On September 4, 2024, NOW Art Founder Carmen Zella sat down with artist Carole Kim for a live conversation about public art and LUMINEX 3.0 on Instagram (@nowart_la). RSVP here for future LUMINEX Artist Talks.
Below is a transcript of the video:
Carmen Zella (CZ): Hello everyone! Super excited to be hosting another one of our live Instagram chats. It’s really great to see, everybody’s coming into the room. Hi! Carmen Zella. I’m the curator and chief operator of Now Art, which is a public art agency, and I have the privilege of sitting with Carole Kim, artist extraordinaire. She’s going to be at Site 6, which might not mean anything right now, but potentially will mean something for Luminex, which is happening on October 5th in the South Park area where we’re at currently in downtown Los Angeles.
So we’re gonna talk a little bit with Carole, whose work is tremendous, and she’s done quite a few projects in the city of Los Angeles where she’s from but we’re gonna specifically dive into the details of the installation which Carole’s been working on now for a couple years. Because we took a pause with Luminex in 2023.
But the piece has continued to grow and expand. And yeah, it’s really amazing. Thank you for being here, Carole.
Carole Kim (CK): Thanks for having me.
CZ : If the sound isn’t coming through well on your side please put a comment in the chat just so that we’re aware if there is a sound discrepancy.
We want to make sure that the audience can hear us articulating and isn’t left behind.
CK: It’s a very big, boomy concrete room. So I think there’s a lot of echo. We’re good?
CZ: We’re good. Okay. Awesome. So Carole, we’re just going to dive in because these are quite short, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, can you give us some context about your work specifically in the public art arena?
Tell us a little bit about, your history, like how did you become a public art artist?
CK: Okay. I’m going to first say something, and then I’m going to make up for it with what I say next, okay?
CZ: Okay, yeah, no, I love that.
CK: So first, I don’t really think much categorically because for the last 20-plus years, I’ve never really fit very well in any given category, so I keep popping up in between or amorphously squeezing in between the cracks kind of thing, so people don’t know quite how to place me and so I don’t invest a whole lot in, specifically, what do you think about public art. However, what I do think about and what public art raises for me are a couple of things.
So one is a term people use a lot is accessibility. I talk about it a little differently. I think about framing. I think about site specificity. And I think about scale. Okay, so I’ll talk a little bit about those four things and then I’ll move into specifically how I’m going to be approaching Luminex this year.
CZ: Yeah, fantastic.
CK: So first let’s talk about accessibility.
I tend to more use the term on-ramping because I feel like it’s not the work itself that needs to take into consideration accessibility, it’s all the surrounding circumstances. And when I think about on-ramping, one, it feels like a more sort of action, call to action, on-ramping – as to how you can orient anything surrounding the piece where you’re leaning in to the viewer, the audience, and the public, regardless of where I’m mounting a piece, whether it’s officially public art or in any other kind of venue.
So then I think about framing. There’s something about being in a site like Luminex where the formality isn’t there anymore. And the person who comes to see it, there’s more casual circumstances, so you can make your own choices.
So how do you come to this event? Do you bring your own chair? Do you come watch our performance for a bit, go see the rest of the installations and then come back and see something totally different unfolding. But it’s your choice, or if you want to sit and linger, like we had some people who said, I just came for a few minutes and they stay for the whole four hours or something, cause it keeps changing.
So I love how people can make their own choices. They don’t have to feel whether they belong in that setting. You’re in the city. You’re in a parking lot. You belong. You know what I mean? So I like that.
So then what was my next one? Site specificity. Okay, so being framed by the city is so amazing. So my pieces, regardless, they’re always site specific. So I don’t work in a very packaged way where it’s just like, here’s the piece. I can now bring it everywhere and anywhere and it remains intact and indifferent to where it’s being set up. I always take into account where I’m working and how I can make the piece grow roots in the space that it’s presented in, right.
And when you have a site like this in Luminex it’s every time you come to visit, you get to know the space a little better and bring a little more love to it, come to know it better. For instance, this past Sunday, I met with some of the performers for this year’s Luminex, and Robert Reigle, who’s the saxophone player in the group, starts playing in all different parts of the space.
And he discovers that, well one, acoustically the space is really interesting. So outside sometimes you worry how sound is going to behave, but there’s actually some interesting acoustics. And he discovered that each building had its own personality as to how it bounced sound back. And so he’s in love with the yellow building.
So if you see the yellow building when you get there. So it’s something you learn about the space and you know we’re going to us that information.
CZ: Because this is a new location. So Carole has done Luminex in the past, but this is a new location, which is also really fun for the artists who are returning.
CK: Yeah, and it’s fun for me too. So I come to a space and basically asked myself what does this space want? What can I imagine happening here? And it’s pretty quick for me. Like I want to project on the rooftop, and I want to get on there, and then this kind of thing. And then you get into more of the particulars, like how you’re connecting all your cables.
How is the technology going to integrate with the live performers, and how they can impact the live experience. So for instance, this year, the big front projection on the huge frontal wall, the projector is being placed really close to the ground. And so the entire cone of the projection, when the dancers are in it, they’re going to be casting shadows at the same time as their bodies being in space.
At the same time as live cameras are picking their image and I’m incorporating it into the video.
CZ: So let’s talk about that for a second because the shadows that the performers are creating, conceptually, how is that like a part of your piece? Because I think it’s a really important element.
CK: I’ve used live feed with the dancers for so long. This is a different way of projecting the body, and it’s very, it’s black silhouette. And it’s scaled differently. So when you’re really close to the projector, the shadows are going to be huge. It could just be the entire wall, and then when you get close to the wall, you’re teeny tiny. Same with the live camera, depending on how the camera brings in the dancer – they could either be, like, just a detail of your face is now billboard size, or it could be at a distance where you’re small figures in relationship to each other. And that can be happening simultaneously in the same or opposite ways. So I think it’s going to be, it’s like being in a technological house of mirrors, but it’s not a mirror.
It’s the way in which the body gets projected into the space.
CZ: And just to be clear for the audience who’s not familiar with Carole’s work, so she’s orchestrating all of these elements live. And she has live instrumentalists like the saxophone player that she was speaking about.
And also the live camera feed and the live dancers. So there’s this element of discovery. And it’s generative, so there is never going to be repetition that happens in the project and its existence.
CK: Yeah, thank you. That’s a good segue.
CZ: And move a little closer.
CK: Oh am I falling off, out of frame. Talking about framing! So how I approach this event is as a durational multimedia performance. So four hours – what I try to do is create, I’m trying to hold space in a way that the live image, live visuals, sound and the body have equal agency and impacting what happens at any given point.
So we’re all on an equal plane, okay. And I’m really invested in improvisation as a form for a piece unto itself, which in terms of the visual arts has a much less robust history as it might have in music for instance, okay. So sometimes I feel like I need to dispel certain misconceptions about improvisation.
It is not random. It is not anything goes. It’s really about everyone being so attuned to each other that you know when to slip into a more supportive role or to meet someone where they are. You’re just on it together. So to me, it feels like this expedition where we’re so locked in. And we don’t know where we’re going, but we’re really curious and I can’t wait to see where we go. So that’s kind of what motivates it.
CZ: Sure. And this ensemble that you’re working with, these performers have a history of working with each other. So it’s also, that rehearsal time is a different type of rehearsing because you start to get more attuned to the other people that are working around you.
CK: Yes. Yes. Everyone who’s on board as a performer and maybe I’ll quickly read their names or something, are all really strong improvisers within their own medium as well as just being attuned to the entire environment in general. To listen, watch, feel. So we have, we’ll have four dancers and four musicians and two live camera people.
So on dance we have Oguri, Roxanne Steinberg, Michelle Shiu-lin Lai, and Chénhuì Mao. And for sound we have a group called Intangible Quartet. Tim Feeney on percussion, Gamin on Korean wind instruments, Robert Reigle on saxophone, and Jeff Schwartz on bass. And then we have Theo Rasmussen on live camera and Brent Kaplan on live drum. So just to throw out those names of these fabulous people. So maybe I’ll segue now into some of the content that I’ve been building.
CZ: Yeah, I want to show the content. And then I also want to talk a little bit about the concept too, cause I think that really pulls it all together.
CK: Which concept?
CZ: The concept of memory and just going a little bit into that history would be great.
CK: Okay. So the piece is called Chronicles of Touch: HOWDOESYOURMEMORYWORK, all one word. And so some of you who know me know that for the last two years, I’ve been – My life has changed a lot in that we moved my mom and dad out here to California. And taking care of aging parents has been a very complex experience with my mom having dementia.
And it has taught me so much about the complexity of dementia and memory. It is not a linear path. It is not about loss. It can be about loss, but it’s far more intricate than that. And it changes in the moment. It changes by day, it changes by week, it changes by month. So for instance, my mom is in a more aware state now than she was six or eight months ago, or we’ll have this amazing, insightful moment followed by, can you tell me about your mother? That kind of thing.
So it’s been a, I feel like my experience and training as an artist who is invested in the moment and being really present has been put to the full test in the role of caregiving. But anyway, it has me thinking a lot about memory and what is memory and what is our relationship to memory and what does that mean.
And when I’m thinking about stuff, I often will go, I wonder what other people are thinking about this or what they’re experiencing. So I’ll send out this query to a vast number of people and just say what do you think? What is your relationship to memory? And is that changing?
And do you think, do you feel that your memories define who you are or, all these kinds of things. And then people, I’m so grateful, they’ll take the time to really contemplate it and send me back these really beautiful responses that diversify my understanding of how I was thinking about it.
When you’re preparing for a four hour performance, there’s a lot of material I’m preparing, but there is this core core amount of material that is all about this investigation of memory. And so what I’ve done is, I’ve paired this stop motion film that I shot of working with this white powder and my fingertips. And you may need to know that I’m a very tactile…
CZ: Artist? Human being?
CK: I need to just interact with the materials that I’m working with. Materiality – the physical materiality of something really drives where I go with things. I’m playing with this white powder and doing frame by frame thing, and the powder just registered every little touch, it was like these traces of contact and of gesture, okay. And I pulled these stills from that and I’m going to try to show you off my laptop, and paired them with extracted text of what people sent me. So I’ll show you just a few examples to give you a feeling for it.
And then I’ll move on from there. But so okay, so let’s see if we can actually see the screen and I’ll read the text. It says, “I’ve been walking into rooms and not remembering why I am here or why I’m there,” sorry.
“Not remembering. Not remembering what I did yesterday, what I had for breakfast. Things I learned or read or viewed, what movie I saw and what it was about, a joke I heard, all gone rather quickly.”
“Memory is a repository of trauma, yes, but also of potential healing.”
“What about forgetting? Why do we forget?”
“I think of the painter who thought in dots. They carried him through the hourglass. Maybe I’ll just show one more. In spite of an early life full of strife and tragedy, Dad longs to go back to the rural place of his childhood. He says it has nothing to do with people. It’s the place, the landscape. He says he feels like he would kiss the ground.”
CZ: So these images that Carole just shared with you are going to be projected on the main wall. And so as we were talking about the shadow casting, that’s going to be embedded. And I think that’s a really important, for me, that image of the shadows interplaying and putting that piece of humanity, but also their shadows – they’re creating holes that are cut out of these images, has such a unique conceptual framework and layer inside of the entirety of the piece. I’m so excited about it.
CK: I’m glad you’re picking up – Okay, so this is what I’ll say, so what has become, it’s what I felt for some time but that has only been reinforced in this thought process, is the non-linearity of time and experience. We live so forcibly on this chronological x-axis, it marches forward, but in terms of how it registers in our body and gets recorded there, time is on the z-axis.
And it’s all about what comes to the foreground and what recedes, what’s retrievable, what’s not, what pops out of nowhere and that kind of thing. And so this z-axis layering is really interesting for an artist who has been obsessed with spatiality and projection and layering and translucency, like the correlation there is just like perfect, so I feel kind of, I don’t know. It just seemed like an aha moment.
CZ: It is an aha moment. And so what is going to be projected then on the artists? So we have the dancers, which are going to be on the parking lot facade and they actually have a projection that is coming down on top of them and they’re going to be interacting with white powder, which is like where these framed, stop motion pieces are reinforced in terms of that materiality.
CK: Yeah. The floor projection I think of in different ways. One, I think of it as…Oh, so another thing I do often is within the live visuals, there are audio reactive elements. And so sound will impact it in a way that makes, I think of it as a it adds to a nervous system that’s linked, so sound, everything kind of…
CZ: It’s a frequency.
CK: There’s responsiveness to it, right? And so I’m thinking about the floor in terms of how sound might start to energize it and move it around. I also think of it since it’s coming from above, like what I can precipitate down onto the dancers. And then also how I can illuminate them so that the live cameras can pull them in and also how the shadow casting is going to work depends on where I put the light, right? And so it’s a big puzzle that’s really fascinating. I feel really motivated by, ooh, what if we tried this? What’s that going to be like? And nobody knows. Nobody knows what it’s going to be like to…
CZ: Make these adjustments.
CK: Yeah, and how that might coincide and just the physics of it will be magical. You know what I mean? Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. So much of it is about like, ooh, I don’t know, but I think it’s going to be totally cool. Or just, oh once I get my hands on what the handles are, cause like you still have to figure out like, it really does feel like you’re on this big ship, and you want it to go places. But you also have to figure out where the handles are. Like what you can push and pull and accentuate and like, oh, the dancers are doing this now, I’m gonna put in, I’m gonna give them something more to play with, or the sound is doing this now, it’s oh, we need to move to something that’s just gonna respond to that or something. So yeah.
So another thing I just wanted to talk about is duration. And so I’ve had more and more opportunities to do these four or five hour pieces. And for me, it’s just so amazing in this day in age where everything is, has to be like this, and we’re all like, trying to keep up, whatever – that you can still make situations where time…and just becomes this sort of expansive thing, and when it does that, I’m convinced that’s what allows these magical things to happen.
CZ: Absolutely.
CK: And yeah. So I find that so infinitely reassuring, that’s possible, and I, and that the things that you couldn’t imagine happening are allowed to happen, and so that I find really reassuring and…
CZ: Because in the first hour, everything is still like nerve racking. Everyone’s settling in and then you start getting in the zone and then it’s like…and you start really in the connection. And yeah, this is going to be amazing.
So we’ve gone a little bit over time. But I have something else that you wanted to share.
CK: No, I could talk about a lot of things, I’m also happy to engage in conversation with anyone.
If you have questions you want to send me and I’m really happy to talk on site too, at the piece, if that comes up too. I had some really interesting conversations during the past Luminexes and just people…maybe it seems like it’s not evident at first with moving image when it’s happening live, and then when you realize all the different layers of what’s actually happening and coming together, people just go, Pwwfff! Yeah. So I’m happy to share anything about all that.
CZ: Amazing. So if you have any questions, please put them in the chat and then we’ll forward them over to Carole, absolutely. But this is really amazing. If you haven’t done so, please RSVP through our Eventbrite. And we’ll send you updated notifications on, really importantly, where to park and things like that. Try to take the Metro. We’re taking up all the parking lots in this area and Comic Con is happening.
So please if you can, at all, do rideshare, or bike, or some other mode of transportation, but please come. We’re really excited for Luminex this year, and just connecting with Carole.
CK: Yeah, I’ll say one more thing, if I can. If it’s okay. You know my interest in the physical materiality of things. So for me, the ultimate material is presence. It’s just presence, and just, you’re coming to it is part of it. Because your presence in the space with us is definitely part of the piece, okay. So in some ways to me, that’s what it’s all about.
CZ: Yeah, I couldn’t have said it any better.
We’re doing a public art piece and we need all of your magical, beautiful human spirits there to share with us. Thank you. Excellent.
CK: Antenna!
CZ: Thank you so much. Take care. Have a good night.
CK: Thank you, thank you!