A VOID A VOID by Carole Kim took collaborative improvisation to the next level at LUMINEX: Dialogues of Light
At LUMINEX: Dialogues of Light, Carole Kim presented A VOID A VOID. Kim is an artist known for being experimental and at LUMINEX she made no exception. A VOID A VOID appeared, for one night only, on the exterior wall of The Morrison Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and expanded upon both the prolonged absence and historical presence that emanates from this location. Through use of her native medium – video projection for multi-media installation, performance and photography – Kim presented varying images, videos, and sounds that were projected onto the wall of this building with the help of her collaborators and the audience members themselves.
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With a station set up for visitors to write and draw notes that could be incorporated into the performance, Kim broke the barrier between the artist and the audience, the performer and the onlooker. It is this that made her work so perfect for the LUMINEX: Dialogues of Light – an exhibition with the direct intention of bringing the Los Angeles community together after more than a year of both physical and political separation. Through her work, Kim offered a moment of reprise where there was truly nothing that divided the people who gathered there.
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What is so unique about Kim’s work is that it tends to live in a unique creative space that many artists aspire to explore themselves – the space that exists between what is rooted in a singular concept and what is open-ended enough to allow room for improvisation. In fact, when it came to A VOID A VOID, Kim told us that the intention of creating within this space is to allow for enough “freedom for my collaborators to fully insert themselves and do what they do best,” and to “encourage the maximum amount of exploration and unpredictable discovery.” You can see this commitment clearly in A VOID A VOID as well as in her previous work, such as Shine a Light at Descanso Gardens.
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The particular architecture of The Morrison Hotel also played a role in Kim’s expression. On this, she said, “the two inlets on the parking lot side of the building present an opportunity to metaphorically explore loss, the hole of a pandemic, the gaps of isolation, the intransigent nature of communication that is so prevalent at present.” This was further exemplified by the movement that was incorporated into A VOID A VOID, which was added by Kim because of the fact that movement brings with it “a renewed sense of possibility.”
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At random times of the night, two bodies, dressed in white, moved, crawled, and slithered into the naturally formed void between the exhibition wall and the audience. Once there, they began to draw lines on the floor with chalk (also in white). This color selection seemed to be particularly fitting when paired with the light show projected onto the building behind the performers since white light encapsulates both the absence of color as well as the presence of all colors at once.
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The concept of exploring both nothing and everything at the same time was not just presented as a juxtaposition in Kim’s work, it was presented as an opportunity – one where the line between opposites are blurred and the idea of collective healing could be felt, seen, heard, and experienced rather than simply ideated over.
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If you want to see Carole Kim’s A VOID A VOID, you can access the livestream here.
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More about the artist
Carole Kim works primarily with video projection for multi-media installation, performance and photography. Working extensively with technology, it is where technology meets up with the human, physical, tangible world that interests her. Kim’s work attests to an ongoing fascination with light and layered translucency, pushing the moving images to take on optical, spatial and dimensional form of its own.
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What fascinates Kim about layered installations is the merging of physical space, the body, and the illusionistic world of the moving image. Through this juxtaposition I can play with relative scale, dimensionality and how matter can appear to commingle. It is through this juxtaposition that new composite worlds unfold where one is left to contemplate, “what is this new world I am observing?” and “how does it make me think differently about my relationship to the physical world?” It is less about what is often referred to as “video mapping” as it is an interaction, a collaboration.
Meet the collaborators who worked with Carole Kim at LUMINEX: DIALOGUES OF LIGHT
Roxanne Steinberg & Oguri – DANCE
Carmina Escobar – VOICE & ELECTRONICS
Jorge Martin – MODULAR SYNTH
Eli Rosenkim – ELECTRONICS
Alicia Gorecki & Theo Rasmussen – LIVE-FEED CAMERA