BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim

         all BUSY DAYS interventions: ( INTERVIEW: an interview with Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader ) ( LAUTPLAN: a lecture-performance by Christine Sun Kim ) ( AVAILABLE SPACES: presentation of two series of drawings by Christine Sun Kim ) ( CLOSE READINGS: presentation of Close Readings video-installation by Christine Sun Kim ) ( BUSY DAY radio broadcast by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader )

         see also ( De Appel Editions #1: Christine Sun Kim )

( Download Brochure Here )

BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim stages five artistic interventions throughout Amsterdam (and beyond). It presents a concise selection of works by the American artist Christine Sun Kim that explore the medium of sound through technology, performance and drawing. Each of these interventions concerns a particular medium, duration and social context, such as a nightclub, a radio station or an office hallway, and highlights Kim’s singular relationship with spoken languages and her aural environment.

The project has grown out of a number of extended live chat-sessions between the artist and De Appel director Niels Van Tomme. These sessions touched upon topics such as the visual interpretation of sound, alternative experiences of spatial sonic qualities, or privileges related to hearing. There was one topic, however, that became more urgent as their chat-sessions progressed: how to organise an exhibition project that would both befit Kim’s main thematic preoccupation, namely the conceptual and social aspects of sound, and the new nomadic organisational reality of De Appel?

Thinking about this issue, the project set forth to explore a set of open-ended questions related to idiosyncratic modes of exhibition making attached to being an institution without a fixed exhibition venue. What is the relationship between an organisation without a home and an artist predominantly preoccupied with sound, a medium that travels freely through time and space, unbound by spatial limitations? What if one disentangled the very idea of an exhibition project tied to a specific exhibition space? What if the project dispersed to different locations throughout the city and even ceased being an exhibition? And what if it sometimes even abandoned physical space altogether?

Fore mostly, BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim highlights some of the distinctive ways in which Christine Sun Kim understands the concepts of sound and listening. This understanding has been determined by her being Deaf since birth – hence the project’s elaborate exchanges through live chat. Kim, however, prefers people to focus on the communication aspects of her work, instead of letting deafness be the driving force behind it. By doing this, she challenges widely excepted cultural ideas about the human voice as a predominantly sonic force, or sound as something that can only be experienced through audition.

To underscore the multifaceted ways in which the artist comprehends sound, ‘BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim’ consists of a wide range of strategies of intervention:

( INTERVIEW: an interview with Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader )

( LAUTPLAN: a lecture-performance by Christine Sun Kim )

( AVAILABLE SPACES: presentation of two series of drawings by Christine Sun Kim )

( CLOSE READINGS: presentation of Close Readings video-installation by Christine Sun Kim and Classified Digits video by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader )

( BUSY DAY radio broadcast by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader )

Taken together, these five interventions provide tools to comprehend some of the inquisitive ways in which Christine Sun Kim explores sound and what she calls “the politics of listening”. BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim thus highlights the artist’s dedication to always playfully break the rules, especially when it concerns the questioning of culturally conditioned hearing practices or the ways in which we are habituated to experience sound, and in doing so provides alternative modes of communication. It connects these issues to De Appel’s continued exploration of its firm yet unfixed organizational identity in Amsterdam and alternative exhibition contexts within which to experience art.

The artist(s): Christine Sun Kim uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and her aural environment. Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: White Space, Beijing (solo); Carroll/Fletcher, London (solo); nyMusikk, Oslo; Sound Live Tokyo, Tokyo; Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Shanghai Biennale; and the Museum of Modern Art / PS1, New York. Kim was awarded TED and MIT Media Lab Fellowships.

Thomas Mader employs different media to research questions of national identity, communication and storytelling. Selected group exhibitions and online contributions include: NGBK, Berlin/Germany; SAVAC, Toronto/Canada; Bus Projects, Melbourne/Australia; The Kitchen, NY/USA and Bomb Magazine, NY/USA.

De Appel (acts): De Appel (acts) is De Appel’s nomadic artistic programme, which is presented at various context-specific locations throughout the city of Amsterdam (and beyond). For ‘BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim’ De Appel partners with Red Light Radio, Broedplaats Lely, De School and Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee.

‘BUSY DAYS with Christine Sun Kim’ is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Mondriaan Fund and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. Christine Sun Kim is represented by Carroll / Fletcher, London. Christine Sun Kim is represented by Carroll / Fletcher, London.

Home page video captions by Ariel Baker-Gibes