27. Salon

Studiovisit with Yunchul Kim



MatteReal by Yunchul Kim

Nothing is independent from the world and this world of matter is continuously fluctuating and becoming. It enables our thoughts to entangle with huge ontological horizon and even imaginary things which have not become real things yet. In such a world of ‘things thinging’, realities and things are emerged in the phenomena through its own materiality. As Latin ‘res’, the etymology of the word 'reality', also means 'thing', realities and things are another name of the event in an ongoing process.
MatteReal is the world of materials which is constantly fluctuating, being entangled and implicated, and becoming in the spatial-temporal world as a reality of material. It makes possible to liquefying the boundaries of the dichotomous polarity of notions such as culture and nature, and human and non-human that comes from anthropocentric perspectives. On the processes of THINGing which are in relationship of the world, things become active agents, not lifeless things that placed around us. Through this thought, we can enter the dimension of materials that even accompanies concept of passive materials such as form and meaning. This is not only about things, but also between the interdisciplinary practices and the contacts that science and technology meet. In this talk, I focus on practices and convergences of my recent works and will talk how it can be fluctuating at a junction where material, immaterial, arts, science and technology meet.


CV: Yunchul Kim is an artist, an electroacoustic music composer, and the founder of Studio Locus Solus in Seoul. His latest works are focusing on the artistic potential of fluid dynamics, metamaterials (photonic crystals) and especially on the context of magnetohydrodynamics. His works have been shown internationally including: FACT, Liverpool; ZKM, Germany; Ars Electronica, Austria; International Triennial of New media art, China; VIDA15.0, Spain; Transmediale, Germany; ISEA, Germany; and New York Digi- tal Salon, amongst others.
Kim was the winner of the Collide International Award 2016, CERN, and was awarded the third prize at VIDA 15.0, Vida Foundation in 2013. He has received grants from renowned institutions and organizations such as Ernst Schering Foundation, Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art. Having taught in several academic institutions, Kim was chief researcher of the research group Mattereality at the Transdisciplinary Research Program at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study. He is a member of the art and science project group Fluid Skies as well as Liquid Things, an artistic research project at the Art and Science Department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria.