involving seaweed farming, water quality, ocean currents, and biomass, is also located in the area of the Oryukdo Islands.
Sohila, a former humanitarian status holder who left Yemen escaping the Yemen War, is a senior researcher at the lab. She has just returned to the lab after taking an early month-long vacation for Ramadan. She hears good news and bad news from Surisol, an artificial intelligence system that manages the laboratory alongside the human beings there. Sohila sends Turbo Shell (the remotely operated vehicle) to conduct reconnaissance in the waters in question. Viewing the images sent by the ROV, Sohila shares its point-of-view as it is imperiled during its journey when it encounters a large swarm of squid and turbulent currents. Suddenly, she blacks out. This segues into a flashback, as she recalls what happened to Korea, and to her, during the COVID-19 pandemic that swept over the world in 2020.

* The character Sohila was played by Sohila AlBna'a, an actual Yemeni migrant living in Korea.

Commissioned by Busan Biennale 2020, Korea
About the Works
At the Surisol Underwater Lab
Single Channel video, Approx. 17 min, 2020

This speculative fiction is a simulation of the near future, around a decade after the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020. As a sort of 'creative sabotage of the future', the project delves into a possible world, reflecting and distorting the conditions of the current world.
In the wake of climate change and depletion of natural resources brought on by fossil fuels, eco-friendly bio-fuels have become society’s main energy source. The chief source of energy in the world is algae—macro-algae that are fermented to produce biofuel.
In the Korean city of Busan, a “biomass town” has been established over a long belt stretching from Gijang to the waters near the Oryukdo Islands. (Kelp from Busan has been renowned since the 19th century for its quality and yields.) Surisol Underwater Lab, which manages an integrated process involving seaweed farming, water quality, ocean currents, and biomass, is also located in the area of the Oryukdo Islands.
Sohila, a former humanitarian status holder who left Yemen escaping the Yemen War, is a senior researcher at the lab. She has just returned to the lab after taking an early month-long vacation for Ramadan. She hears good news and bad news from Surisol, an artificial intelligence system that manages the laboratory alongside the human beings there. Sohila sends Turbo Shell (the remotely operated vehicle) to conduct reconnaissance in the waters in question. Viewing the images sent by the ROV, Sohila shares its point-of-view as it is imperiled during its journey when it encounters a large swarm of squid and turbulent currents. Suddenly, she blacks out. This segues into a flashback, as she recalls what happened to Korea, and to her, during the COVID-19 pandemic that swept over the world in 2020.

* The character Sohila was played by Sohila AlBna'a, an actual Yemeni migrant living in Korea.

Commissioned by Busan Biennale 2020, Korea
The Underwater Response
Two-Channel Video, 12 min, 2021

Created for Asian Art Biennial 2021, this two-channel vertical video is one of the works revolving around the fictitious space Surisol Underwater Lab. It is a prequel of Surisol Underwater Lab, a past that arrived later than the main event. If one considers “the present” depicted in At the Surisol Underwater Lab as a near-future or a possible world departed from our reality, what emerges from this work is a “retroactive temporality” or a “retroactive present”, as it gazes at the past event from the timeframe of At The Surisol Underwater Lab, and that can be “the present” for us. This also can be seen as a basic function of “extrapolation”, a methodology that frequently being deployed in sci-fis and speculative fictions.

It shows the interview that a young Muslim Mavel El Desuky undergoes under Surisol’s direction to become a researcher at the Surisol Underwater Lab. Here the cliché sci-fi roles are reversed between the interviewing AI Surisol and its human interviewee as it attempts to select an employee to work at the underwater lab. The interview/test is meant for the Surisol to determine whether the human is suited to the isolated deep-sea laboratory environment.

The conception of this interview/test
process was based on the clichés of the sort of psychological response tests seen in sci-fi and cyberpunk work like the film Blade Runner (1982).

Commissioned by Asian Art Biennial 2021, Taiwan
The Underwater Response
Two-Channel Video, 12 min, 2021

Created for Asian Art Biennial 2021, this two-channel vertical video is one of the works revolving around the fictitious space Surisol Underwater Lab. It is a prequel of Surisol Underwater Lab, a past that arrived later than the main event. If one considers “the present” depicted in At the Surisol Underwater Lab as a near-future or a possible world departed from our reality, what emerges from this work is a “retroactive temporality” or a “retroactive present”, as it gazes at the past event from the timeframe of At The Surisol Underwater Lab, and that can be “the present” for us. This also can be seen as a basic function of “extrapolation”, a methodology that frequently being deployed in sci-fis and speculative fictions.

It shows the interview that a young Muslim Mavel El Desuky undergoes under Surisol’s direction to become a researcher at the Surisol Underwater Lab. Here the cliché sci-fi roles are reversed between the interviewing AI Surisol and its human interviewee as it attempts to select an employee to work at the underwater lab. The interview/test is meant for the Surisol to determine whether the human is suited to the isolated deep-sea laboratory environment.

The conception of this interview/test
process was based on the clichés of the sort of psychological response tests seen in sci-fi and cyberpunk work like the film Blade Runner (1982).

Commissioned by Asian Art Biennial 2021, Taiwan
In Search of Petra Genetrix
Voice-Transforming Lecture Performance, Approx. 30 min, 2020
(Ver. IMPAKT Festival)

Petra Genetrix, the protagonist of the series Porosity Valley, is a migrant, mineral, and data cluster. In this lecture performance, the artist traces the origin of Petra Genetrix who constantly crosses borders, gender boundaries, and the concept of existence and nonexistence and creates her own hyperbolic mythology. While utilizing audio and video excerpts from her existing works, Ayoung Kim uses her own voice to create a verbal narrative exploring those agents who cross boundaries. By doing so, she continues to trace multifaceted crystal faces of Petra Genetrix, who is fundamentally porous and ambiguous.

Project Produced by IMPAKT Festival 2020, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Project Supported by Korean Film Council

In Search of Petra Genetrix
Voice-Transforming Lecture Performance, Approx. 30 min, 2020
(Ver. IMPAKT Festival)

Petra Genetrix, the protagonist of the series Porosity Valley, is a migrant, mineral, and data cluster. In this lecture performance, the artist traces the origin of Petra Genetrix who constantly crosses borders, gender boundaries, and the concept of existence and nonexistence and creates her own hyperbolic mythology. While utilizing audio and video excerpts from her existing works, Ayoung Kim uses her own voice to create a verbal narrative exploring those agents who cross boundaries. By doing so, she continues to trace multifaceted crystal faces of Petra Genetrix, who is fundamentally porous and ambiguous.

Project Produced by IMPAKT Festival 2020, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Project Supported by Korean Film Council

Surisol Underwater Lab Guided Tour
Document video of live VRChat lecture performance, Approx. 10-12 min, 2022

Surisol Underwater Lab is a fictitious place conceived by Ayoung Kim since 2020. It features in a series of projects including At the Surisol Underwater Lab (2020), Surisol: POVCR (2021) and The Underwater Response (2021). These speculative fictions are set in the near future, around a decade after the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020.

In the wake of climate change and depletion of natural resources brought on by fossil fuels, seaweed-fermented biofuels have become society’s main energy source. Surisol Underwater Lab, which manages seaweed farming and biomass production is located in the area of the Oryukdo Islands in the Korean city of Busan. In this guided tour, the audiences are invited to visit the Surisol Underwater Lab and the kelp farm, where the senior researcher Sohila and the operating AI Surisol is out for a duty.

Project Produced by STRP Festival 2022, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Project Supported by Arts Council Korea

Surisol Underwater Lab Guided Tour
Document video of live VRChat lecture performance, Approx. 10-12 min, 2022

Surisol Underwater Lab is a fictitious place conceived by Ayoung Kim since 2020. It features in a series of projects including At the Surisol Underwater Lab (2020), Surisol: POVCR (2021) and The Underwater Response (2021). These speculative fictions are set in the near future, around a decade after the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020.

In the wake of climate change and depletion of natural resources brought on by fossil fuels, seaweed-fermented biofuels have become society’s main energy source. Surisol Underwater Lab, which manages seaweed farming and biomass production is located in the area of the Oryukdo Islands in the Korean city of Busan. In this guided tour, the audiences are invited to visit the Surisol Underwater Lab and the kelp farm, where the senior researcher Sohila and the operating AI Surisol is out for a duty.

Project Produced by STRP Festival 2022, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Project Supported by Arts Council Korea

About 2022 Kuandu Biennale Time of the Art Society: How to Become Indi-genous?
The concept of “art society” refers not to the aesthetic function of art in the society, but to its creative and affective power in transforming society. “Time of the Art Society” is the title of the Kuandu Biennale 2022, exploring the indigenousness of time in two layers. Modeling the interrelationship between time and space, the Biennale intends to extend beyond its one-off nature (being a two to three months event) into a longitudinal exploration (one to two years presence), thereby becoming a long-term “free” time companioning the everyday life. The second layer is to bring human-to-human relationship and human-to-object relationship into ecological time, detaching from the problem-solving mindset and the pursuit of value maximization. The title prompts a consideration of how individuals can respond to each other and/or the society as a whole through affective functions and redistribution, hence to transform short-lived experiences to long-term relationships.

About 2022 Kuandu Biennale Time of the Art Society: How to Become Indi-genous?
The concept of “art society” refers not to the aesthetic function of art in the society, but to its creative and affective power in transforming society. “Time of the Art Society” is the title of the Kuandu Biennale 2022, exploring the indigenousness of time in two layers. Modeling the interrelationship between time and space, the Biennale intends to extend beyond its one-off nature (being a two to three months event) into a longitudinal exploration (one to two years presence), thereby becoming a long-term “free” time companioning the everyday life. The second layer is to bring human-to-human relationship and human-to-object relationship into ecological time, detaching from the problem-solving mindset and the pursuit of value maximization. The title prompts a consideration of how individuals can respond to each other and/or the society as a whole through affective functions and redistribution, hence to transform short-lived experiences to long-term relationships.

Works
At the Surisol Underwater Lab
At the Surisol Underwater Lab
At the Surisol Underwater Lab
The Underwater Response
The Underwater Response
In Search of Petra Genetrix
In Search of Petra Genetrix
Surisol Underwater Lab Guided Tour
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